WHOSE FAULT?

Auto rickshaws packed with school children and brimming with their ever-bulging school bags and lunch bags, rushing past in the morning hours through the mindless traffic is a common sight. It is the same with public transport buses too, also call taxis and vans. How many of those kids ever make it to the top? The statistics making u feel uneasy?? LOL. Forget it.

In the case of buses, there are instances, where we see the bus driver taking the liberty to pass up on a bus-stop where he notices school children with their heavy bags – implying a simple point: the child with his or her school bag occupies the space supposedly required by two persons.

Who is to be blamed? The parents? The education system? Or the schools?

Parents desirous of providing their children affordable education in the best schools do so unmindful of the distance the schools are (or their residences as the case may be). What does this imply?

That only a few of the schools (though following a common syllabus) function to the desired level? How often do we graciously accept that the blame for a student’s grade does not lie entirely on the teaching staff alone but also partly on the children learning there? Not much of us, though. (Now, please don’t ask me what is my stand in the issue. I’m undecided).

As with any conflict there are two sides to the issue. As far as the teachers are concerned, he or she will be motivated to teach the children better only when there is a positive feedback from the kids studying. He expects the student to score well. It is commonly agreed that all the staff aren’t alike. One may be well capable of expressing his ideas and thereby succeeding in creating a curiosity in the student. While, another may not be so; thoroughly educated but unable to put forth his ideas to the student the way he needs to be taught.

In the Asian or the American countries, the scenario is strikingly different: a student residing in any place has to get himself admitted to in the schools available in that locality or vicinity, regardless of the social status of the parents. Of course there are exceptions- if the parents wish that their child should have a much better schooling, they have to pay through their nose to have their child admitted to a school far off from his home. It is expensive. This demonstrates that all the schools alike have the same standard of education, acceptable by all. So, why the differentiation more pronounced in our country?

Makes one wonder whether education is becoming a booming business after all. Doesn’t it? Well, I’ll say you keep your fingers crossed...

Lebanon shelling.

SORRY DOESN’T MAKE A DEAD MAN ALIVE.

All of us know it. The irony is that we still use it. Well, you might wonder what it has got to do now..?

The Israeli air strike on the Lebanese town of Qana in the early hours on a Sunday last month had left 54 civilians including 34 children killed.

In its deadliest bombing till date, the attack on the town of Qana, repeatedly, had left a bloody carnage. (Even bloodier ones followed, you might very well remember the picture of an Israeli lady holding a few months’ old baby, both dead, lying amongst the rubbles of a building). An entire building received a direct hit from the air raid. Eyewitnesses have said that parents had held these dead children cradled in their hands, still clothed in their pajamas when they had gone on sleep earlier.

After the bombing, the Israeli government had vide a statement, regretted the civilian deaths caused.

It was also reported that the rescue workers found it hard to proceed, stunned by the scale of the carnage. Unless some restraint is exercised by the Israelis as well as the Hizbollah, the end to all this misery and suffering is nowhere in sight.

No wonder they rightly say that “THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR IS INNOCENCE”.