8th Anniversary IV

Metamorphosis of school education by Amrita ShahI live in a western suburb of Mumbai. It is an affluent neighbourhood with a predominance of young, upwardly mobile couples. It is also an area that was once well-known for its schools. I went to one of them, an elegant whitewashed building with high ceilings and polished floors. It was what was spoken of in those days in hushed tones of respect as a ‚Ëœconvent‚ school. Convent schools ‚ as the expression suggests ‚ were run by Christian missionaries and reputed to be a cut above other schools. I cannot say in what way they were better (if indeed they were) but from the casual way in which many of my friends in other schools approached their schooling, I can confirm one difference, which was discipline. We had rules and conventions for everything: assembly, hymns, marching tunes. Nuns in starched white habits ran the place, checking for minor infractions ‚ a missing badge, dirty shoes ‚ with the severity of policemen. And monitors paced the corridors hushing noisy classrooms into subdued silence. Ours was one of many schools in the neighbourhood. There was a boys‚ school across the road and another in the lane leading from my school. These were run by Jesuit priests, tall spare men in white cassocks who sometimes visited us to teach moral science or strum tunes on their guitars. The boys‚ schools also had vast playgrounds to which we were taken on sports days. There was a girls‚ school further down the main road and at least two in the neighbour-hood. They looked more or less the same: wide bulky buildings set in bleak playgrounds surrounded by high, grey walls and tall gates. There must have been differences in scholastic standards, quality of teaching and discipline. But from what I recall, they were considered good enough for everyone. In my school, like in all others, there were rich kids and poor ones. I had a classmate who was very fat, lived in a big house and commuted to school everyday in a white Ambassador. I also knew of girls who lived in the orphanage behind the chapel and did not pay any fees. When one visited friends one saw the differences in the way they lived. But in school, I don‚t recall anybody talking about their wealth or lack of it, or of what their fathers did. It would have been considered crass. Partly it was also perhaps because there was no call to highlight differences between us. Everyone wore uniforms to school, every day, except on birthdays. Those who stayed close to school walked or cycled, those who stayed further away came by the school bus. The only car we saw in the school compound was an old weather-beaten Standard owned by one of the teachers. A couple of mothers played an active role in extra-curricular activities or fetes organised by the school and so one would see them once in a while carrying boxes of something or the other. But parents were mostly invisible, turning up once a year, if at all, for parent-teacher meetings. Nobody ever had money either. Only girls like my friend with the Ambassador car patronised the canteen in the short recess. Everybody else ate home-made snacks and bought an occasional sweet from the shop across the road or ampapad from a street vendor. In short, we were all the same and differences when they were made apparent showed up in report cards, on the sportsfield, in acting talent on stage or alertness in quiz competitions. Aptitude in studies, though praised, was not taken too seriously. In the first few years up to senior school we were graded, not ranked, a policy that enabled us to recognise where we stood in terms of ability but discouraged competitiveness. Reports day was an ordeal only for those who were weak, and there was at least one girl in my class who was always in tears until the cards were handed out and she discovered that she had scraped through. Things have changed dramatically now. the schools that I have described, once considered the best in the suburbs are no longer patronised by the middle and upper middle class. My friends, many of whom studied in the very same schools, now send their kids to kindergartens with cute names and four figure tuition fees, and scour the countryside looking for experimental schools that will protect their children‚s sensitivities. A couple I know changed cities to put their daughter in a school that teaches riding and tennis at a monthly cost of renting a three-bedroom apartment in Mumbai.Till recently, approach roads to the fashionable schools in Mumbai were jammed so bad that school authorities had to pass rules discouraging kids from coming to school by car. The kids may take the school bus now but parents are still just a cellphone call away. Today there is no division between parents and kids: they are one unit. It is the parent-kid that takes an exam, a parent-kid that does crafts or goes to sports day or finds a judge for the fancy dress competition and decides what to do for show and tell.I can‚t judge which is better: then or now. I am sure parents wanted what was best for their children then, and they do the same now. But sometimes when I witness the stressful business that education has become, I wonder if we need to worry so much. Whatever we do, kids will grow up and find their way.(Amrita Shah is a Mumbai-based author and columnist)