What Indian schools need today?
A year back, sitting in a classroom full of ambitious
Indian students a revelation strolled into the room. My teacher (a ‘rebel
teacher’ as I choose to call him) walked into the classroom in his colourful casual
clothes and said “Hi all. I’m your service provider” and he smiled. He gave an
impressive one hour lecture-discussion and said “Thank you for listening”, he
waited for all of us to leave the room and then he walked to his staff room
like a gentleman. We all know what happens after an unusual episode- usual
discussions! Not many got impressed, I could sense from the chat. He in a
way challenged their idea of a teacher, Indian values or maybe most of them
couldn’t digest the idea of being a ‘knowledge consumer’.
All my life I met teachers who were desperate for respect
from the students, they always expected kids to be submissive, studious and
unchallenging. Classrooms a monopoly to them, the rules formerly set and those
who broke rules got into the black list. Don’t you think this monopoly kills
creativity? Why do we want to create a future hub of thoughtless dumb dolls?
Wait. Let me make this clear. I’m not asking for a school where kids play the
monopoly. A teacher is a service provider, he or she’s getting paid for it. If
the consumer likes the product he takes it, doesn’t like it he skips it. (And,
the idea of a teacher somehow got reduced to a person who takes teaching as a
profession. We are still following a Brahmanical pattern where a trained person
with a certificate gets the badge of a teacher. No. From wherever knowledge
pours I see a teacher there, which can be a thing, person, group, nature or
animal. Indian values taught us Guru is more significant than God but we should
remember history that has introduced us Shishyas far more intelligent and smart than their
Gurus and they survived but today? And Guru itself is a twisted word, Guru need
not necessarily be a Brahmin or a person with a certificate-badge. )Let me tell
you, I have enormous respect towards my ‘rebel teacher’, nature and plenty of
ordinary teachers I met on my wanderings. I have learnt far better things and
values from them rather than the monotonous preaching of a cubical room. I
don’t intend to disrespect teachers with a certificate but how many of them
really chose to become a teacher? How many of them thought of bringing a
change? How many of them inspired their students? How many of them never got
offended when a child asked a question they couldn’t answer? How many of them
said Thank you? We don’t need monopoly
in classrooms. We need a healthy strong relationship if the consumer chose to
sit in a classroom with a qualified smart service provider. We need
discussions, debates and challenges than preaching and punishments and I think perfectly seated classroom itself is so unexciting.
Sex education. Yes Battle of Plassey and Trigonometry can
come later, we need to educate children about their body. Today I see children
reaching puberty much early than their supposed age and the curiosity about
their body and of the opposite sex needs to be accurately addressed. I grew up
in a village in Kerala surrounded by conventional people and being born in a
Hindu family I had to go through all the rituals of menstruation- I drank ghee
and raw eggs mix, slept on a pine mat, did not touch anybody for 3 days, ate on
a separate plate like an untouchable and I was allowed to enter only few rooms
which needed purification after the wretched three days, worst of all the
entire women clan of the family and of the village came to see me with sweets,
gold and clothes when I got my first menstruation, it was not an exciting experience
at least to me. Interestingly none of the ladies explained what’s happening to
my body and I was totally clueless at the age of 11. It was my father who broke
all the rules and ‘shamelessly’ explained to me what puberty is, what happens
during the special cycle of the month and he gave me a healthy sex education
which was unappealing to many of the conventional ladies of my family. He saved
me from the tortures I was supposed to follow for the rest of my menstrual years.
I lead a ‘normal life’ after my first few menstrual months. But people like my
father are rare in a society like mine and I guess schools are the best place
for appropriate sex education. By age 10 I wish every child gets a proper education
about both male and female body before they seek asylums like internet and
unhealthy friendships which may give them an altogether different impression
and idea. Sex has always been a taboo in Indian society, people spoke secretly
about it but they were a lot curious about it. So why don’t we settle the
curiosity by openly talking about it, that too in a much younger age?
The first feminist I met in my life asked me “Can you say
vagina in a crowd without any hesitation?” Honestly speaking I couldn’t then. She
told me that’s not my problem, it’s the problem of the society. Vagina is just
a body part and if you see it as ordinary as a body part then there’s nothing
to shy about it. But we always lowered our voices when we spoke of ‘private
parts’, we saw people giggling when they went to shop under garments and we all
wanted to be the chaste-pure-good-Indian- woman. The alarming increase of
sexual assaults in the country is in a way because of wrong or no sex
education. It’s time for both men and women to talk about sexuality openly,
educate children and young adults on their body, sex and contraception. I don’t
understand how sex education threatens Indian culture. Before historic
expeditions, chemical combinations, addition and subtraction we need to educate
our children about them, their body and its evolution.