Admissions and Confessions

‘International e-techno school with world class curriculum’ read the hoarding.
The nursery school in the neighbourhood opened up with a gala party. Precocious cuties walked around to get a feel of the school. Parents stepped down their imported cars to walk through the red carpet with their wards in branded wear, sippers and sling bags to find out about the school. Teachers escorted the parents around the place.

The school correspondent explained the various amenities. Sand pit, to help kids play and improve their motor skills; splash pool for the kids to, well, splash around, and get friendly with water and perhaps learn swimming at a later date; models of fruits, vegetables, plants and trees. All of them in 'feel-like-real' fibre models…

In the study area, they have computers, baby lap tops, audio visual aids to teach them – A for apple, B for bat and such other things, a flat screen television for them to watch cartoon network if need be, a dance floor and discotheque along with strobe lights for them to develop their creative skills and fine arts such dancing, singing etc. Oh yes, they also have field trips, camps, workshops, seminars, conventions… for nursery kids… to keep up with the times.

In good old days, when we were in school (and that wasn’t too long along ago), nursery just meant a place to freewheel. A place where you could show your thumb to drink water, show the little finger for a visit to the loo, pinch the girl next to you and come back home happily looking forward to school the next day. Today, children have to ask ‘Maayyyaaaiiii pleezzz haaaaaaff vaater to dink, teashur,” at a time they can barely muster up the words, “Mom, I am hungry’ in their mother tongue.

For us, the living room doubled up as the doll house. Empty cartons became the rooms and old cushions served as the ceiling. Mom’s used up slim and tall Ponds powder dabba served as a telephone and granny’s old broken umbrella was a rifle in the police police game. Kids were teeming with creativity and anything could become anything else.

There were no real time models of fruits or workshops about the vegetable market. A chat with the mobile fruitwallah who walked around with his wares in a cane basket gave us inputs about fruits. Holding Dad’s hand to the vegetable market every evening acquainted us with roots, tubers, legumes, leafy greens, beans, peas and what not. Sand and mud on the street developed motor skills while helping mom wash clothes was sheer water games. Watching mom cook in the kitchen was a great lesson on pots, pans, ladels and forks. And finally, a bedtime story – not your American Cinderella or the Goldilocks – from, your granny about local heroes and heroines which we could relate to, helped us pick up vocabulary, increase our IQ and yes, comprehend too.

Ah, those where days when you could pay Rs 85 a month and get home a happy child. Today, you shell out a few thousand rupees to bring home your nursery kid, restlessly look up her diary, read up what the project work for the day is, quickly factor in the time (even canceling a meeting at home) to do her project work on ‘red coloured vegetables’. International e-techno school with world class? My foot!

-ends