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GOING TO SCHOOL DURING EARLY 70s AS A KID

Going to school during early 70s as a kid.


In early June, when our school used to open after summer vacation, I used to sink my heart in Pain. The summer days schooling was pretty tough and heartless in those days in Villages. I was then just a kid of 8 yrs old. On our way to school we used to cross paddy fields, small ponds and of course railway tracks. And that used to be the best incentive to go to school because we could play with the tadpoles or run along the narrow bridges through the paddy fields or walk on the rail -way-tracks balancing our arms like wings.
I did not like school or my teachers. What I used to hate the most was that the class room atmosphere, the artifacts and the pedagogy . A freshly picked long and strong twig used to greet us .And a never smiling teacher will command the knowledge to bloom. Thus as soon as we used to enter the class room the fear used to enter in us.
The first class used to be of rhyming tables. So the class teacher used to pick up a bright child as a lead chanter to chant tables and then we all used to follow him .We used to call it 'Pahada class/ponika (in Oriya)'.So we used to complete 25 tables in one go. That was a sheer monotonous, mechanical and most obnoxious part of the class. One day, in the same class, tough I was chanting the tables as a follower,my mind was out through the window, across the road and up on a tree to witness a pair of Baya weaving a beautiful nest. The teacher spotted me and asked me -" how much is 13* 6 ? My eyes become wide and under utter nervousness, I could not speak a word. He (the teacher) canned on my palms for 5 times. I fell ill for a week not because of the fear but because nobody understood me and my world.
Later ,when I grew up, I came across a beautiful poem written by Yeats on school children. It really touched my heart as I found my childhood in this poem.
I hoped to share the same with you. Who knows?It may touch you too.

I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me.
O! what sweet company!
But to go to school on a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.
Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour,
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn thro' with the dreary shower.
How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?
O! father and mother, if buds are nipped
And blossoms blown away,
And if the tender plants are stripped
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care's dismay,
How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer's fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?
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