Back in school, we used to be in uniform. In my case it used to be white shirt, grey trousers, black shoes, green socks with a yellow and maroon band at the top, green tie with diagonal maroon and yellow stripes, and a V-necked green pullover (optional in summer) with yellow and maroon stripes at neck and wrists. Or, alternatively, a green blazer with maroon and yellow piping along the lapels and sleeves, with brass buttons and the school emblem on the breast pocket. The school still uses it.

I know that these days the thrust seems to be on wearing whatever you want to wear, but I still support the old uniform – and here’s why.

In those days, you see, we never thought about who was rich and who wasn’t. I agree that we weren’t so materialistic in the seventies as kids are these days; we didn’t even have video games, let alone iPods and our own, personal, cellphones. Nor did we really give all that much of a damn if one or the other of us had a fancy pencil box or something. And, because we all wore the same clothes, there was no way we could start speculating about the differing economic status of different students. We didn’t know who was poor and who wasn’t. Nor did we care.

And then, again, the uniform imposed some responsibilities. When we wore it, we were conditioned to believe that certain types of behaviour (like sneaking fags behind the boundary wall) were unacceptable, even if one could get away with it. Of course there were the lot who did it anyway, but you’d be surprised at how effective the uniform was as an enforcer of a code of honour, by and large.

And – of course – the uniform marked us out as all members of the same brotherhood, so when one saw a boy in that uniform on the street in some kind of trouble (in a fight, say) we were – unofficially – expected to jump in. This led to some pretty gruesome fights between rival schools, but since I was never a witness to these acts of mass violence, I can’t really comment on them.

Still, better a uniform than in the “heights of fashion” so many of the kids today insist on dressing up in. One wonders why they go to school, to show off their clothes or to study.

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classrooms
Teacher leave those kids alone.
Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall…

                                  (Pink Floyd, The Wall)

Imagine this scenario.

A class is in progress in a school somewhere. The kids are – as they will – refusing to pay any attention, dozing off, fighting, throwing things around, whatever. Nobody is paying the slightest attention to what the teacher is saying. Sounds familiar?

So, what should the teacher do to assert her authority so that at least the few kids interested in learning get a chance to learn?

According to the enlightened minds in the Indian government – nothing.  Forget about hitting them - you can't even scold them. Hell's bells.

All right, all right. I do agree that beating up children, a staple of Indian schools, isn’t a good way of teaching. Also I agree that all that yelling at kids endlessly does is make them mutinous and unwilling to do what you want them to. But for the galaxy’s sake, one has to draw a line somewhere.

If a kid is being obtuse, you can’t call it stupid. If a kid doesn’t do its homework, you can’t call it to account. A friend tells me (she’s a teacher) that the staff isn’t even allowed, in her school, to put more than three negative comments in a child’s record in a year. The school’s reputation might suffer, you see.

How on earth is a teacher supposed to do her job if she can’t even admonish her charges? It’s of no use to say that she should know her job. I know my job, but I can’t force my patients to do what’s right for them. A teacher’s responsibility is much more – she’s literally moulding the future of the human race. How can she do this with both hands tied behind her back?

Well, back when I was a kid, there were some people who were not fit to be teachers. And nowadays there are many more people who aren’t fit to be teachers, who only take up any job going. But that doesn’t change the basic fact – to teach, one must have the respect of the taught. If the children don’t respect your authority, they won’t learn a thing.

Ah yes, the parents. Earlier, parents would teach kids the difference between good and bad, or at least would try. Today? Well, the parents have their own extremely busy lives. Who’s got the time for teaching values? That’s the teacher’s job, right?

Back when I was in school, the teachers did smack us sometimes. Can’t say it did us a lot of harm – myself included. There were the occasional sadists, but the worst of the lot were the sarcastic teachers who damned by faint praise. They were the only ones who really humiliated. The blowhards and the stick wielders didn’t humiliate us – they bonded us, because we all went through the same pain together, and we knew they all were irresponsible anyway. But it was the sarcastic lot who could really make us furious inside. Like Pink Floyd said, they should’ve left the kids alone.

But, nowadays, sarcasm seems the only tool left to teachers who can’t even call a moron a moron, forget about a well deserved rap across the knuckles. The poor darlings will be left scarred for life if that happened to them. What a lot of little emperors and empresses.

If you think the current crop of kids is ignorant and spoiled, just wait for the next.

Back when I was a student in the institution of learning pictured above, we had what we thought was an onerous enough schedule. Those were the days where we had five and a half day school weeks, and five of those days were spent in uniform, and each day had five hours of classes and an hour’s lunch break. We’d spend ten minutes of that hour eating and the remaining fifty on the fields, playing – and there were three large fields to play on, not to mention wooded slopes where one could clamber around to one’s heart’s content.

Each year, after the final examinations were over in November, we’d contact those we knew among our seniors and buy their textbooks. Those books would be of no use to them in their new classes, and we could save sixty or seventy per cent on the cost of new textbooks. All that was fine with the school administration. They were busy running the school, scheduling classes and examinations, and so on. No one had any desire to rock a pretty stable boat.

I guess someone suddenly had a bright idea. I guess someone suddenly decided they could make a lot of money.

The first sign was when they filled in the swimming pool and built a new wing over it. More space. More classrooms. More pupils. More revenue.  

Ah.

Then – for no reason I can determine to this day – they chopped down forty huge trees that had stood for as long as anyone could remember on the slopes I mentioned. I remember the super-incompetent Brother Noronha, Catholic monk and principal (who later left the calling, and no bloody surprise either) declaiming before the assembled school, “We cut down forty trees and we planted four hundred trees, and we intend to plant four thousand trees.”  Even then I found the argument dodgy. Four thousand? Wouldn’t they, er, occupy a hell of a lot of space? Where would that space come from?

Guess what? Last I looked, not one of the alleged forty trees, after the passage of so many years, has been replaced.

Then – even as the school timing shrank to five days a week, this achieved by extending daily schedules and restricting the lunch break – they stopped giving out the sports gear which they had been lending out every afternoon to those who wanted it. No explanation given.

They shut the hostel down, because boarding students took up a lot of space and that space and money could be better used to build yet more big buildings – and, yes, more classrooms, more pupils, and etc. Naturally, the weekly evening movie went for a toss as well.

Well, I left. I went to college, then medical college. But when I came back to my hometown on holiday I’d usually take a walk over to the school to see what things were like. I came, I saw, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Remember those three fields I mentioned? Two are lined by wire fences, and locked gates. You couldn’t get on them if you tried.
The slopes are also sealed off. No entry, very sorry, boys. Go and play someplace else.

The third field is now an almost exact counterpart of a Second World War prisoner of war camp, with tall barbed wire fences breaking it into boxes. There is no way anyone can even get on those fields.   

This at a time when schools throughout India were desperately looking for playgrounds and trying to at least appear to be promoting some sort of sports culture.

Remember the days I spoke of, when we used to buy our seniors’ textbooks?

You can’t do that any more. In order to ensure that you can’t do that any more, they change the textbooks every year. And since there are not that many good textbooks anyway, the dross that comes in is pretty awful. Our long gone Radiant Readers and similar texts are supplanted by something written for someone with the understanding of a two year old and the attention span of a jellyfish.

Hell – you can’t even buy the books that they prescribe in the market any more. You can’t even use exercise books not sold through the school, without the school’s coat of arms on the cover, any more. You can only buy through the school’s shop, at rates the open market can only dream of charging. And meanwhile the fees have gone up by several hundred percent – naturally.

They even reduced the number of subjects by restricting the languages taught. This saved on teachers employed and salaries. Result: net earnings up.

Oh – did I mention that wearing school-supplied tracksuits is now mandatory on those days when the school gives pupils their strictly rationed quota of drill time? We had done perfectly well with our flannels and blazers. They can’t.

And what is the result of all this? Has the school’s right to make a profit on its investment paid off?

Well…

Back when I was in this school, going by results and public perception, it was among the best schools of North East India.    

Now, it is not even thought of as one of the best three schools in Shillong.

Ah well, who cares, so long as the moolah is flowing in.