Thursday, April 26, 2007

The sister act

When a baby girl is born to Indian parents her parents have great dreams for her. They dream of her going to a convent school and then to a convent run college and then getting herself a husband due to her "convent educated" status. In fact the craze for convents is so much that we now have anyone and anybody opening "convent schools". I think Mr Rupinder Singh who runs the St Jesus Convent School and Ramesh Kedia who runs St God Convent School are visionaries. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if they have branches called St Convent School , St Sister, St Church and St Cemetry. Anything that sounds remotely Christian is prefixed with the "St" and used as a name for these schools. Recently a school called St Anthony's was in the news for physically punishing a child. Turns out the owners were an ordinary couple who also had a flower nursery.

When people run out of names they become innovative and we have St Lilly, St Rose and St Lotus to name a few. Some people go for an authentic touch and we get schools like St Meera and St Radha. Well they were saints weren’t they? The word ‘saint’ in any other language would still be a saint!

Among the upmarket schools we have names like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and even Ivy League. I heard there is a school called IIT!!!

With education becoming a lucrative business with millions to be made, schools are mushrooming everywhere. The St God School was a two room tenement. Today it had classes from Nursery to 10th in a span of just 5 years! The owner incidentally is uneducated. That in my humble non MBA opinion is the best example of business acumen!

The other category of schools is the Kindergarten variety. The owners of these schools are more sober though some do go a little overboard with names like 'Little Angels' (guffaw) and 'Dolls'(double guffaw). Excuse the loud unlady like laughter but I was a KG kid too some time back and neither was I an angel nor a doll. Neither were my classmates. We were more like mud encrusted devils with bald patches of scalp from where many an enraged classmate had pulled our hair out. There was more hair flying in our class that in a fur factory. (I dared to grow my hair only after reaching high school!)

Most of these schools are garages or asbestos sheet covered tenements. But the full classrooms do give you hope that education is finally being regarded as an asset by people who rarely sent their kids to school once. On the flip side if this unbridled growth continues then education will become just another commodity, but like a commodity, competition may just keep prices in check.

19 comments:

ap said...

The brother must be M...nah???

ap said...

sorry for posting it here ......

This comment is in reference to

http://my-think-pad.blogspot.com/2006/06/shopping-within-your-budget.html

...Someone was saying paying dowry and marrying off is better......u may ask why????
Well the guy said its better that way for my Sons ...they get a fatter share!!!!!!!(nothing goes out of the family type).......

the logic is simple when u marry off ur daughter its never a 50-50 division of net assets between boys and girls....
the girls are paid a small share compared to what the boys will be getting.....

c...even when they are given dowry its like cheating em!!!!!sorry state of affairs indeed......

AP

Neihal said...

Made a good point.Attaining better literacy rate we may succeed but educating the youth well enuf to take the country in right direction, will be a difficult task

Anonymous said...

Hi, Been reading your blogs (both)
for a while now. I must admit that you write very well and you have a very natural humor flowing thru. Have added your blog to my favorites.

Keep it goin!

Ramesh

mathew said...

exactly..very well sarcastically put..

well being convent educated is misunderstood..that you are somone who is rankin way top in morals and sort of ivy league material..

Not all girls comin out of Holy Angel's convent school are angels nor all guys comin out of Bishop Moore school are joinin clergy..

silverine said...

AP: Yes :)

AP: Well that was a good observation! Though the premise of giving dowry was equal distribution of property there is nothing equal about it.

neihal: All we got to do is change the educataion system from the present pre british set up that was mainly used to equip Indians for clerical work. If education is fun and interesting like in other countries then drop outs will also decrease.

Ramesh: Thanks buddy :)

mathew: So very true!!! I think the insistence for convent educated girls started mainly due to the cold hard fact that these schools are not co-ed...

Alex said...

True. It is very much becoming a commodity. :(

Anonymous said...

I must show you pics of Harvard that I have! Hehe. On the outskirts of Hyderabad.

Great tune @ Nelly. She's such a hottie *sigh*

Jeseem said...

so what is wrong in education being a commodity. I fail to see anything. If it becomes so, then people will look for the next level, maybe montesary, maybe smthing else.

hey so the school you went, did they rename it to little ex-devil. and good excuse for those bald patches now :P

ToOothlEss WOndeR! said...

Nelly.. Awww!!!
but that's beside the point.. ;)
Coming to think of it, I heard even my school was rechristened St.Josephs a year or two ago. And it's actually been standing for more than a few decades now with a simple board saying "PUBLIC SCHOOL"
Bleddy phools!

ap said...

At last I am through with your blogs ..finished both the blogs in record time.....
one is humorous at the best.....
the other one very thought provoking...

way to go girl.....

AP

Initially I thought men writers were good in humor ,u have made eat my thoughts ;)

Jay Sun said...

the song is great...is on my most frequently played list in my ipod... :)

Ajith Prasad Balakrishnan said...

Actually, I've found schools ran by convents to be better than the 'N.S.S' school which I studied..atleast in terms of providing facilities...Its better to be in co-ed school rather than in convent system :)

silverine said...

alex: Sad state of affairs indeed!

G: heh and I so wanna see it!!

jeseem: lol I guess you got me there about the bald patches :p

tooth wonder: lol! Blr is full of St Anthony's and St Francis and none of them are run by nuns or priests!

ap: Thank you. That was a sweet thing to say. I must say I found your writing very spontaneous too :)

jaysun: Timberlands background makes this number all that special :)

ajith: I am not talking about the regular convents run by Nuns. This is people who open schools with the name "convent" in it to attract students.

Pradeep Nair said...

Role the Christian schools in education has been invaluable. But at the end of it all, there is lot of difference between being educated and living as an educated person.

silverine said...

Pradeep: These are not Christian Institutions, but a new breed of education entrepreneurs who use names like these to cash in on the craze for convent education :)

VMJ said...

on a trip from jalandhar to amritsar i saw a St. Soldier school also. a beautiful merger of two genuine punjabi obsessions. convent schools and patriotism. how ingenious!!

silverine said...

vmj: Wow!! Ingenious indeed!! :)

Anonymous said...

Good words.