My younger son, Anuj is in Grade 12. These days, he is trying his best to maintain or improve his marks so that he may get admission in the university of his choice. His school is about 3.5 Kms from our home. I drop him at his school in the morning around 8.30 am in my car while going to my office. After finishing his school, he goes to Milliken Mills Public Library and studies there until 9 pm when I pick him up and bring back home. These days, competition to get in a good university has become quite tough as so many Indian, Chinese, Sri Lankan and Pakistani families live in Toronto and surrounding areas and they want their children to excel in higher studies.
When I look back at my school life in Moti Bagh, it is in total contrast to the school life in Canada. My school was just across the road from our home. I would run to the school after hearing the first school bell. And, in the afternoon, when the school finishes, I would be at home before the bell stops ringing. After eating the lunch, I would quickly finish whatever home work was assigned by the teachers, and then its playtime in evening. I don't remember if I studied long hours even during examination days, at least not until in the last year in the school. There were hardly any extra-curricular activities in the school. The school library was nothing more than a show-piece. We used to have one library period of 40 minutes once a week when our class could visit the library. Even during that period, we were only supposed to sit quietly on the floor; at the most one student used to read a story book to the class. We were never encouraged to look at the books or get a book on loan for reading. For sports, we were assigned a peroid once a week and a class of 40 students would just kick a soccer ball in any direction — there was no concept of teams. Most of time during those soccer adventres, I would not get a chance to touch my foot to the ball even once!
The teachers in our sarkari (Government) schools were generally good in teaching the syllabus. However, there was never any discussion or counselling about what a student could do after finishing the school. Since we lived in a typical babu colony, there was no guidance even from neighbours — all of them were clerks in Central Government Ministries. Many students and their parents did not have clear idea about the true cost of studying a particular course, and if they could get loan for higher studies. (There was no Internet in those days! ) I think, because of the lack of information on the part of the students as well as their parents, some of the students could not have reached their potential.
Now let me go back to my last year in school. As I mentioned earlier, I just used to finish the home work and go to bed by about 9.30 pm. One day, my classmate Rajan, asked me if I studied until 11 pm or 12 am. I told him that I go to sleep at 9.30 pm — that all. He was surprised by my answer and suggested me that I should study a few hours during night, preferably until midnight or even later. Thanks to Rajan, I started studying for one hour in the night, which I slowly increased to two and half hours, and this helped to improve my marks in the final examination.
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