I stumbled into school education. In 1975 while lecturing to under graduate students at LSR if anyone had told me that in 30 years time I would be heading schools, I would have laughed it off in utter disbelief.

 

Yet that first day in school is so memorable. A crisp cold day in February 1993, a very warm sun, blue sky and amidst a colourful school building, hundreds of young children, running, squealing, laughing – throwing themselves into the arms of happy smiling teachers! I thought I had died and gone to heaven. If this was what schools had metamorphosed into, the career change was worth it.

 

Even today whenever I walk into a school I let the atmosphere, energy and ambience soak in. You can tell a successful school from the energy surrounding the children and staff, the material on the walls, the reflection of all their creative energies, the freedom and the confidence with which they walk around the space that is their own and revel in the relationships with the adults around them.

 

Sadly, both in terms of architectural design and interiors so many school spaces are repressive – dark, crammed, not enough light or greenery, bulletin boards with locks and few facilities that are at the height for children to touch or feel. They remind me of the musty corridors of dank government offices and there is no hope of change.

 

Change – now that’s a word that educational institutions dread. Consider the cataclysmic way in which our societies have turned upside down in the last 30 years, yet while the world changed, schools continue to teach content that is half a century old and follow processes that have little or no meaning today. When I came back from the UK in the early ‘90s I saw that we were still teaching subjects and content that I had studied in school in 1960!

 

That was one of the biggest challenges – bringing about change in the curriculum and methodology, convincing teachers of the need to change their roles and perhaps the most difficult part of all – convincing the parents that education needs to be age appropriate, enjoyable and challenging!

 

In the early ‘90’s we were at the crest of the need for schools to become communities where all of us, parents, teachers and children were in agreement about what kind of school we were, what we were trying to do, what kind of student would leave us after 14 years of schooling, and how we needed to develop our curriculum to shape the attitudes and skills of our students.

 

Looking back I suppose it was revolutionary to bring the parents on board, to open up the school to parents’ suggestions, involve them in formulating policy and yet ensure there was a fine line which was not crossed when it came to professional decisions about education.

Bringing about change in the mindset of the faculty – now there was a challenge! Teachers tend to be conservative by nature and teach in the manner in which they have been taught. The old guard was suspicious. “This is the way we have always done things – why change!” was the refrain. Discussions, meetings and gentle but firm insistence on the need for ‘continuous improvement’ as a mantra bore fruit, but it took a while.

 

We had to open the doors to creative individuals who were excited about teaching – who were making the choice to change careers and who may not have the ubiquitous B.Ed tag! So we welcomed staff who were open to change, willing to unlearn and relearn and excited about trying out new ways of learning both for themselves and for the children. I love it when a prospective teacher’s eyes just light up when asked if they enjoy being around children. And I have the deepest of respect for those who continue to want to teach despite the poor pay, tough working conditions and a no-brainer syllabus!

 

Parents were and continue to be constantly anxious about the lack of pressure on their children, why wasn’t there homework which preoccupied them for at least 3 hours a day in junior school, and look - children from other schools knew fifteen times tables at age 6, and ours would only get there in a few years! Would they be able to tackle the Big B – the Board Examination if they didn’t start exams at class1?

 

Fourteen years on and a slew of successful Board results later its clear that a graduated approach to learning, where children enjoy their learning by doing, and throw themselves into a range of co curricular experiences -  and success in the BOARD Exams – are not mutually exclusive! But it was a tough path to walk, and now looking at all the new schools growing at a prodigious rate, adopting the same path and treating it as a norm –now that’s an achievement!

 

I learnt early on that schools were becoming a confessional for parents. In the absence of joint families, increasing mobility and a lack of support systems - people did not have anyone to talk to. And they needed to share their problems, working mothers wracked with guilt, marital discord between partners, issues with the in-laws – all of it spilled into parent conferences with teachers and the Principals. As teachers, we were not equipped to deal with it or indeed help them. Training in counselling skills became imperative for all staff and we learnt to listen attentively. It gave us a window into the troubled times our children lived in – witnesses to domestic violence, living with a mentally ill parent who refused medication, disabled children being locked up and hidden away from the rest of the world; and all the while mothers being blamed for bearing children who were less than able in the eyes of the larger family. It was heartbreaking.

 

The next step was to open up counselling services for parents and then seek to appoint a family therapist. But children resist going to the counsellor – you automatically got labelled and your peers jeered at the ‘psycho’. Developing a panel of educational psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, paediatricians and neurologists that we could refer students and parents to became imperative. I have seen the number of ‘referrals’ grow at an alarming rate, and it is frightening.

 

The approach to discipline changed as the nature and intensity of misbehaviour became more disturbing. The flashpoint for all rebellion in the early ‘90’s was class 11 or 12. By mid nineties it was class 10 who was giving us the tough times, as 2001 loomed the ‘bad guys’ were class 9 and by 2005 no teacher wanted to cross the threshold of class 8!

 

So what had happened? Affluence, consumerism, satellite TV, advancing adolescence and a slow but sure inversion of values, where it was ‘cool’ to be bad and if you worked hard then you were a ‘nerdy geek’ and a ‘loser’. As teachers struggled to comprehend expletives in rap music, body piercing, and the language of gangster rap, what was disturbing was not the superficial donning of attitudes from popular American culture but the underlying violence and cruelty that emerged in conflicts and senseless vandalism.

 

Looking into a thirteen year old’s eyes who had thrown furniture out of a first floor window narrowly missing a junior walking on the ground floor, I could not comprehend what, just what drove him to do it. Why would a group break into the control room of the auditorium and trash the sound system, spraying the fire extinguisher everywhere and destroy equipment worth lakhs? Was it the ‘fight club’ syndrome – where young people need to create their ‘highs’ and was violence the only way they knew. Why would a group of older boys terrorize juniors, hitting and punching and bashing them in the toilets?

 

Sitting with these children from affluent homes who had everything, I was constantly torn between removing them from school and trying to understand the reasons for such disturbed behaviour. Dealing with discipline cases of violence and unfathomable destruction left me with an acute sense of failure. I came home heavy hearted.

 

The middle schools were particularly vulnerable, in fact I often referred to it as the ‘theatre of war’. We need our best teachers at middle school, those that are the best at ‘tough love’. They know that students respond to love and fairness. Love them equivocally but be really tough and make demands.

 

We were grappling with a different morality, and so we tried everything – all kinds of consequences for bad behaviour, detention, community service, exclusion from activities, suspension and expulsion. I don’t know if we were successful. The numbers of incidents just continued to grow. Ex students would comment on the numbers of disturbed children they had amongst classes a few years junior to them. And yet, and yet – once they had left school and joined the world of work, well groomed, polite and sensible – they were a different species! I was and continue to find them a joy.

 

Whilst I tried my best with the troubled souls at the school my son was going through his own adolescence and it was a double whammy! Sometimes I think that educators make the worst parents. Our expectations are high. We constantly look for appropriate behaviour and hey – as a Principal my child should be exemplary. Well, mine was not! He was and is - high on energy, focused on sport, technology, music and history, and a teacher’s worst nightmare when it came to being class clown, being regular with assignments and as for hard work - that was an anathema. Somehow all the ‘gyan’ I gave to anguished parents and errant children just failed me when I came home.  

 

I really had to work hard to give him his space, let go, continue to define the limits, and keep the lines of communication open at all times. The bottom line was – no untruths and no disrespect. I stuck the ‘This Too Shall Pass’ sticker on the fridge, prayed a lot, was buoyed up by his Principal! And today I have the best relationship with him, ever!

 

Schools are an emotional vortex. You are a part of thousands of lives, every day 1700 hundred or more individuals from three years to sixty would walk through, inhabit the space for 7 hours, would be fed, use the toilets, play, paint, sing, dance, read, fight and leave. And that’s when the administration would begin to clean, prepare, set up and secure the campus for in another twelve hours the circus would be back in town.

 

 

It’s not a place for the faint hearted. And Principals need to be right in there, stuck in the middle, with eyes in the backs of their heads, be prepared to teach at a moment’s notice, listen to student’s problems, disentangle knotty problems between teachers, give a patient hearing to parent’s, discipline, lecture, hug – and at the end of the day sign the financial statements, check the toilets and sometimes make the coffee. 

 

It’s a great job, and you know you are alive! If only you were allowed to just concentrate on it. As a successful school and I know I speak for many of my colleagues the worst part of the work is (not parents!) – but the corridors of power – be they bureaucrats, politicians, industrialists or anyone who fancies they have access to the corridors of power. Resisting the pressures from politicians has got so many Principals into so much trouble and I have always wanted to write a book about the travails but I don’t think anyone would believe it.

 

Early on I fell foul of one of the Minister’s and before I knew it all our processes for recognition were placed on hold. If the telephone/electricity/tax departments were not ‘accommodated’ then you could be sure that the phones would be cut, you would not get the load sanction you required and needless to say the school’s books would be opened time and time again in the presence of a series of tax commissioners. At a personal level my tax returns came under endless scrutiny and I soon got used to that.

 

It was harder though when they upped the ante and I had to face an enquiry from the department of education and the police for teaching children western music! Clearly that was an attempt to erode Indian moral values and teach them obscenities. Like other Principals I regularly faced serious charges but always, a supportive management, good legal counsel, and several trips to the department resolved the case. All of this because a relative of a high ranking officer in the government had not been granted admission. 

 

Principal’s are no strangers to courts of law – there are enough disgruntled powerful bullies who will lodge a case on spurious charges. I will never forget racing away from a school because the police had an unbailable warrant for my arrest. This time round the instigator was a senior member of the judiciary whose grandson had not secured admission. The stories are numerous and colleagues seldom discuss them because once you have been able to laugh about it you are left seething with anger at the vulnerability that you feel.

 

And despite the above, they are the best of years. I got to be a part of so many lives and hopefully made some differences along the way. There is such a joy in helping children grow. And being around them keeps you young! You are loved unconditionally and all through the turbulent adolescent years as you keep trying to get through – at least you are connecting. It’s a total engagement. And its binding. Seeing them come through at the end of it all as warm, happy, confident and caring young people can still make me weep. Being in the presence of energetic, creative, talented young teachers and students is like being plugged into a 1000kv transformer! Its high octane and I am still enjoying the charge!