“OF COURSE, we go to school to meet friends and play. Studies comes later,” was how a 9th standard boy said, as schools reopened after nearly a year of shut-down during the terrible coronavirus pandemic. Children were eager to return to school because they missed their friends and their social life in the ever-expanding confines of the class-rooms and playfields and libraries and laboratories and school buses. Even though the schools have reopened on a limited basis, the kids are happy to return to their very own domains. This is the best and the most straight-forward description of what the school generally means to children -- friends first, studies later. Studies do flourish, but only in the company of dear friends with whom the kids share so much of their lives.

 

The 9th standard boy who lives next-door was extremely excited to return to school after the long gap. For, he missed his four friends with whom he did so many things, shared so many secrets and dreams ...! “That is what school is,” he said with a voice bubbling with enthusiasm. This is actually the crux of what the school is all about -- studies, yes, but only to an extent. The rest is life in general. And that is the better part of school -- where the kids learn far more than they ever do in the class-room. And this is the story across the globe, since time immemorial, that is when the school was first invented ages ago. Teachers do occupy a major part of the kids’ comprehension.

 

They play such an important role in shaping the kids’ process of learning. But truly good teachers also understand that the kids are learning better through the experience of larger life that they get exposed to in the school’s sociology. And if this understanding underlines the school’s overall philosophy, that institution offers better education to its students. Unfortunately, this awareness has been on a decline in a big number of our schools in the past few years. There is no opposition to the idea of primacy of studies, but a big question-mark hangs low over the manner in which studies are imposed on the students. There is a high premium on high marks. Naturally, studies and more studies are insisted upon. That affects the children’s intra-school sociology to an extent.

 

This is one point that needs to be considered by those who give some thought to how the schools should conduct themselves. My mind darts back to a time more than sixty years into the past when I attended school. I might not have been of much consequence in studies, but I was popular among students and had many friends (some of whom have continued to be my friends even today). My school experience is defined very clearly by the associations I formed with other kids, older or younger. That shaped a lot of my people’s skill and gave me a better understanding of how to handle life in general than what the class-room taught me. “You know, you were such a normal boy”, a ninety-year-old teacher of mine told me just a few days ago when I made a courtesy call on him!” Nothing has made me happier in years!!!