Children and trying times..

Every evening since the last two years, I take an extra class for the underprivileged children who cannot afford extra classes or tuitions and help from their parents as they them selves work /toil in the fields and are illiterate. It is a class that started from 3 and peaked to 120, the common denominator being their zeal for life and to soak in anything and everything. They love studying, acting as sponges soaking in anything and picking up small nuances, mannerisms improving themselves.

Be it manners, social skills and how to conduct themselves in the correct manner in public, to moral values and basic cleanliness, hygiene they have improved drastically from uncouth hooligans to disciplined, well mannered children who know their P’s and Q’s and now can speak rudimentary English and also have learnt the lost of respecting their elders.

This change is a start. However, it is a drop in the ocean. They are victims of an obsolete, dead education system that has to learn by rote. They are given free clothes, free books and notebooks but are then told by their teachers to buy the essential guidebooks. Guidebooks are their lifeline. It is by these they pass and learn and learn so well, that they can repeat them ad verbatim. The sad part is the monopoly by these books, you buy a particular JPH or MBD book and that guide will ensure you mark.

Also, the interesting twist is that teachers tell you, in advance what the questions will come, which sums to revise, and what blanks to learn. Imagine being taught in this manner. These children are no different from your and mine and our children but are a victim of a system that pays no attention to them. They are just bothered with results, and board percentages. These children lack simple mental math calculation abilities, simple English and if they learn about science, history or computers its in Punjabi. And, trust me, its downright difficult and even more difficult to pronounce. I am always left embarrassed.

So many times, I have seen them being helpless when they cannot spell or calculate math sums. They hide behind the class or don’t submit their notebooks.

This is what 60% of the population is headed towards. Imagine, a gen-X that cannot calculate or spell or even operate a computer because the keyboard is in English. The board is under impression that being lenient, no failing in the classes and passing them to the next and also having no fixed percentage of attendance leads to a stress free child. However, a balance needs to be struck.

We need to tame the child, to nurture, shape them for tomorrow. I feel, to a large extent it is the teacher who are responsible, they are paid well and as gurus they should dispel the darkness that bogs them down. The parents all send their children with a hope that they will better them selves and their future getting out of the rut of daily wages and working for a pittance. These mothers are illiterate who work day in and day out trying to save their children from poverty, drugs, alcohol and unnatural sexual advances.

It is a sad state and till we don’t completely over haul this system starting from teacher selection (which is also filled with corruption) to the syllabus; that is obsolete, archaic. It’s not the children’s fault that we punish them for being poor or subject them to inter departmental bureaucracy dramas.

Carpe Diem or Seize the moment and change tomorrow and then try to get rid of other evils like alcohol, drugs that all stem from lack of education, unrest and frustration among the youth.