THE CHANGE HAS COME

• By: Arun Banerjee (AB), Chairman and Managing Director BoB-PRIMAAN International School (BPIS) An endeavour by Umabel Educational Foundation (UEF).

The system in my school

• The very thought of starting a school is not from any single reason: Various factors have worked over the years on my mind to inspire and encourage me for taking this plunge to make a change.
• Yes, it is time now 'We Need Change' that is important for me in this venture.
• What ever I have implemented in my school, I am sure you will find a long waited and deserved change over the time but you just followed it as the way others did. Here I have tried to explain them in details that 'Yes. Change has come': and it is in my school BoB-PRIMAAN.

1.'Yes, change has come': (No more home work to carry home)

• Let’s conceder the way I think, and please justify if I am leading you wrong. When you book a taxi cab to take you from a point 'A' to point 'B', does the cab driver ask you 'Sir / Ma’am, do you know how to drive a vehicle?'.
• We all know he does not dare to ask, as this would be an absurd question, because you hired him to give a service and it is his duty to take you from point A to point B. While booking with the service provider you only make sure that the vehicle is in a good condition, the company has some repute; the driver is licensed, knows the destination, and drives competitively well.
• That’s all. You do not expect to get back on the wheel and drive yourself to destination. By this logic, you are right, as you paid for a service.
• If that is the case, then where on the earth, does a schooling system ask you, “Is there any one well educated in your home”?!!!!!.
• It is the same situation, if you say you know driving so the driver can take an excuse under any pretension and call you to help him in driving, same way as you agree gleefully to the enquiry to question of schooling system, that you have good educational backing at home, so does the school gives back the study at home as home work.
• School also takes the advantage of modern day rat race and false egoistic competition among the parents in the society. You send a child to school where he should learn better with uniformly qualified teachers, with all the children of different parents.
• Don’t you find surprisingly chaotic that, various parents of diverse back grounds in education teach their ward in home? That gives the child confusing signals!! Whom to follow?!! The school teachers or the parents teachings?!!!
• In some of the cases child builds up negatively biased perception about a teacher’s teaching technique. This also creates a new problem in the classroom teaching environment.
• In my school it is an offence to send the study back home. To me you have paid for the service and I am the cab driver. My intension should be, to take you as safe as possible from point A to Point B, finding a good road with a good driving skill.

2.'Yes, change has come': (No Project Work to carry home)

• When a child comes home loaded with heavy backpack (not to say the medical implication), a days work is finished, but alas!!! Home works starts.
• The moment the child enters the home, it is only to face the query 'What is your homework or do you have any project work?'
• We all know very well that, most of the project work is supported works helped by the relations in the family. Alas! Death of an innovation, we stopped a creativity mind.
• In my system no project works goes to home, instead child does it along with other children in the classroom, supported by the helping teacher.
• In this type of competitive environment, every child gets a chance to expose his/her talent irrespective of what ever he/she does, so far it is an innovative and creative work of mind.

3.'Yes, change has come': (No more school bag, a completely bag less education)

• There is a saying: If a wrong doing was done for a prolonged period of time, that very wrong doing in the course of time, looks like a right way of life.
• That has happened in our education system. We very well know that, heavy back pack of loads of educational material on the tender back of a young child how painful.
• It is an established truth and enough been written or discussed about the medical implication of the bag packs. Even the educated, the so called guardians of the society have failed to devise a way out, but alas!!! We all are a spectator, while the child suffers in silent.
• It needs moral and social courage to handle the issue; I doubt some one has it. It remained an arm chair discussion while the children of generations having their spine damaged.
• In my school there is no back pack load on the tender back of a child. Yes. I do have a bag for each child in class room of his or her standard but for a different reason.
• Those bags are only used to communicate with the parents/ guardians of my children.When in need, the teacher or the administration pulls up the school diary and write the note addressing or alerting a parent/guardian. The diary then goes into the bag and the child carry the bag home.
• This is to have a communicative link with the parents/ guardians. The duly signed diaries come back to school very next day with the child to the particular classroom. Teacher then collect those bags and submit the diaries to the administration for further action.
• As the child has no bag with him/her hence they are free to have a fun with out loosing some very educational materials on the way back home. We all faced at list once like this.

4.'Yes, change has come': (No more brown / opaque coverings on book/note books).

• Solitary confinement is worst a punishment on a prisoner then a normal prison cell. Seating in a room colored in single shade of paint tires your eyes and saddens your mind.
• Any thing which is continuous is turned to be monotonous. Hence we do change paint in home and re-arrange our lay out of the home furniture for a change.
• Class rooms are no different than that. We all know it, that when we buy a text book or say an exercise note book, we buy brown cover sheet along with it, as it is compulsory to cover books. We think or pretend to, save the book / exercise book for a longer time from wear and tear of the daily use. But those covers are single colors and monotonous in continuous shades.
• It does sadden the mind and fails to encourage the child. Have you ever thought that all those text books and exercise books are the creation of a thorough research and painstaking analytical study of various educationists? They come with some kind of cover photographs on the front page.
• There is a reason for that, when in monotonous class room atmosphere a child gets tired in mind and thought processes, those very photograph tries in helping him change the mind set and enlightened him from the monotony. They definitely help in encouraging the child and changing the atmosphere in the classroom learning’s.
• In my school I have made it sure that each text book or exercise book to be covered with transparent plastic sheet so that the variety in colors is visibly maintained in the classrooms benches next to a child.
• I am sure this has helped to change the monotony in the classrooms atmospheres.

5.'Yes, change has come': (In house Doctor)

• Out of 24 hours of an energetic child hood of a child, most important time i.e. the day period, a child remains with the schooling system.
• In today’s busy world, Parents are much more involved in a demanding responsible job positions then ever before. The unit family parenting demands good child care side by side with the progress in the day to day personal job.
• It is really very difficult for a modern day parent to handle the child care and attend the doctor’s schedule. To have child checked up either of the parents have to let go the individual work schedule in the office and attend the child.
• There is a chance, where the occurrence of delay in child’s check up is possible due to adjustment in the daily life of working parents.
• It has happened with me and I am sure has occurred in your life too. To me it is the teacher not the parents/ guardians are well aware of the health condition of a child.
• In my system a teacher when in a doubt or suspicious of the advent of the falling health of a child, informs the administration and the latter takes note of it immediately by calling in the in-house doctor, gets the child checked up and put the prescription in the school bag for the parents to buy the medicine for the child.
• By providing the in House doctors prescription, my school is helping both the parents and the child to benefit. Parents can buy the medicine at any time of the day and take care of the child.
• In house doctor can be contacted on phone for further advice either by the parents or the consulting physicians during prolonged case of medication /treatment/observation.
• It is the old saying that Precaution is better then cure that I practice in my school.

6.'Yes, change has come': (Mandatory check up)

• The school works Monday to Friday. The administration has a record of each child’s heath condition before he/ she leaves the school premises for the week end holidays.
• If a child fallen sick during the weekend days, parents/ guardians does not allow the child to go to school on the very Monday, under the pretext that they will take the child to doctor and get treated, but surely sends the child in Tuesday to attend the schooling, because none wants to miss the study.
• Hence there is a chance that I might miss a child due to illness or negligence of an over worked busy parents, on the Mondays but Tuesday he/ she come back to me.
• I made it mandatory for the administration to call up in-house doctor, get the Monday missing Child checked up on the Tuesday. Thus there is Tuesday and Friday mandatory in-house doctor available in the school premises for all the school working days.

7.'Yes, change has come': (Equal opportunity under wishful eyes)

• The system of education can be compared with the oven (hearth) with single sided heat coming from the front (i.e. teacher in the front). When you cook a roti (Indian bread) on a hot plate on a hearth, you do change sides to avoid the burning, i.e. getting side scorched.
• In the present system of teaching, teacher teaches from one position and children sits up in a fixed location, as the way one sided cooking. So the frontbenchers gets all the heat or gets the teaching and the backbenchers gets less heat, in other words, the backbenchers gets away from the teaching, hence the difference in the quality of students of same batch.
• In my system I have employed two teachers in the same classroom at a same time. While the running teacher teaches from the front, the helping teacher moves in the back, helping and guiding the backbenchers’ students to get in line with the class.
• To make the cooking evenly all-around, the roti (Indian bread) you cook, you change the side. In my system I have made it mandatory to rotate the class strength in regular interval from front to back in a cyclic manner so that each child gets the chance to get the same good heat i.e. teaching from the front.
• This type of arrangement also makes the child comfortable to face the teacher and the front dais, bringing him /her from being the introvert to being extrovert. Hence the child does not want to shy away any more, as we are used to seeing in our day to day life.