It's strange how much a school can affect a child's future ... I used to not score very well in school as compared to my siblings ... my parents were expecting me to flunk as ...as compared to girls in my batch who stayed in my locality i was least interested in coaching classes or scoring a distinction ... the girls in my locality from my batch-Abha Seth and Ritu Khute were both going to join the science stream and they slogged a lot in the 10th grade ...i was forced to join KCC classes in the second semester of 10th grade and i would have no energy for HW completion after reaching home by 9pm ... i went for classes for 20 days Max i think and then i quit and studied at home itself ...
Our Maths teacher Mrs Ganeshan was a little concerned too and gave me books to practice sums at home ... i was good in geometry but i did not like algebra beyond a point and she was a tad concerned ...they knew i was a lone case .... a student who hadn't any extra coaching outside of school ...
I was really touched by her concern and the kindness she extended ...
and after joining college i really took off and was in the scholar's batch .... madre was soooo livid with the turn around that she went around the Air Force Station saying that i must be copying full scale ...by the time i was in college ... i was sooo focused on getting out of Pune that i kept my nose to the grinding stone and took part in each and every extra curricular activity including trekking LOL
i was collecting certificates to crack the National Hotel Management Institutes GDPI round ... extra curricular activities certificates to prove that I can be good in studies and excel in other fields too ... like trying shotput and javelin throw too ... i do not remember getting a certificate for either ...
Do not remember getting a certificate for losing in Badminton either ...but do remember pestering the sports Sir for a participation certificate
Luckily for me even though i had major issues with confidence in my looks and some other hang ups in life due to the initial weird twists and turns my life took ... i had no qualms in talking to folk
Cut to my kids and the system schools have adopted to push students scoring less than 60% into the NIOS system ...
That NCERT set syllabus for NIOS is Not Easy ...when a Mallu lawyer whose son was in Aman Setu and doing NIOS showed me the text books... i was aghast ...that syllabus is Extremely Vast and how does one push kids with learning difficulties to mug soooo much up
Then when i was going to the Central School in Camp as it was a designated exam center
Soooo many parents approached me with complaints about sooo many issues with the way their wards are treated ...
and i remembered my friend in college who hated the nuns in her school who were highly rude she would say ....the parents whose kids were doing NIOS from the school my friend Rajeshree did her 10th were still rude to parents in 2015 !!!
Decades later that school still had mean nuns who were rude to kids with learning disabilities and made them feel small
The entire system was Skewed ...
Then i saw that the government schools that AAP started with a lot of hoo haaa and fan fare was doing the same to kids from the lower economic strata ... which is pathetic
However today i am reiterating that marks are never the true test of Intelligence and capabilities ... moreover when a child gets rejected by it's school and ridiculed by peers at a young age ...it stays with them for a long time
When complaints against my elder child became too loud and i saw the 9th grade syllabus for Math in IB ... i decided it is time i took him out of the schooling system
He totally settled down and became calmer ... some days we would fight about the amount to read ergo i would send him to my dad to be supervised ... he did not mind my dad supervising his reading ... he refused to do statistics and i just let it go with a huge sigh
I was really worried about his passing economics but he did and i was never Happier ...
It was a breeze to teach my little one and we did the entire course in Statistics too ... we revised the formulae and i was sure he would do very well ... but he scored below my expectation
I was OK as i know he studied and he did the course work completely ...
12grade was during covid and i have no idea when it ended and i am soooo gratefull that they both have HSC certificates for 12th grade ... or else the officials at the Passport Office have Zero clue even now as to what NIOS is
Btw I first heard about NIOS thanks to the Guju folk who live about my parents house and had a child with few challenges ... he could not hear ergo he was in the NIOS system ...
Some times schooling systems are soooo Blind and Deaf to the Damage they do to children with slight learning challenges ...
They push a child to question itself for decades on end ... we put sooo much Pressure on marks and scores and we forget childhood and what being children is all about ...
If schools and colleges can not bend over backwards to Help the weakest kids ... i feel they are Failing Per Se ...
I still remember the sponsored child who was with my elder child in Aman Setu ... she could not afford to pay for a private school so in 9th grade she shifted from the ICSE board to the SSC board ... She worked sooo very hard to catch up to the level of Marathi in the SSC board ... she was a child i would talk to on a regular basis as my Precious never ever copied his Home Work down in his diary ... most evenings i would either call his friend Akshay or Himani for the day's HW ... LOL
Now my child is the Father of the Man ...Literally ...he looks after Everything including tax filings ... coaching them and getting to spend quality time with my kids was a trade off i had to decide on in 2018 ... i chose to not let madre or their father change the course i had opted for ,,,, homeschooling and nurturing their talents ...
Yeah even Rapping in a Bar in Kalyani Nagar .... i was sooo scared but I stood by them and listened to them practice Eminem's Rap song over and over .... in the end they sang the Rap number they collaborated on with HotFix and it was appreciated ...
that phase ended too but it was educative in it's own way and i remember being sooo happy with a distrack by their IB school friend Chirag from Kothrud who called them Punekars in his distrack ... and i was so happy to hear that line from their school's goalkeeper ... LOL
Parenting has to take over where Schools Fail ... I thank my lucky stars that our relative in Khadki suggested St Felix to my dad and I was schooled by very kind nuns and teachers who were Extremely Kind and Dedicated ...
I seriously hope that I can help a child wronged by the System ...
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