Why are schools adopting tough steps?

KANPUR: The schools are adopting amazing methods to punish the students. What could be crueller than confining the little innocent students in a room for one long hour? They were so little as to find themselves in dire straits. They must have been cursing their fate for standing in the uncomfortable space of a room. However, the height of astonishment was that the school management showed little mercy for them until the police arrived on the spot to release the overawed speechless confused kids. It was a strange startling touch of the class 1 students who had to undergo an ordeal in an age when they were completely unconcerned with the vindictiveness. Their default was nothing more than the delay in the fee payment by their parents. It was beyond their imagination that they would have to bear such a horrible situation in their little span of life.

What a painful case of wrongful confinement! This is certainly not a plain matter. It was neither too smooth nor too cheerful for the children. This is a stark reality of the students' life before us. Their unblemished boyhood may have recorded a deep appalling imprint on the tender minds. If they got an opportunity to attend a school for learning the three ‘R’s. This was just with an aim of overcoming the social evil of illiteracy but their realisation was slightly different from what they visualised or heard from their elders. They surely had started their learning lessons but a very contradictory situation encircled them. The school management appeared to have followed the practical principle of no fee, no examination in its academic standard. But such criterion becomes a burden for the students time and again.This kind of amazing inclination is not peculiar to anyone for its prevalence is amply persisting in almost in all the schools across the length and breadth of the country.

It seems education is being sold on certain fixed charge. Such was not the Indian tradition in the yester years. It is more or less accepted that knowledge is an asset. However, this notion has abruptly changed with the time. A new narration has developed with a varied perception of commercialisation. Though what happened in the southern part of our country is nothing peculiar in this sense that similar reflection comes into our roving view even in other posh schools too. Just as this school management tried to prevent them from appearing for their yearly examinations, so as we find how the posh schools reprimand the students for failure in paying the quarterly fee. They are also warned and kept away from appearing at the final year examination. Despite sound financial position, renowned educational institutions do not afford any kind of sympathetic attitude. This tendency mars the spirit of education somewhere.

Is it not unfortunate in our great idealistic country that the tender age students are forced to bear the unnecessary punishment for not paying the fee timely? What will a five-year-old student understand of it? His mind possesses least capacity to calculate the oddity. A teacher turns out so callous just because of delay in fee payment. His responsibility lies in expanding and upholding educational values. It should not be restricting the students’ liberty. There used to be teachers who lent their financial support to the poor students. If one student fell short of the total fee amount, the benevolent teacher paid on his part. The students thought it better to return the amount to the teacher. That’s why the teachers were respected as Gurus in the past times. What was the concept of the fee concession? Poverty or paucity of means to pay! 

It was as much regrettable that the police had to intervene for helping the students who luckily got the chance of appearing at the examinations. If the parents were poor enough not to pay the school fee on time, the school management needs to show at least some mercy with kids. The police had really performed commendably. The agonised students got were overjoyed after their release. Here, the state government should strictly issue guidelines to restrict such alleged unjust punishment. Why is education confining into limits of the market forces?