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…