All is not well in the wealthy country of Norway. For example - family values, or rather its decline. The divorce rate amongst the Norwegian couples continues to climb. Highest amongst the age group between 35 – 39. The issues of single parenting, lonely childhood, child abuse, and battered relationships in the household, drug addiction, unwed mothers are interwoven. I was chatting with my colleague at the Belgium Consulate in Mumbai. She was curious to know how I was doing and we discussed my views about family values to her. Her analysis was interesting. Having stayed in Mumbai she knows how the family units in India function. She partly blames the much hyped and praised social security and health care systems in the Western Europe. In her opinion, apart from the natural bond and the Sanskar, the family units in India are tied to each other for various reasons such as monitory needs or need to have some one when ill, some one to take care in the old age, economy of shared resources etc. When the government takes care of these needs what do people need each other for?
When I tell the female colleagues about the schedule of my mother from 6am till midnight, when I tell them that my 93 years old, sick grandfather still stays with us, my brother’s family also stays in the same house – it is beyond their imagination.
Interaction with the students was like a mirror. The experience was shocking for me. As a part of the exchange programme we are going across various towns and visiting the schools for interactions with students. The typical age group is 16-17. In the following paragraphs I narrate my experience. I must clarify that it is a direct comparison between the kind of school that I went to 15 years back and the schools that I visited today. I do not know what the situation is in the Indian schools, today. So, the premise is my vernacular school in Chinchwad versus Norwegian schools.
As we were reaching the school, we saw groups of students walking in. The high school students looked more like college students. Norway doesn’t seem to have school uniforms, I exclaimed! The colleague said they indeed do not have uniforms! So here I see these handsome boys and beautiful girls in jeans, T shirts and designer clothes. Body piercing, tattoos and colored hair was too much to associate with students.
So we enter the class and I was in for a shock! I notice a girl sitting in the lap of a guy! I turned a blind eye and proceeded with the presentation and I was constantly getting distracted by these horrid things going on in the class. Someone is holding hands and caressing, someone is running their fingers in someone’s hair. But I ignored it all and continued with the topic, in a few minutes I grabbed the attention of the students and suddenly in between a long haired guy just put his head down on the desk and I lost it. I asked him to leave if he was not interested and to my surprise he obeyed me!
After a while a guy put his foot on the desk. I decided to deviate from the actual topic and settled myself on the table and told the students about my school and asked them if whatever is going on in the class is normal. They said it was! I asked them if they think this is indiscipline, they did not think so. All this was happening in presence of their regular class teacher. She had sheepish look on her face. Later on she confessed to me in private that it was not always like this and the situation in schools is deteriorating rapidly and is a worry of the parents. It is one of the favorite topics in the Norwegian media.
In another class, three girls were bored on sitting on the chair so they decided to lie down on the floor. The school bag was their pillow and they were lying down throughout our interaction. They were participative; they were asking questions etc but everything lied down! One of the girls was real specimen. She had long hair on half of her head and the other half was shaved bald!! She had pierced her ear at 1000 places and in addition had pierced her nose, lower lip and right eyebrow. She looked rather scary. How do parents allow all this at this age? I told them that in our schools we could not even stare out of the window or chew some gum and we had to seek permission to pee. They looked at me as if I was an alien.
In yet another class, a big fat student walked in a bit late and just threw himself on a table and the table broke in two pieces. There was a riot of laughter in the class but no shame or fear. After the class, while we were waiting for the taxi, I spotted a group in the premises and the bald girl was smoking a cigarette. I decided to strike some conversation and asked her what she will do on the weekend and stuff and the answer was she said she will get drunk. Thank god the taxi saved me from further conversation.
While I write this, I must confess that there were many students which can be categorized as ‘good’ students as per the standards of my judgment. But I thought of writing things that bothered me. At the end I am happy that I got my education in our Indian schools. And I thought no matter what the situation is I think we have better school life for youth of our country.
The students here are lucky in one way. Swanky and ultra modern schools. The school had doors that opened automatically. There were many LCD monitor computers in the corridors with high speed internet connections for the use of students. The class rooms had fitted LCD projector suspended from the ceiling. The blinds of the windows were remote controlled. Each class room had its own toilet attached had a water station.
At the end of talk I just compared situation in most of Indian schools and pointed out to them that they are lucky. I appealed to them that they take maximum advantage of the facilities and provisions but made them realize that there are many deprived childhoods in other parts of the world. I hoped that they keep this at the back of their mind and do something to make the world equal, in their own possible way, now and when they grow up. During this there was pin drop silence and I could see that the students were thinking…all is not lost…there is hope…
