Are the Elite Schools of India destroying our traditions?

A couple of days back I went to this event which was the grand finale of a 3 month long writing competition on Indian heritage. After a long time, being at this event gave me a chance to observe school students - 100's of them from over 20 schools from Delhi / NCR with their teachers at close quarters, for over four hours.

To encourage kids to interact with each other, since all were from different schools, it was decided that the students would form a group of five from different schools and one teacher would accompany each group. I decided to accompany this group and observe.

My learnings began as soon as the groups were being formed. I noticed one pretty lady teacher accompanied by two students who were keeping to themselves and did not become part of any group. I decided to keep track. Tasks were assigned to each group and this particular group of 2 students and one teacher did not get any assignment. They went to the event co-coordinator and asked for a task and were told to team up with existing groups. But they did not!

In the museum this group of 2 children and the teacher kept roaming about themselves with no tasks at hand. The tasks were given as a learning to the children, so that they could take back some knowledge. But this particular group had an air of "superiority" about them as if they knew it all!!! I couldn't resist and asked the teacher to which school did they belong. I already had a suspicion that they must be from one of the most elitist schools of the region.The response confirmed my suspicions as they were from a school which is at the top rung of the elitist institutions in the area.

I could only think of one thing: why do parents send their children to such schools? Frankly here the kids were not at fault, but the teacher herself had an attitude problem and did not encourage the students to mingle with others. My learnings did not stop there.

After brief introduction, the award ceremony began. But before that, I noted another interesting thing: Barring a couple of teachers from the not so well known schools, who spoke on the dais in Hindi, everybody spoke in English. The Chief Guest, a venerable old lady, though not very conversant in English also spoke in the same language.

One of the schools, which is not ranked amongst the "elite" won the 1st prize for their well-researched piece on Indian heritage. When they were called to the stage to collect their award and get a photo clicked with the Chief Guest, they bent and touched the Chief Guest's feet one by one. This was touching, as this was the true heritage of India where youngsters are taught to touch there elders feet as a mark of respect. I waited with baited breath to see if the students from teams of other schools would follow suit, but again no surprises, none did. And most of the awards went to students from the so called best schools of Delhi!

This bought me to the heading of my blog - Are the elite schools of India destroying our Traditions and Heritage?? If I look a the above observations, then the answer is obviously YES. My next question comes from my this answer - then why as Parents do we vie with each other and spend huge amounts as fees to send our children to these schools??

Is our Generation, with schools going kids, simply oblivious to this fact or is it simply that they do not care? In my interaction with Parents during school admission time over the years I am yet to come across one single set of Parents who can answer the reason why they want to send their children to a particular school except for the ELITIST TAG.

If this is the state of mind of this generation, then how can we as a nation trust them to protect our heritage, culture and traditions.

The education system is not helping either. I will give another example, a few years back I had gone to my cousins' just before Deepawali and I learnt that two of my nephews were not buying crackers on Diwali since they had given a pledge to their school not to do so, ostensibly to help in preventing noise and air pollution. Lighting Diyas was also being frowned upon! When questioned further they said they will light candles and celebrate Christmas. Interestingly, all schools today teach students carols to sing around Christmas and very few talk about our own Aartis or Bhajans!!!

This left me stunned and angry. What kind of a society were we trying to create - one where the children forget their own festivals and celebrate others? While I do not have any issues about learning about other cultures, but at the cost of your own - that is an unpalatable thing!

This brings me back to the question of what are we doing to preserve our traditions and heritage? It is time that we as a society woke up from our slumber and blind aping of the west, to take notice that our kids - our future is almost non-conversant with our own traditions and heritage.

The education system should also make teaching our Heritage and Culture as compulsory, in order to preserve and restore our heritage. India since the ancient ages was the land of great learning and spirituality and we need to rekindle this amongst our youth, throughout the nooks and corners of our country.

We as parents need to ask ourselves what is it that we are teaching our children? We as parents need to ask the schools what is it that they are teaching our children? It is time that we as parents dismantled this stereo-type approach to getting our kids into elitist schools. It is time that we as a society shunned the so-called best schools where value systems take a back seat.

Only if we rise up will we be able to force the system to change. And change it must for the better because only then can we rest assured that we will leave behind a better world for our children - because that is what we all ultimately desire to do.