We, the civil society

 

This video is making the usual viral rounds of FB, like most funny videos. Hundreds have laughed, ‘thumbs upped’, and left ‘LOL’, ‘ROFL’, ‘awesome’, etc. type of comments on seeing this video. You too will, like many of my friends and acquaintances (in all probability) laugh.

I don’t want to sound like a cynic, but really, those of you who laughed without a thought, are so disconnected and unaware of the state of our government schools.

This video takes me back to my one year stint with an NGO called Naandi. I was part of their ‘Civil Society Cell’, that mobilised the civil society, like you and me, corporates etc. to come and volunteer/help  in their elementary school programme, which was run in partnership with the government of Andhra Pradesh. It was during those 12 months that I went into government schools with donors, programme coordinators and sometimes alone too, to monitor how the programme was being implemented. My husband and I had also ‘adopted’ a school, which required us to visit the school at least once a month to interact with the children and meet their parents and encourage them to send their children to school everyday, besides financially helping the school in the form of books, teaching aids etc.

Most of these schools didn’t have teachers, let alone benches and uniforms for the children. But this was the least of  our worries. Our biggest challenge was to get children to attend school. The mid-day meal programme that was also run by Naandi was a big attraction for most of these children whose parents couldn’t afford 2 square meals a day. So a free meal was most welcome, and if that needed their kid to be in school, so be it.  But not all thoguht that way. Some didn;t go despite the free meal. Some attended only the day when free uniforms were distributed.

I saw no reason why they should come either. With a school so shabby and a bored teacher, what was their motivation? In one of the schools where a corporate had very active volunteers and conducted quizzes and other such programmes, children never missed going to school, albeit on the day the volunteers went. A kid from that school had come up to me and begged us to come more often. ‘aap teacher kaiku nai ban te didi’ , she had asked me with perfectly innocent eyes. I didn’t know where to look. I still cringe. I didn’t have an answer for her. She also added, ‘aap log aate toh bohut maja ata ischool mein, nai toh bejaar lagta’.

When we were in school and were asked ‘what would you like to be be when you grow up’, we all said those standard- engineer, doctor, teacher, etc without thinking much. The doctor, engineer, etc manifested inside us and we steered towards becoming something in life. These kids also had similar ambitions- just that I knew most would end up helping their dad sell vegetables, become domestic help, daily wage labourers etc and the slightly better ones would probably study further. But most would drop out.

Tell me if we are not sensitive to issues like these and sensitize others in turn, who will?

I smiled when I saw this Video too, looking at the kid in front who had really animated expressions! And its high time schools bid a good bye to rote memory. But I guess that will take a long long time.

 

(Note to self: KG, enough of these posts I say. Time for a breather. Time for some hilarity now).