LETTER TO A PRINCIPAL

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.