Going through Changes

The good ol' exclusive boys' schools were regarded as places that prepared boys to become men.

The elite and the upper middle class preferred to send their kids to boys' boarding schools and girls' boarding schools. There were valid reasons for this: boys will be boys and girls will be girls.

There was a time when the best boys' schools in India were the ones that had a strong currriculum and lots of space for the boys to learn boxing, gymnastics, swimming, rugby and contact sports. 

Boys' story books were full of great adventure, valour, honour, and manly stuff. Girls' stroy books were full of aventure, honour, cleverness, bravery, ettiquette, and  wit Now school libraries hardly stock children's literature any more. Except, perhaps,  for flights of fancy.

Sadly, with all these new fangled ideas of co-ed schools, and  schools shutting down their boxing programmes [no 'violence'], and hesitant to have swimming pools [  'no drowning'], and with teachers who are basically nerdy wimps, what do we get from the teaching shops of today?

Defective products : men with  no sense of honour, no sense of sortsmanship, who cannot settle their differences man-to-man and then shake hands over a beer. Oh yes, they have a lot of text book knowledge, but little social graces.

It's interesting to see how the concept of 'education' has changed over the years, and what it brings to society at large.
In the old days, anybody who crossed the line expected to get a couple of whacks on the backside, accepted the punishment with equanimity, and got on with life.

The school tradition of 'Six-of-the-best' kept many a lad on the straight and narrow. Parents expected schools to discipline their kids, and produce 'men'. Today, many parents  neither discipline their own kids (they don't set examples of discipline themselves, have you ever seen an orderly queue in Bihar?) and now, by law, 'six-of-the-best' is banished!

'Spare the rod and spoil the child' has been overturned.

Hurrah! the new code will be 'Bribe your child and have peace of mind.'
Let's see how robust lads of fifteen [who are actually eighteen] intent of destruction of school property are going to be 'handled' in schools since neither the rod nor removal, nor 'punishment that denigrates the child or gives mental agony'  are allowed in schools from April 2010. Can students who break the rules be asked to clean toilets and do other menial but essential tasks - or will this to be seen as 'torture by teachers'?