‘Sir, please go and bring my schoolbag’

Raj Mehta
The Ides of March it certainly was but projected ominously to September 2014. Kashmir was drowning. The insidious Jhelum waters had broken bounds, strangulating homes, hospitals, shops within their serpentine coils. A military boat full of wailing mums, weaning babies from GB Pant Children's Hospital and disconsolate fathers waited for the little girl to jump from her flooded second floor balcony into waiting arms, but she didn't. "Fauji sir, bring my school bag,” she stated with no-nonsense rectitude. The officer turned back for confirmation from her distraught mother. “Nadaan hai...padhne-likhne ka junoon hai... Khuda ke vaaste madad kijye”. (She is innocent and consumed by the passion to study...for god's sake, help), she said.
The officer swept the girl into his arms, entering the flooded house to recover her bursting Barbie-embossed bag; the happy girl rushing into the arms of her tear-streaked daddy. Lest one feel that this was a stray incident, reflect over what happened recently at a reputed co-ed public school's declamation contest for senior classes in Chandigarh, where I was one of three judges. The refreshingly formatted contest permitted students to choose and script their topics. Their eloquent rendition left us spell-bound; stunned by their quality, candour and awareness of societal evils that marginalise women; amidst other issues that trouble young minds. A sampling says it all: A woman's paradox: Obesity obsession; Evil triumphs when good men stay silent; When religion is sold; Men aren't dogs; Fear the roses; Addition leads to subtraction — all honest, perceptive takes on society. The heart-stopper was the declamation: It didn't happen...it did. The stark honesty of the narration and the speaker's grit in moving on was mind-numbing.
Something is indeed happening in education that's pan-India. In 2013, I was asked to take a most unusual talk at a unique school at Puducherry which runs a fluid syllabus without examinations or grades. I spoke to students ranging from primary school to postgraduate levels, all sitting in the same hall and with institutional freedom to walk out if distracted/bored. That no one did made the experience memorable. A day later, I spoke at a senior government school for slum children. Most of them shared world-class dreams of becoming doctors, scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, IT professionals, teachers and military officers.
The skein that links these diverse incidents together is that young India is rebooting, breaking away from its linear, mnemonic past — from rote-driven to open-ended experiential learning hinged on evolving societal mores. The internet has spawned an explosion of knowledge which has transformed the time-space-social impact-learning continuum. This phenomenon, fuelled by a staggering number of powerful 'apps' that provide instant social connectivity; packaged information, knowledge, opinions and entertainment in multiple forms has   "flattened" the world much as Thomas Friedman foresaw. The young are driving the change — along with some enlightened schools, elders and opinion shapers.
The soft click of an apps button may by itself be a small thing but that apparently innocuous click has taken knowledge and its dissemination to a new high, aided and abetted by 24x7 channels that propagate a bewildering variety of information and learning. Piloting a growing child through this complex maze to achieve excellence is our challenge. We can retreat to the past; get defensive; insist on "My-way-or-the-highway" — or be positive in outlook and cheerfully go get the schoolbag for our children as a young Army officer did in the autumn of 2014.