MY CHILD GOES TO SCHOOL...NO MATTER WHAT HE LEARNS

In recent times, seeking an admission of your child is only quite a less headache than buying a new home. Along with convent schools, the others too ask for the eligibility of your child . You take your child for interview, pay the donation, buy the text books and notebooks from the school itself and then start paying monthly or bi yearly fees. But in Mumbai suburbs like Dombivali, Diva, Mumbra, Kalwa, etc a normal middle class man cannot afford to send his child to a convent school...and thus admits his child in a school where he has to pay less fees...without any idea about what sort of guidance will his child get over there.

“Out of around 15 schools in Dombivali, only 2-3 are worth admitting your child”, says Mrs Bhadra who takes private tuitions. “The problem with other schools is that they charge a bit less fees but teaching is worst”, she adds. This is mainly because of in experienced teachers are getting appointed and the school authorities are not willing to pay more to their teachers. All these teachers are either graduated or just HSC passed and they join the job not because they are passionate about it but because they can make some money without travelling in crowded trains.

“I was shocked when I went to the school on the open day as the English teacher herself was speaking in a pathetic English,” says Manju whose children study in Dnyaneshwari Vidyalaya, Dombivali(w).  She complains that her children are daily flooded with projects but the teachers cannot calculate the exact marks allotted to each project. Children keep doing projects before 10 days of exam when the portion is not completed but they do get revision which is very close to the exam question paper..So students only study what is being given in the revision, says Manju. The school authority asks the parents to be well dressed when they come in to receive their children but they do not formulate any rules on the bad dressing sense of their teachers. “The teachers in the school resemble a typical Hindi serial character”, says Mrs Bhadra. Social Science teachers in the school just read out the lines of the chapter and that’s how do they say that they teach. Talking about teachers is of no use if the Head of the Management is hardly a graduate.

But Dnyaneshwari alone is not an exception; there is a bunch of such schools in the suburban areas.

It is observed that parents admit their child in such schools because they cost less than the convents and also fall near to their residence. Apart from this, many parents who admit their child in such school are either less or not at all literate. But what about the quality of education that they get in such schools.It is said that a strong base is important for the intellectual growth of the child...but what if they do not get the base at all????

Posted by- Pandey Kavita

MACJ, PART-I