Dear reader,
Instagram Sapim Jinoymash. No, it’s not a social media voucher. In my village – or maybe that I was once like this – that’s it. I was the thing that Indian imagination easily calls “learning” puree“For many years, especially in my university days, for small children entering my life, one is almost three years old.
My father, a bank employee, can still see Little Sanjo who wants to start school with “some basic information”. Sanjo could not pronounce his name properly. He said Fa for sa: “Fanjo wants bifcuit.” He was so beautiful, so innocent that I didn’t try to fix him once. When my father was worried about whether this would be left, I consulted a friend who received psychology education in speech therapy, and the professional became sure of something harmless, what needs to grow. And it was: Sanjo stole Fa for SA and became “normal ıyla with the words that his father was relieved. His father thanked me – “puree” – To help, but in reality the patience of the family, the willingness to wait, to endure social pressure, to understand the child as he was, gave him a room to bloom.
However, the family of Anoop Kumar (name has changed) did not have this understanding or knowledge, because they were poor, uneducated and first of all. Anoop would make partridge; He could never finish the “r ında in Kumar. Now I know, autistic. And his mind worked in remarkable, unexpected ways. Consider this example: He struggled to memorize the impact painting of the nine. He just refused to place it in his memory. So he invented a number. Every time he read it, he put both hands on the table. For 1 × 9, he folded a finger in his left hand and counted nine as fast as lightning. He folded the second finger for 2 × 9, saw one finger on one side and eight at the other, and instantly declared “eighteen”. He always dives in the table, the mind competition and answers always did the right.
I never knew whether he had discovered an old number, or whether he brought him together, but it worked. When I asked him why he did it, when I asked if there was a cheating, the weak little boy was still in primary school – he looked at me with wet eyes and whispered, “I learn like that, mashe. “I didn’t stop this desperation, but one day I had to learn a“ usual ”style.
Anoop had many habits that the mainstream would reject as flaws, but in my opinion, he was shy, humorous, uniquely shy with a distorted smile that could disarm everyone. We got closer. Until then, I was teaching almost every child in the village. Some families paid me money, many did not give me, but they gave me love, respect and boiled banana and egg plates.
My little army grew rapidly: Anoop, Dhanya, Drishia, Remia, Chinnu, Ponnu, Paru, Avinash and others. We shared us in the afternoon, we laughed and exchanged. They told me everything – schools, teachers, parents. Actually, they were my teachers; I was endlessly surprised by their intelligence, mind beings, and sharp understanding of the world.
And still something hit me: almost all of them were afraid of school. Teachers who prevented a rare spirit horrified them. For some children, the school was only preferred because the house was worse. They could not find real care in both places. They felt guilty for any mistakes, and they all knew that no one really understood them at that age.
I was a weak teacher. “Why did the teacher hit me even after saying that I was tired and I couldn’t finish the homework?” They asked. or “I love Ambily MamanThe moon, but when my teacher explains in science, I just want to pull my hair and escape, ”The only thing I could do was hugging them, making a little joke and joining quietly, because I knew that the system was not built for them; I saw damage myself.
The most switching question years later, after leaving a June – month school began – three hours away, stayed in the hostel. Life moved, things took me further from the village, and my questions about these children decreased to my family or old friends.
But one August, years later, he returned from Delhi when I was at home. When I heard a cartilage outside my door, I was sleeping on the radio after lunch. My mother tricked someone to enter. A hesitant voice, “No, I don’t want to disturb Mash!” It was anoop.
It looked almost the same, growth perhaps bad health, Ses Shriller’dan dwarf, but familiar oddity was intact. Now he was a young man, I guessed. I spoke in broken explosions and learned that he left me shortly after me and dragged in strange works – in a stationery shop, a pressure, a rice mill and so on. He met me with the helpless look I remember from childhood. Then suddenly, he poured his shyness, he moved forward in his short, frightening run, wrapped my waist so tight that I had to fix myself and said, “But when I got back from school, you weren’t there. Why did you leave me, mashe? If you were there, I would stay. ”And then left.
I don’t know how much of this is right or how much is a way of explaining a more difficult life, but I feel that I should stay at that moment and even now. The minister needed someone who laughed with him, never judged, and simply listened. I left him.
And of course, he wasn’t the only one. Now we all know, dear reader, thousands of people like him – compressed caste boys and girls, poor, expropriated, abandoned. They had not tried their most difficult, begging teachers for patience, attempted to memorize, tried to fit, but many of them failed, left or disappeared to margins, because the system was never designed for them. They were the children of poverty, they would take them for talent tests, feeding their strange gifts, abuse, depression, protecting them for disappointment.
These were the children of public school and in a state celebrated for their literacy. I’m shaking to imagine what it means elsewhere. Since then, a lot has changed, but the reports in newspapers and jokes from other journalists remind me how finished, how broken schools are still in India: quitting, broken souls, sometimes even criminals. It is an area where the market is made where the rules of power and money prevents the teeth that it determines. This has changed. Vikitis Bharat or everything we build cannot afford to fail in our children. We need to make schools and education more inclusive, non -elitarian, accomed, supportive and egalitarian.
This morning I thought again as Sanjo, Anop and them. Front -facing‘Vishal Vasanthakumar, Divya Kannan, Anustup Nayak, Harshit Pai, Borker, Meena Kandasamy, Tarun Cherukuri and Mridula Koshy System System System’s System System, Meena Kandasamy, Merlia Shaukath, both Borker’s latest number. A collection worth holding, teachers, parents, policy makers and a collection that I believe can talk to the liking of my anoop – at the end of the spectrum.
Read and write again with your stories and thoughts as always.
I wish a nice week ahead of us
Jinoy Jose P.
Digital Editor, Front -facing
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