Schooling, not schools

It's ironic that April, with its scented breezes, sudden showers and languorous days, heralds the coming of a season of discontent for so many. Even as the children of the upper-classes celebrate their exam results in malls and bowling alleys, the children of "People Like Them" mill anxiously outside government schools, vocational centres and bookshops, worried about their results, worried about their future. I often see many of them not far from my house, where a non-governmental organisation organises vocational training programmes for young girls. That is where I recently ran into Anita. Seventeen, made up and truculent, she'd come to find out what courses she could join.

"I don't mind doing a beautician's course," said she, admiring her predatory scarlet talons. "Beauty can never go out of business!" She was desperate for something to do, having failed her Class X exams. Her parents now wanted her to quit school and start working. "They say they don't have the money to send me to school - if I don't have the brains to pass my exams," said she gloomily. "I've convinced them to at least let me do a vocational course, so here I am!"

Feeling sorry for her, I offered her a glass of cold water and asked her about her school. It was a government school, she said, in which all the girls who could afford it, studied through private tuition. "My parents barely managed to buy books for me and my six siblings... how could they afford tuition!" she said. Sadly, the level of teaching was so poor, said Anita, that students couldn't easily make the grade on their own. "As a result, I got seven out of 100 in Maths, and my English result was only marginally better!" she said bitterly.

Moved by her story, I asked her how keen she was to study. "I don't know about studying, but I'm very keen to go to school!" she exclaimed. "Where else can I sit with my friends under a tree and talk all day with no tension or worries?" As we chatted, I realised that this girl who had supposedly studied and passed nine grades, could barely string together a lucid sentence in English. How had she managed to reach this far up the education ladder without falling off?

Just then, her mother bustled down the road to pick her up. When she saw her daughter talking to me, she burst into vitriolic complaints. "We are poor people who have slaved to send our seven children to school, but Anita doesn't seem like she's learnt much. She wants a mobile phone, lipstick and a job in some call centre - but she can't even draft a leave application to submit in her school!" The mother said Anita wanted to go to school only to have a good time, not to study and make something of her life. "A family I know needs a nursemaid for their newborn and are offering good money, but ma'am here doesn't want to do such work!" she said. Anita rolled her eyes, inspected her talons and said, "I can do much better, if only you'd let me study. I haven't spent so many years in school to become a nursemaid, have I?"

I watched them argue, unable to decide whose side I was on. Eventually, the mother muttered she was late for work, grabbed Anita's hand and the duo disappeared down the road. That was the last time I saw Anita. But I read or debate the Right to Education Act; I think about the countless, faceless Anitas across the country; all victims of the yawning gap that has developed between schools and schooling, exams and actual education.