By Dr R K Lenin
Our land has been in a state of turmoil and difficulty and restlessness for a pretty long time and improvement is in the offing. In the meanwhile we do not ponder deeply over the condition of our children who are our real wealth, but when we are impelled by an incident to think about them we are frightened and worried more.
To play for a while and to indulge in funs and frolicks is the nature of a child, but the present-day child, leave alone playing, does not find a moment for rest. Still I do reminisce the pleasant odour of the beautiful green grass of the playfield, the play in the evening and the homing bidding good-bye to my friends at dusk. Today play grounds are scarce and children cannot take to playing. In very early morning a child is dragged out of in his pleasant slumber saying that the school van has come, he should have his grub and he will be late for school. No sooner does he return from school than the home tutor arrives. As soon as the tutor leaves him he will turn to his home works in succession - he is at his wit’s end whether he should do the school home-work or the tutor’s home-work first. But in any case he must work them out completely. The work is large enough and they are by no way easy and the young and tender brain is taxed. He loses his appetite, becomes thin, perspiration appears on the side of the nose, becomes torpid and tardy in work. The school becomes a bug-bear to him and sometimes there is occasion when he does his home work in his dream.
And, examinations and examinations, the class examination, monthly examination, the half-yearly examination, the final and annual examination - there is no dearth of examination and there is no end of examination in the life of a student. The parents are real enthusiasts of their child’s education and they say, ‘you must hold a rank. You must score high marks. Tom’s son has become this, Harry’s son has done that and you do not attend to your study. Is your head filled with bull-shit?’ (We do not know how brilliant the chastising parents were when they were students).
Everyone is anxious, all ran helter-skelter crying ‘the result is out’. When she failed in most of the subjects Ibeyaima is lachrymose and said, ‘Shila, I shall not return home, my mother will beat me and she will not feed me’. ‘Why so?’, said Shila. Ibeyaima also replied feeling like weeping, ‘You see, on the other occasion my mother beat me severely for scoring poor marks, and she warned me that I will be expelled from home if I fail in the exam’. Among the vans which parked in a long line not far away from the school gate there was the white van which picked up Ibeyaima usually, but that day she cast a quick glance around and to avoid her friends she hastened her paces with the heavy school-bag on her back and being dog tired from hunger she trod on and on in the fading light of the evening to an unknown destination. The parents looked for her everywhere. They asked her friends but the reply was ‘We don’t know. We don’t see her’. Shila told them, ‘The result is out today. She failed. She told me that she was much afraid of her parents for they would beat her’. After much searching, when it was dark they found little Ibeyaima who was reading in the fourth standard sitting alone beneath a tree by the road. The utter fear made her fearless in the dark that day.
What I want to put forward are - (1) all children are not equally endowed with intelligence by God; the level of intelligence is different from a child to a child, the level of ability is also different. Random beating of the child by the parents desiring the child to be good without knowing his/her quality and ability will not serve the purpose. The load of an elephant cannot be put on a buffalo; all the water of a bucket can never be contained in a pot. Though hungry one cannot eat three meals at once. (2) How will a child get time to do the home-works being given in some schools? When to eat his meals, when to rest, when to sleep leaving aside the question of playing. Some good and able children may do them and will get much benefit. But the large assignment may lead to dislike of studies and muddle the brain of the weak children. As a child knows that he will be rebuked if he says that he dislikes to go to school, we may sometimes find a child who complains of dizziness, or headache or colic pain or cramps when the time of his school going comes. If such a symptom is found, great care needs to be taken, it indicates the unbearability of his load.
Here is a story of a boy of Class IX who is very studious. He used to hold rank in the previous examinations and this time he scores low marks, he is outclassed by his friends and cannot get a rank. He begins to remain silent, behaves in an unusual manner, he is not as amiable as before, he eats less, he has sleeplessness and sometime, he weeps secretly at night. He thinks that he will read hard to improve well in the next examination but things do not enter into his mind; those already he had learnt are also in jumbles and the degree of forgetting increases. To think that the examination is drawing near his pulse starts throbbing, he is excited and feels fear. At such a point he thinks of suicides and says, ‘My parents are doing their best for me and I cannot live upto their expectation and I am debasing their honour. I am not worthy of them, I need not live’. Running for the first position in the examination is everybody’s desire, it is a very good thing but it is only a question of inability. But it is not true that the topper will always be a successful and great man in life surely. Non-inclusion in the ranks cannot be taken as the doomsday. There are many who won gold medals in examination but unsuccessfull in life. Over ambition (incompatible to his being) causes anxiety all the more. Excess in anxiety hampers study.
If a student finds interest in reading and put the necessary labour in it, the result will certainly be good. And even if he does not achieve the desired result he has to remain complacent and hope for the next time. Along with studies, a student has to have good health (mental an physical both) and to learn sociableness, for after his education he is going to live in the human society.
Supposing, a child has gone to school, he is small and tense, he can not eat well in haste, he is just recovering from an illness, but he is called out of his class room and he is made to sit by the roadside in the scorching heat for a dharna and taken to a rally. The parents are between schilla and cheribdis whether they should send their child to school; of course they like their child to join classes before another bandh is called. Owing to bandhs, blockades, general strikes and public curfews their child cannot read upto 5 or 6 months in a year. Affluent parents use to send their children outside Manipur, so as to avoid these unfortunate things.
It is always the best to keep little children under the watch and ward of parents. All say, ‘What can we help! ours is a land which cannot keep the academic calendar, but our children cannot be spoilt. There are some cases of boys who developed mental illness owing to their inability to adapt to the hostel life and recalled back home.
Again some boys fail in the examination on account of the difference in style and method of teaching. When the boys reading outside come home during holidays they take recourse to private tuition in the holiday time. There is no way of escape for today’s child.
How dearly does one love one’s alma mater! It is very much loved and revered, and everybody bows down to it as if a sacred temple. But when the school buildings were reduced to ashes before their own eyes, the shock given to the helpless children by the heinous scene was reflected on the face of every child.
God let not the abominable impression linger long on the hearts of the innocent children. Not only their books were snatched from their hands and put them to blaze. It might leave a lasting scar in their young minds.
In the name of learning a trade many a small children are doing jobs in transport vehicles, factories and workshops for some earning. Abandoning their studies they have started to feel the hard experiences of life. In families which have dearth of working members, many children are employed as helpers still, the number of such children cannot be ascertained for want of proper enumeration.
God must see those people who treat these wretched children kindly and may God bless them! There are not without a few houses in which when the real children of the family are all married and settled in their lives, the helper children are kept as their children and make way for their better future.
This is a story of a pleasant kind. But in certain houses there are pitiful scenes of ill treatment, feeding partial meals, threatenings, hurting the heart by harsh and poignant words and giving no rest and peace, and the member of which is not a few. A master of a house clapses a little girl of only eight or nine by his left hand and beats her hard by his huge right hand like a tyrant. The girl does not cry aloud. Has she been resistent and immune due to frequent beatings? No, that does not seem to be. She is quivering and her eyes run. If she cries aloud she will be alleged for alarming the neighbours and she will be dragged into a room, gagged and beaten more than before - she knows it well. What will other people say against the cruel act? If anyone protest against the monster, he will retort, ‘This is none of your business’. There may be laws against such crimes, but who will come forward to protect her? May God see this and I pray to Him to let grow quicker such stunted and miserable children, so that they may stand on their own feet and express their own thought.
Some innocent children become orphans very early as a result of premature deaths of their parents who had been infected with HIV/AIDS for inchastity or by accident. Who will look after them and who they will be fed by? Who will help them to sleep at night? That is not all for them, besides, the society is maltreating them and they are going to miss to enjoy the wordly merriments by the scourge of the virulent disease. For which sin of these little and innocent children do they deserve the punishment?
What is the message to the growing children by the atrocity, murder, quarrel, disciplinlessness, topsy-turvy, might-is-rightism and punishing the earnest workers which are daily and commonplace occurrence in this society? Should they follow suit when they grow up?
The incidents of abduction of innocent children for ransoms and killing them mercilessly have shattered the hearts of the hearers and the seers. What a stony human heart? Do they have no children of their own? Parents are afraid of sending their children out of home or leave the children behind even in their own homes in this land of our own.
The intoxicant is rampant. The drunkard father beats the mother, the children are helpless except connivance, they cannot eat peacefully, they are disturbed in their study too, the father is indifferent to the financial needs of the children and the children cannot put up their faces before their friends in shame for the conduct of their father. Again the friends of the children insist them and say, ‘Have a taste of this at least once’. It is offered them free and they begin to think ‘I may taste it!’ There is no dearth of alcohol and it cannot be banned and besides it No.4, bhang and opium- say of anything, nothing is not unavailable. The intoxicant is made plenty in this land by those who are crazy about money.
Whither the fate of our growing children of this land where power and water are scarce, there are no factories nor sources of income, work places are few, funs and merriments are in repletion, forced charity is asked in streets, idlers pose as the wise ‘Pabung’ (honourable father) is called to any rich man, punishment is awarded to a hard workers and the might become the right?
There is a great wrong in us whose lives are enviable. The time has come to join the heads of the wise. Are not our children who are deprived of their rights the real estate of our land?
(The names used hereto are fictitious, the stories are fictions and they are of those who suffer the harsh impact of the society)
Source: The Sangai Express
Our land has been in a state of turmoil and difficulty and restlessness for a pretty long time and improvement is in the offing. In the meanwhile we do not ponder deeply over the condition of our children who are our real wealth, but when we are impelled by an incident to think about them we are frightened and worried more.
To play for a while and to indulge in funs and frolicks is the nature of a child, but the present-day child, leave alone playing, does not find a moment for rest. Still I do reminisce the pleasant odour of the beautiful green grass of the playfield, the play in the evening and the homing bidding good-bye to my friends at dusk. Today play grounds are scarce and children cannot take to playing. In very early morning a child is dragged out of in his pleasant slumber saying that the school van has come, he should have his grub and he will be late for school. No sooner does he return from school than the home tutor arrives. As soon as the tutor leaves him he will turn to his home works in succession - he is at his wit’s end whether he should do the school home-work or the tutor’s home-work first. But in any case he must work them out completely. The work is large enough and they are by no way easy and the young and tender brain is taxed. He loses his appetite, becomes thin, perspiration appears on the side of the nose, becomes torpid and tardy in work. The school becomes a bug-bear to him and sometimes there is occasion when he does his home work in his dream.
And, examinations and examinations, the class examination, monthly examination, the half-yearly examination, the final and annual examination - there is no dearth of examination and there is no end of examination in the life of a student. The parents are real enthusiasts of their child’s education and they say, ‘you must hold a rank. You must score high marks. Tom’s son has become this, Harry’s son has done that and you do not attend to your study. Is your head filled with bull-shit?’ (We do not know how brilliant the chastising parents were when they were students).
Everyone is anxious, all ran helter-skelter crying ‘the result is out’. When she failed in most of the subjects Ibeyaima is lachrymose and said, ‘Shila, I shall not return home, my mother will beat me and she will not feed me’. ‘Why so?’, said Shila. Ibeyaima also replied feeling like weeping, ‘You see, on the other occasion my mother beat me severely for scoring poor marks, and she warned me that I will be expelled from home if I fail in the exam’. Among the vans which parked in a long line not far away from the school gate there was the white van which picked up Ibeyaima usually, but that day she cast a quick glance around and to avoid her friends she hastened her paces with the heavy school-bag on her back and being dog tired from hunger she trod on and on in the fading light of the evening to an unknown destination. The parents looked for her everywhere. They asked her friends but the reply was ‘We don’t know. We don’t see her’. Shila told them, ‘The result is out today. She failed. She told me that she was much afraid of her parents for they would beat her’. After much searching, when it was dark they found little Ibeyaima who was reading in the fourth standard sitting alone beneath a tree by the road. The utter fear made her fearless in the dark that day.
What I want to put forward are - (1) all children are not equally endowed with intelligence by God; the level of intelligence is different from a child to a child, the level of ability is also different. Random beating of the child by the parents desiring the child to be good without knowing his/her quality and ability will not serve the purpose. The load of an elephant cannot be put on a buffalo; all the water of a bucket can never be contained in a pot. Though hungry one cannot eat three meals at once. (2) How will a child get time to do the home-works being given in some schools? When to eat his meals, when to rest, when to sleep leaving aside the question of playing. Some good and able children may do them and will get much benefit. But the large assignment may lead to dislike of studies and muddle the brain of the weak children. As a child knows that he will be rebuked if he says that he dislikes to go to school, we may sometimes find a child who complains of dizziness, or headache or colic pain or cramps when the time of his school going comes. If such a symptom is found, great care needs to be taken, it indicates the unbearability of his load.
Here is a story of a boy of Class IX who is very studious. He used to hold rank in the previous examinations and this time he scores low marks, he is outclassed by his friends and cannot get a rank. He begins to remain silent, behaves in an unusual manner, he is not as amiable as before, he eats less, he has sleeplessness and sometime, he weeps secretly at night. He thinks that he will read hard to improve well in the next examination but things do not enter into his mind; those already he had learnt are also in jumbles and the degree of forgetting increases. To think that the examination is drawing near his pulse starts throbbing, he is excited and feels fear. At such a point he thinks of suicides and says, ‘My parents are doing their best for me and I cannot live upto their expectation and I am debasing their honour. I am not worthy of them, I need not live’. Running for the first position in the examination is everybody’s desire, it is a very good thing but it is only a question of inability. But it is not true that the topper will always be a successful and great man in life surely. Non-inclusion in the ranks cannot be taken as the doomsday. There are many who won gold medals in examination but unsuccessfull in life. Over ambition (incompatible to his being) causes anxiety all the more. Excess in anxiety hampers study.
If a student finds interest in reading and put the necessary labour in it, the result will certainly be good. And even if he does not achieve the desired result he has to remain complacent and hope for the next time. Along with studies, a student has to have good health (mental an physical both) and to learn sociableness, for after his education he is going to live in the human society.
Supposing, a child has gone to school, he is small and tense, he can not eat well in haste, he is just recovering from an illness, but he is called out of his class room and he is made to sit by the roadside in the scorching heat for a dharna and taken to a rally. The parents are between schilla and cheribdis whether they should send their child to school; of course they like their child to join classes before another bandh is called. Owing to bandhs, blockades, general strikes and public curfews their child cannot read upto 5 or 6 months in a year. Affluent parents use to send their children outside Manipur, so as to avoid these unfortunate things.
It is always the best to keep little children under the watch and ward of parents. All say, ‘What can we help! ours is a land which cannot keep the academic calendar, but our children cannot be spoilt. There are some cases of boys who developed mental illness owing to their inability to adapt to the hostel life and recalled back home.
Again some boys fail in the examination on account of the difference in style and method of teaching. When the boys reading outside come home during holidays they take recourse to private tuition in the holiday time. There is no way of escape for today’s child.
How dearly does one love one’s alma mater! It is very much loved and revered, and everybody bows down to it as if a sacred temple. But when the school buildings were reduced to ashes before their own eyes, the shock given to the helpless children by the heinous scene was reflected on the face of every child.
God let not the abominable impression linger long on the hearts of the innocent children. Not only their books were snatched from their hands and put them to blaze. It might leave a lasting scar in their young minds.
In the name of learning a trade many a small children are doing jobs in transport vehicles, factories and workshops for some earning. Abandoning their studies they have started to feel the hard experiences of life. In families which have dearth of working members, many children are employed as helpers still, the number of such children cannot be ascertained for want of proper enumeration.
God must see those people who treat these wretched children kindly and may God bless them! There are not without a few houses in which when the real children of the family are all married and settled in their lives, the helper children are kept as their children and make way for their better future.
This is a story of a pleasant kind. But in certain houses there are pitiful scenes of ill treatment, feeding partial meals, threatenings, hurting the heart by harsh and poignant words and giving no rest and peace, and the member of which is not a few. A master of a house clapses a little girl of only eight or nine by his left hand and beats her hard by his huge right hand like a tyrant. The girl does not cry aloud. Has she been resistent and immune due to frequent beatings? No, that does not seem to be. She is quivering and her eyes run. If she cries aloud she will be alleged for alarming the neighbours and she will be dragged into a room, gagged and beaten more than before - she knows it well. What will other people say against the cruel act? If anyone protest against the monster, he will retort, ‘This is none of your business’. There may be laws against such crimes, but who will come forward to protect her? May God see this and I pray to Him to let grow quicker such stunted and miserable children, so that they may stand on their own feet and express their own thought.
Some innocent children become orphans very early as a result of premature deaths of their parents who had been infected with HIV/AIDS for inchastity or by accident. Who will look after them and who they will be fed by? Who will help them to sleep at night? That is not all for them, besides, the society is maltreating them and they are going to miss to enjoy the wordly merriments by the scourge of the virulent disease. For which sin of these little and innocent children do they deserve the punishment?
What is the message to the growing children by the atrocity, murder, quarrel, disciplinlessness, topsy-turvy, might-is-rightism and punishing the earnest workers which are daily and commonplace occurrence in this society? Should they follow suit when they grow up?
The incidents of abduction of innocent children for ransoms and killing them mercilessly have shattered the hearts of the hearers and the seers. What a stony human heart? Do they have no children of their own? Parents are afraid of sending their children out of home or leave the children behind even in their own homes in this land of our own.
The intoxicant is rampant. The drunkard father beats the mother, the children are helpless except connivance, they cannot eat peacefully, they are disturbed in their study too, the father is indifferent to the financial needs of the children and the children cannot put up their faces before their friends in shame for the conduct of their father. Again the friends of the children insist them and say, ‘Have a taste of this at least once’. It is offered them free and they begin to think ‘I may taste it!’ There is no dearth of alcohol and it cannot be banned and besides it No.4, bhang and opium- say of anything, nothing is not unavailable. The intoxicant is made plenty in this land by those who are crazy about money.
Whither the fate of our growing children of this land where power and water are scarce, there are no factories nor sources of income, work places are few, funs and merriments are in repletion, forced charity is asked in streets, idlers pose as the wise ‘Pabung’ (honourable father) is called to any rich man, punishment is awarded to a hard workers and the might become the right?
There is a great wrong in us whose lives are enviable. The time has come to join the heads of the wise. Are not our children who are deprived of their rights the real estate of our land?
(The names used hereto are fictitious, the stories are fictions and they are of those who suffer the harsh impact of the society)
Source: The Sangai Express
