Posts
17
September, 2014.
To
The
Principal,
Canossa
English Medium School,
Payakaraopeta.
From
Datla
Chiranjeevi Raju,
Father
of Datla Anand Sagar Varma,
UKG-Canossa
School,
Payakaraopeta.
Dear
Madam,
I
am the father of Datla Anand Sagar Varma, a UKG student in your school. I got
him admitted to your school two years ago but I never got time to come to you
and talk with you personally about the sense of concern I have been feeling for
long as far as the education of my son is concerned in your school.
I am sending my son to your school
regularly thinking that the management of this school and the teaching and
non-teaching staff working here are of very good nature and so they know how to
treat my son kindly and ideally every day when he is in their presence and
guidance as an innocent kid. Hope you are making proper arrangements to this
effect to satisfy me as the father of your student. Your school should be a
holy abode of learning and reformation.
A student cannot learn that, which is
beyond his capacity. The IQ of each student differs from the other’s. Still the
academic writers and educationists can assess the average psychological and
intellectual status of formative learners of an age group. Most of our course
books are prepared minding this reality. Hope that you do not bother my son if
he is unable to learn something, which is beyond his capacity. Please sensitize
your teachers to treat little learners of this age with kindness. Nothing
disastrous happens in this world even if my son does not get first rank in
every exam he takes. He is more important to me than the marks and ranks he
gets regularly. So, ask your teachers to respect and love these little learners
more than what they expect them to learn out of their regular classroom teaching.
Every learner is a valuable creature in the creation of God. God would be
furious with those who fail to treat kids kindly and lovingly always. If kids
are offered love and care by you, they grow into ideal human beings slowly.
I noticed that you have more focus on the
idea of earning money through different kinds of fees collected from students
of all age groups. Earlier Christian missionaries had noble objective of
educating Indians through their western systems of education. We Indians had
great respect for Christian teachers those days because they dedicated their
lives to bring a positive change in the lives of learners in their educational
institutions. Now you are competing with similar private educational
institutions in this region in terms of fee hikes every academic year and
related passion to earn more and more money as an educational institution. If
one observes the kind of your treatment towards students and their parents
associated with your school, one can easily understand that you are also deeply
focused on the concept of earning money like any other contemporary private
school or college in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Hope you shun such attitude
and try to make Canossa an educational institution of highest moral standards
and values. If your school remains as one among those mediocre private schools,
Lord Jesus Christ won’t be happy with the kind of attitude and culture you have
developed over the years as promoters of education. There are many slogans on
the walls around your school. Please check whether you are practicing most of
these virtues or not as the preachers of these ideals. God loves those, who
practice what He taught them centuries ago.
There are no proper facilities like
toilets and drinking water to learners in your school though the campus is
spacious enough to accommodate all such arrangements. If you love your students
more than the money being generated because of their association with you, you
can certainly make Canossa an institution of great beauty and facilities.
Students and their parents have no time to interact with you personally. They
have no patience to fight with you for these facilities either. If you treat
your students as great guests created by your kind God, you should know what
kind of love and kindness you should extend towards them. God and your
conscience are aware of your genuine thoughts and acts. Hope you always try to
win the heart of God providing ideal service to the learners in your campus
with honesty and ideals always. You should be role models in reforming students
and their parents.
The educational standards of the present
students are very low. It is because there are no competent teachers in most of
the schools now. When an ordinary worker is able to earn 10,000 rupees a month
as a tea seller, mason or daily laborer, you are paying pathetic salaries to
most of your teachers. Thus you are creating many batches of helpless and
hopeless teachers in your school. Then how can students expect highly
dependable and quality education from those teachers, who are suffering without
adequate remunerations. Hope you would try to utilize the services of competent
teachers attracting them with considerable salaries and facilities in tune to
the fees you are collecting from the students every academic year. If the
managements of schools think like businessmen, they can create worthless
machines only, who are not competent in any subject or field of knowledge.
Their knowledge and values gained through institutional learning remain very
low and negligible in the long run. The knowledge and discipline which
formative learners gain during their standards from LKG to 10 influence them
substantially. Hope you make them into kind human beings and competent
knowledge seekers through your system of ideal institutional learning.
I wonder to see the kind of work burden
you are imposing on all of your learners. Homework is like hell to almost every
student now. Can’t you give them as little homework as possible to keep them
happy at home at least? Their parents may not be in a position to help them in
their homework. All parents cannot spend money to arrange tutors for their
learners. Please reduce the number of books being carried by all learners in
your school and also the homework to be done by them regularly. Thus you can
save their lives and sensitivities.
I wonder to see the kind of formalities
you are expecting from all the students. Uniforms, shoes, books, bags,
attendance, competitions…you are making the lives of their mothers hellish
expecting your learners to be very formal every day. You made their mothers
into helpless servants at home. Do you think that one cannot learn well if
one’s clothes are not up to your expectations and if there is no tie and belt
and so on? Why are you making the lives of students and their parents hellish
this way? Focus more on what you are teaching and the kind of environment you
are creating in your campus for a holistic development of the little learners.
Like any other school now in this region,
you are making money even from selling books and various stationery items. When
you have this kind of commercial attitude towards students and parents, how can
the educational system be reformed and reoriented towards that direction
whereby a great India can be rebuilt?
There cannot be development without
constructive criticism. I hope some of the notions and ideas shared in this
letter by me help you assess your role in the present society and the kind of
focus you need to exert on your systems of learning and guidance of students.
If there is something wrong on part of the parents, inform them to change
through letters or conducting a meeting with all of them someday. As the owners
and conductors of an educational institution, you should play the role of a
social reformer but not that of a businessman.
I noted that my name has been recorded
wrongly in the records related to my son. If you cannot write the name of the
father of a student also correctly, what kind of promise can you make to the
parents of students of your school? If you cannot write and maintain records
properly, it reflects on the image and status of your school. Millions of
Indians are suffering now across places in India just because of wrong entries
of data into various documents issued by many agencies of the governments. Are
you making such staff record the data of your students, who don’t know how to
read and write English well? Please improve your standards substantially in
this direction also.
You might wonder about my credentials as
the father of a student in your school. I am a thinker, writer and idealist. To
enable you to understand me better, I am sending my CV also in this envelope.
After reading this letter, if you got
anything to share with me, please email me or write a letter to me. I am busy
as an employee. Though I am living in a house very close to your educational
institution, I am unable to meet you and discuss these matters of concern. I
want my son to grow as an intelligent and kind human being under your guidance.
Positive change is all that we need as Indians now because deterioration of
standards and values is rampant across India now. Hope you try to keep your
school out of this mire of irregularities and drawbacks.
