Government Schools…

June14th 2008…Saturday…cloudy it rained a bit

Physical Education Teacher shouted “Straight”.

The children on the field straightened their backs and looked back at him for approval.

On the stage there were around 20 important people. The first row was of the honorable guests and head master. The second row had all other permanent teacher. Many of the first row people had pride of being on the stage at least here.

That is a government school, where not well to do background children came. The ground belonged commonly to another private school, with a huge stone compound. The security guard of the one of the gates of the private school was sitting on a plastic chair viewing the soccer game of some college boys and the assembly on the other side live.

To his left on the front of the ground are two columns of trees, with full glory of windy season. Also a main road was attached to the ground. Children coming late threw their bags in to the pile of bags and ran to the nearest row of students.

Head master signaled to English madam and then there was ceremony of garlanding. The temporary teachers, standing on the three sides of the assembly ordered “claps, claps”. Children clapped for next many minutes.

The Social Studies madam sung the prayer. She earned the nodding and smiles from the first row elites. She beamed with pride the entire day. All the permanent teachers had got themselves one or the part to play. They thought it’s their day to shine. Students were merely there to clap and sit on the cold ground for more than an hour.

“You are in no way less intelligent compared to private school students”, thundered one of the guests. There was a wave of claps.

Then he told a story of humble background people who have brought pride to their humble schools. There were no facility for drinking water for children in the near vicinity, but people on stage had mineral water bottles.

At the end of it all, some parents who were seeing from behind the compound the proceedings of the day, left questioning “Was this assembly conducted for children or it was for self praising of the people on the stage?”.