When special becomes commonplace

When I was in school, I couldn’t wait to go to the next class. First there was the hurdle of examinations to overcome and then the sweetness of a new set of books and stationery. These seemed reward enough. Having older siblings meant you were aware of a wider world of knowledge and you couldn’t wait to catch up with them.

Of course you could never catch up, but you were one step closer to that dream of sitting for the last school examination which would see you released from constraining uniforms and braided hair. That was motive enough to go through the daily grind.

Now, however, there are grand graduation days for tiny tots moving from kindergarten one to kindergarten two. To me, this is trivialising a momentous occasion. But I realise that education has now become a completely commercialised operation. So, parents are wooed by the prospect of seeing their kids being given the honour that they feel is due to them.

A programme is drawn up replete with entertainment interlaced with the solemnity of graduation regalia such as robes and mortarboards weighing down slender bodies. Pride and joy are reflected in equal measure on the faces of the parents. And they are prepared to go through the ritual time and again until, years later, the occasion loses its appeal.

When we were in school, we had headmistresses/headmasters and principals. Minor infractions were dealt with by the teacher and if she wanted to scare the living daylights out of us, we were warned of a higher justice. The thought of being hauled up by the headmistress — somehow this species always seemed to be stern-looking martinets — was enough to make you feel weak in the knees (and I don’t mean this in a pleasurable way) and reducing these body parts to a state of quivering jelly.

The principal, on the other hand, was a remote, unapproachable figure who presided over morning assembly and made announcements that either lifted our spirits or crushed them firmly.

But now we have CEOs in charge, whose task is to whip this ‘company’ into shape and make sure the enterprise remains profitable. In order to achieve this, a number of committees and subcommittees are set up, each with a teacher at the helm. This person is given an impressive-sounding designation to make him or her feel he or she is making a genuine contribution to moulding lives. Goals are set and performance reviews take place. Eventually, the teacher feels under so much pressure that there isn’t much to give the pupils who should be the sole focus.

Since parents pay exorbitant fees, they must be pandered to. They are in constant email touch with teachers and are given an account of each and every minute of their ward’s time in school. When did this come about? My parents knew some of my teachers by name simply because I spoke about them at home. Some were mentioned with admiration bordering on hero worship while others were named to let off steam over what I might consider an unfair amount of homework.

If any criticism was levelled against them it was something minor like speaking too fast or not giving you an A plus when you thought you deserved it. Our complaints were met with parental responses such as, “If your teacher is going too fast, ask her to slow down”. That’s how naive adults are. As if any of us would have the nerve to point out something like that to someone who held our future in their hands.

As for getting a grade that we thought wasn’t good enough, we were told to try harder next time.

I am glad I could keep my two worlds — home and school — apart. There was no way my parents knew or wanted to know everything I did when I was out of sight. So, living in a technologically backward age had its advantages after all.