Uniformed to Doom

>>Some more hours of summer remain to be dusked for the schools to get reopened.  The children now enjoying everything under the sun will be back to business.  When we look around, we see the usual busy preparations going in full swing to convert back those little devils to be obedient students again.

The shops in the city are filled with parents “guided” by their children scrambling for school items and many of them getting frustrated with the fussy nature of kids or some of them fully happy to see their children gratified with in their budgets.  At schools, managements supported by their staff are giving final touch to give a new look for their school atmosphere.  Expectedly, the monsoon may set in on May 30 and it will give the best wash for everything.  Are these preparations enough to begin a new academic year?   How much retrospection and introspection the parents and the managements have done to put their best foot forward on June 1?

To speak truly based on experiences; more will come out with negative expressions.  Here we find the nemesis that leads to pathetic schooling.  Schools have become the best commercial points in our state.  Do not get surprised if tomorrow somebody says “my child’s school is better than Big Bazar”,  since the art of teaching and learning is moving in that direction.  Parents spend huge amounts on donation, fees, transport, etc expecting their children will gain something from those “malls” to survive in this competitive world in future.  Despite spending at school, the fact is that the same parents are compelled to send their children for private tuition centers which run in parallel and those for many, are more reliable mercantile establishments, which are always happy to see the degradation happening at schools.  From “Agriculture to Tuition culture” that is the transformation we have gained from the education of modern days.

If the school cannot provide good teaching-learning system, why the parents spend heavily?  If the schools cannot support children as per their needs, why they charge heavily?  It is easy to get answers for these questions, but very challenging to admit it openly.  Parents want to make sure that their children should not be left out of the so called “best schools” so that they will be not hold in contempt by others.  This makes them scramble for admissions where the class rooms are overcrowded and where teachers’ pay scales are pathetic.  Everybody knows what transpires in a classroom of 50 plus students, where a teacher spends 40 minutes!!  Some schools boast of regular parent teacher meetings. This is another gimmick.  In these meetings, the needs of the children are not all discussed.  Here the management finds ways to escape from their responsibilities and drawbacks and they pass the buck to the poor parents whose sweat and blood feed these managements.

The word “project” has achieved the highest degree of fraudulence at many schools.  A few may gain from these exercise called “Projects”, but the most are compelled to learn the art of “cut and paste” that does not need any intellectual contribution.   Likewise, we see more negatives in each and every activity.  Only the managements get fattened.  The poor teachers keep on switching schools in search of better pay and more peace.  The hapless kids are compelled to stay there fully subjugated by the experiments done on them.  These managements and thoughtless parents have eaten deep into the sweetest conditions of childhood.

Childhood of every child, whether bright or poor, is being violated in every class rooms.  Their innocence is ripped apart with the help of harsh syllabus and rigorous teaching methods that even Taliban will be ashamed of.  Their unseen and unheard tears and sobs reflect the deplorable condition of our minds.  Our current educational system has now got the strategic advantage to create more schizophrenics in our society.  It has been too late to understand that most of the school-going children are orchids not dandelion.

Prathap M.R

(Senior Editor,  Technopark Today)