Sam and Simmi go to a government school in grade 4th in a city in India. They have been going to this school since last 4 yrs and they say they are quite regular. Once they were picked by a ‘kind hearted’ NGO to participate in an essay writing competition for a CSR activity of a big ‘kind hearted’ corporate. The topic was, ‘my school’ !
Sam took the permission to write in the vernacular language and started….My school’s name is Government Primary School (GPS), in Good-Good-Nagar. It had 300 children 2 years back, 130 children last year and now we are a small elite group of 43 children in the whole school across 5 grades. Head master of my school is a very nice person but I think he has some family problems as he comes to school only once a week. My favorite teacher is Sarita, a class 5th girl. My class teacher madam appoints her most of the times to take care of our class as she is busy most of the time in staff-room in talking to other teachers and motivating them. Cooking of mid day meals for us also keeps her busy. I always get curious that why she takes such a special interest in mid day meals ? She might be interested in cooking for us. My home is not very far from the school. I go there around 5-6 times a day during the school hours to visit the toilet and drink water as my teachers alone cannot manage the water arrangement and toilet cleaning at school.
Simmi, daughter of a small time basti leader had a different take….She pretended that her hand is paining and asked the NGO volunteer to write as she narrates her essay …She started like this ….My school’s name is Government Primary School (GPS), No-One-Cares Nagar. Strength of the school is decreasing every year as most of the children have started going to the road side ‘Ravi Convent School’ paying Rs 300 per month. My Head master Mr. Ravi owns that school and that’s why he rarely comes to our school. Our teachers keep on gossiping in the staff room and send 5th class children to control us. Some teachers manage the whole mid day meal and my father told me that they get money for 100 children as per the register, bud hardly 50 children come daily to school. There is no water facility in the schools and being a girl I feel so ashamed to go to toilet in open. And the truth is that after being in school for 4 years many of us including me can’t even read and write properly even in our mother tongue. My father gets paid and goes for many rallies, dharnas and bandhs BUT he never does a rally for me, for us, that we are not learning, that our teachers are not taking care of us, that we don’t get proper food in the school, that we don’t have water and toilets in the school. Can you all “kind hearted’ people, please pay my dad, so that he and his friends can do some dharna to save us.
Or may be all 43 of us can make a children’s union and do the dharna ourselves!
