Class Struggle In Schoolsville

Perhaps it8217;s because of its alumni. Politicians and princes, writers and media moguls, painters and actors have all walked through these corridors. Headmaster Kanti Bajpai says with a laugh, 8216;8216;Just one more reason why everybody loves to hate us.8217;8217;

Bajpai ushers me into his book-lined office. In a corner, I can8217;t help but notice, is a heavy, ornately-carved wooden chair, throne-like in its grandeur. Bajpai tells me it8217;s the traditional headmaster8217;s chair, used by successive incumbents since 1935, when the school opened.

For his part, Bajpai occupies a regular upholstered office swivel chair. 8216;8216;Much more comfortable,8217;8217; he tells me; and much less terrifying for a little boy brought before it, I guess.

On Doon8217;s roster, 8216;A8217; list gives way to 8216;B8217; towns

PERHAPS the swivel chair is a metaphor for how Doon and the public school system have changed. And then again have they? As Bajpai points out, 8216;8216;It has been the most commonly held misconception that we were a school for India8217;s babalog and princelings. While the institution was not created for any particular section, nobody was barred from admission. The only criteria was merit and, of course, the ability to pay the fee.8217;8217;

In 1935, the fee was Rs 1,375 per annum. Today, it is around Rs 150,000. I make a quick mental calculation of what it costs to keep a child in the city. When one adds feeding that take-away pizza, clothing, entertaining those inevitable birthday parties and ferrying children back and forth to the tuition fees day schools charge, the Doon fee isn8217;t quite stratospheric.

Bajpai has other numbers for me. Forty per cent of the students are either on bursaries or need-based financial assistance. While even 20 years ago, boys enrolled from Delhi, Calcutta and Bombay, today8217;s profile is different.

A quarter of the student body comes from the metros. A staggering 75 per cent is from second-tier towns, Moradabad, Kanpur, Agra, Ranchi, Patna, and the Northeast.

So where8217;s the metropolitan elite sending its children?

With new, high-end schools mushrooming all over the country see related story, the well-heeled parent has a host of options. Big city day schools offer a variety of facilities and co-curricular activities. So how do places like Doon still survive?

Education consultant Shashank Vira may have an answer: 8216;8216;There are many workable models as far as schools go. It would be foolish to say that this one works and that one doesn8217;t. The Doon School model has worked in the past and evidently continues to work, just going by the waiting list. It8217;s not about being elitist, it8217;s about having aspirations.8217;8217;

Bajpai concurs, 8216;8216;By what yardstick does one decide whether school A or school B is the best? We don8217;t make claims to being the best school in India, but we do claim to stand for a certain value system. It8217;s about individual lifestyle choices.8217;8217;

True. In a sense, you can tell an individual from the school he sends his child to.

One-stop education shop. Or just an ivory tower?

WHAT have the old boarding schools got going for them? Continuity for a start. Says Dev Lahiri, a former headmaster at Lawrence School, Lovedale, and currently headmaster at Welham Boys School, Dehradun, 8216;8216;Public schools lay stress on public service, on empathising with the less privileged, on leadership, teamwork, secular values and equality. Their one great strength is that by virtue of their vintage they have an amazing alumni network.8217;8217;

At St Paul8217;s, Darjeeling, established in 1823, principal David Howard insists its vintage has not made the school complacent, 8216;8216;While we8217;re adapting to the changing times, we believe in creating good men for society. In a nutshell, we stand for quality rather than quantity.8217;8217;

There8217;s also locational advantage. While cities 8212; or even city schools 8212; offer a variety of facilities, everything is scattered. So parents may have to dash from activity to activity if they hope to provide their children an all-round education.

No wonder Pradeep Sharma, headmaster, Mayo College, Ajmer, is confident the boarding school model is alive and well. 8216;8216;At a residential school, everything is centralised. Academics, additional coaching, extra-curricular activities all take place within the same campus.8217;8217;

Howard echoes this; 8216;8216;Name any sport or facility, barring horse-riding and swimming, and we have it on our 65-acre campus.8217;8217;

Yet isolation can cut both ways. To many, boarding schools are past it simply because they focus on all-round 8216;8216;honourable schoolboys8217;8217; entirely unsuited to the cut and thrust, the competitive instincts of today8217;s society. In short, the boarding school product is somehow 8216;8216;naive8217;8217;, a misfit in the harsh, brash new world called India.

Arun Kapur, director, Vasant Valley School, Delhi, disagrees, 8216;8216;The isolated location of most boarding schools only makes them keener to keep abreast of changing technologies.8217;8217;

The frontier crumbles, private tutors break into public schools

IN an environment where jobs are increasingly driven by the market rather than contacts, the pressure on schools, both residential and city-based, to produce results that translate into IIT, medical school or NID admissions is immense.

The feeling that boarding schools don8217;t lay enough stress on academics has caused Doon to allow, for the first time, boys to take extra coaching classes at local crammers outside the campus. There is the argument city schools over-emphasise results and marks, but also grudging acceptance that this has forced boarding schools to try and keep up.

S.R. Das, former headmaster at Mayo, Lawrence School, Sanawar, and Doon, is perturbed by the cutthroat streak that schools, particularly those in Delhi, exhibit: 8216;8216;Schools are constantly looking over their shoulders to see what the competition is doing. The secrecy for everything from fee structures to curriculum is ludicrous. Nobody seems to want to work together and exchange ideas on bettering the teaching methodology.8217;8217;

Vira adds, 8216;8216;No one realises the IITs offer only 2,000 seats each year. There are over one lakh schools in the fray, so even if each school manages to send one child through, the probability of admissions is already less than 0.2 per cent.8217;8217;

So does the boarding school stay the sanctuary or join the zoo? Kapur is clear, 8216;8216;Residential schools are not only still relevant but essential. They offer a different kind of education. Schools are not conveyor belts churning out identical mass-produced products.8217;8217;

Many little Indians, united by that one school tie

AS I walk through Doon, a clutch of boys dressed in Harlequin-style blue and grey uniforms stops to wish me. This is a pleasant surprise. Where are the pampered darlings born with the proverbial silver spoon? 8216;8216;Certainly not here. No child from any of India8217;s big business families is here at Doon,8217;8217; says Bajpai.

Of the 500-odd boys who study at Doon, 150 have salaried parents. Many of the others are childen of self-employed professionals, like doctors and lawyers. At Mayo, the story is fairly similar. In addition to civil service parents, Sharma points out a growing number of doctor couples opt to send their sons to Ajmer.

Yet some things haven8217;t changed, and gladly too. The very premise of a public school is there are no ethnic markers, only equality. Children from a variety of backgrounds live, eat, study and play together.

Aditya Roy was in St Columba8217;s, Delhi, before coming to Doon. To him, the most important lesson learnt from the boarding school experience has been adaptability, self-reliance, the confidence to take decisions and, ultimately, responsibility for them.

Rohit Tiwari lived with his parents in the United States until he joined Doon. Was it a culture shock? 8216;8216;Not really, the sense of belonging was incredible 8230; The big adjustment for me was not being able to open the fridge and eat what I want, when I want!8217;8217; he says with a grin.

By Rohit8217;s side is Rahul, the boy from Agra, son of a lawyer father and schoolteacher mother. Preparing for the IIT entrance exams, Rahul puts in a solid ten hours of study a day, including his regular school classes. Perhaps he8217;s better off than his peers in the city 8212; no distractions like cable TV, the Internet or perhaps even the girl next door!

Pocket money? 8216;Rs 450 lasts us one full month8217;

LIFE up in the hills can be pretty austere. A minimum of 12 to a dorm, and for a term that lasts four months all each Dosco calls his own is a bed, a locker, two pegs to hang clothes on and a rack to stow away shoes. A far cry from what life must be at home.

8216;8216;That8217;s what makes me different from my buddies back home,8217;8217; says Aditya, 8216;8216;everything begins to have value. At home guys will blow up Rs 450 in one evening, at school we have to make that amount last all month.8217;8217;

8216;8216;Being in boarding teaches us equality and bonding. We8217;re all in the same boat, with as much or as little money as the next guy,8217;8217; adds Ajoy, who edits the school8217;s weekly magazine.

Our chat comes to an end. The boys trudge off into the hot sunshine for yet another segment of their structured, routine lives. What is it in a boarding school that makes even an everyday act seem just so poignant?

I sub-consciously glance at my watch and think of home. Right about this time, there must be a crush of swanky cars and designer moms outside my son8217;s school in Delhi, waiting to pick up children.

It all seems so alien here. The dense bamboo groves, the heady fragrance of honeysuckle, the Himalayas in the distance 8230; Looking at the eager, smiling young gentlemen walk away, I can8217;t help but wonder 8212; how much can an idyll change and yet remain idyllic?

For boarding schools, that8217;s an existential question.

Names of some students have been changed to protect privacy

A round of golf? Just another day in school

Where do well-heeled metro parents send their children? At new age schools, pupils flash smart cards, sit the IB exam

ANJALI ABHYANKAR

BLACKBOARDS and dog-eared attendance registers may well be things of the past if one were to go by the new breed of big city schools. Individual laptops, broadband connectivity, smart cards monitoring attendance, close-circuit TVs and web-based report cards are allurements held out to attract parents.

At Pathways World School on the Gurgaon-Sohna Road, outside Delhi, students have the option of being either day scholars or residing on a weekly, fortnightly or term basis. With individual workstations and 8216;8216;comfortable British-boarding school style8217;8217; residences, students may well be checking into a five-star hotel.

The G.D. Goenka World School, also on the capital8217;s outskirts, has piped music and cable television, besides a 17-acre, five-hole trainer golf course to soothe frazzled nerves. Perfect after a hard day at the office, oh sorry, classroom.

Mumbai8217;s upcoming corporate hub, the Bandra-Kurla Complex is home to the seven-storied Dhirubhai Ambani International School. An initiative of the Reliance Group, the school has been enrolling pupils since March 2003.

Another option for swish Mumbai parents is the Ecole Mondiale World School, a Swiss venture, in suburban Juhu. The USP of these snazzy schools is that they offer the option of the International General Certificate of Secondary Education IGCSE and International Baccalaureate IB, in addition to the humble ISC and CBSE programmes.

But the fancy certificates come at a hefty price tag. If you thought places like Doon were up-end, think again. All these schools charge anything from Rs 3 to 6 lakh per annum.

So who8217;s going to these schools? Children of corporate head honchos and Bollywood bachchas from the Khan khandaans 8212; Shahrukh8217;s, Aamir8217;s and Saif Ali8217;s kids attend Ambani International.

The Ecole boasts of students from 55 countries and a sizeable number of its local pupils are from affluent south Mumbai families. For 14-year-old Anisha Dale name changed 8212; in the ninth standard at Dhirubhai Ambani International 8212; being with some of the richest kids in the city is a bit overwhelming. 8216;8216;But as long as they aren8217;t snobbish with me, I would rather make the most of what the school has to offer,8217;8217; chirps Anisha.

8216;8216;Some people say international schools are exclusivist, but we offer education to all those who share our objective of global learning,8217;8217; smiles Ken Jarman, principal, Ecole Mondiale. So Winston Churchill, French poetry, international dances figure in Ecole8217;s primary and middle years programmes, as do Indian dancing, festivals and geography.

In neighbouring Pune, the seven-year-old Mercedes Benz International School 8212; only a fraction of its 125 pupils are children of executives of the promoter company, which has its plant near here 8212; the client target is 8216;8216;MNC parents, especially those on the move. We are also open to like-minded Indian parents who may be mobile or want their children exposed to or ready for international education8217;8217;.

Benz School director John Bastible emphasises landscape as a learning tool 8216;8216;The campus is very green, with pools and gardens, and is integral to the learning experience. In fact most people who come here don8217;t think it8217;s a school but mistake it for a resort.8217;8217;

Kolkata, last bastion of the red brigade, is not to be left behind. Delhi Public School opened in April and principal Melville Samuel says, 8216;8216;We have smart cards for vigilance about attendance and CCTVs in classrooms for security. We have introduced high-tech facilities which have no match in all of West Bengal.8217;8217;

The Heritage School, also in Kolkata, opened in June. As senior school headmistress Ranu Dattagupta puts it, 8216;8216;We are trying to provide the best Indian education at globally competent standards.8217;8217; She8217;s rather reticent about how exactly that8217;s being done 8212; but the school8217;s appeal to the well-heeled Kolkatan is clear enough.

But are these day schools taking over from residential schools as the place to send your child to? 8216;8216;We did consider the residential school at Rishi Valley near Bangalore, but I was too possessive to let my daughter go,8217;8217; confesses Anisha8217;s mother Reshma.

The other competition 8212; older day schools 8212; aren8217;t running scared. Arun Kapur, director, Vasant Valley, Delhi says, 8216;8216;No school or the certificate it offers can be judged as the best or the worst 8212; it all boils down to the quality of student-teacher interaction. It8217;s about creating an environment that brings out or enhances the relationship to its optimum, it could be under a tree or in a centrally air-conditioned classroom or one with just a ceiling fan.8217;8217;

What was that about education being an uncomplicated business?

With Prachi Jathania, Shantanu Banerjee and Sunanda Mehta