Six-day school: What nonsense is this?
There used to be a time when we sent children to school to get an education in arts, sciences and mathematics, to learn the a, b, c’s.
Today we send them to school to be rid of their demanding presence and expect the school system to teach them to be human beings. We, as parents have abdicated our responsibility to imbibe in our children the distilled moral of our social mores. We are no longer accountable for their raising, we are only responsible for their feeding and grooming and paying the bills to see that they want not.
Pre-schooling begins at 18 months, the need for crèche and nanny is outsourced to regimented routine, at least for a few hours of the day. The upside is that our children learn by rote to parrot answers to questions that schools have devised to bottle neck admissions. The colours; the numbers; the shapes, all drilled into acquiescent receptacles preferably in English if the parent is upwardly anxious.
Age three and the child is in a regular school, after the entire family has been passed through a wringer that squeezes out money, patience, connections and mental peace. As the years progress the school takes over more and more the parental role and the parents get treated as the hired help that the school sends the children to. Not that socially active and career conscious parents mind this one bit. It is a symbiotic relationship that works on the premise that schools act as filial substitutes and parents provide night shelters for the children.
The parents pay tonnes of money to the school for this privilege.
The night shelter responsibility includes that parents should have them do their home work or do them for the child; to see that they are put to bed at a reasonable enough time and to get them ready the next morning fully charged to lug their heavy bags and "projects" back to school. To differentiate the boring age old homework of the past the new terminology is project. Children do projects now – all details available via the internet, all props and accoutrements stocked at the neighbourhood school book store. The internet is the biggest boon to education, not because information is free but because it is there for free. Class test papers more often than not are printouts of questionnaires from the net, often from the first hit that a Google search throws up. In school, the children are daily taught the tricks of excelling in a competitive world. Difficult questions, from out of the prescribed syllabus, posed to teachers beget answers ranging from – why can’t you look it up on the net to stop asking stupid questions.
At about quarterly frequency the school summons the parents to be told on how to react, interact and expect from the child. A progress report is generated that is dry and soulless in its wording and depth. The same yet choice phrases crop up to measure, analyse and elucidate your child’s achievement in relation to set expectations and peer progress. Class and subject teachers, not necessarily experienced special educators or trained counsellors, tell parents on how to behave with the child. Parents are equally anxious to find out what other "activities" the school is planning to launch. Western dance, possibly a pseudonym for Bollywood dancing, public speaking and the art of making presentation seems very popular with parents. Cricket coaching, during holidays as also football, swimming and tennis, all at extra payments are de rigueur for a school to be considered "good".
On top of that CBSE has now advised schools on having six day weeks. To ensure that the children don’t miss out on the excitement of learning, middle school onwards, classes on Saturday is now going to be a must. Children don’t need time to spend with their parents and grandparents and cousins and relatives and friends, all they need do is go to school. The school will dictate how much time a child needs to be a part of his family and how long he needs stay apart.
Where are we headed? If all children learn all things at school don’t we risk creating standardised automations? We are working to perfect a system that churns out intellectually mediocre, culturally weak but smart and clever operators who can perpetuate the chimera that society need only the wings of commerce to fly.
Is the prospect of a two day weekend with parents and family and friend so alien to the needs of the 21st century India? Bonds between families don’t get created by taking children away from them. Are we obsessed with the creation of robotic achievers? Will children no longer spend time with grandfathers examining the last dying ray of light on a blade of grass? Who will sit on the bed with grandmothers to play a game of Jenga? When will siblings giggle mimicking the milkman’s call in the morning? When will fathers get the chance to kick a ball in the park or throw a frisbee at his child? When will mothers hold their children to their bosoms and lament how fast they grow? Or on a mundane note how will the child go to the dentist on Saturday to have braces fitted because on a Sunday, the dentist is closed?
What is this school system that takes my child away from me? What is this education where my child grows up a stranger? Who is my child if I have not added values to his being?