Reopening Schools Mid June is such a Bad Idea !

15 Jun

So someone asked me on twitter : how would you write the date 15th June 2014 in 5 letters ? And the answer that instantaneously came to my mind was ‘school’! Ah ! I know it isn’t a five letter word…. And neither it’s the right answer to the question asked … But it’s the only word that comes to my mind when I see dates like 13 June / 14 June or 15 June / 16 June … Mid June the time when the school re-opens. That time of the year which marks the end of happy days. 😥 That time of the year when you so want to look out of the window and simply stare at the rains, but instead are forced to make sense of the scribbles on the boring blackboard.

Reopening schools in Mid June is such a bad idea! Well ! If you ask my true opinion … I feel going to school itself is such a bad idea. But I had to go to school… Everyone has to..! Home schooling is still not a huge trend you see… And no one has the time … So School is the ultimate reality every child has to live with.

Anyways … So re-opening schools in Mid June is a bad idea I say. At least for schools in Mumbai. And I have enough reasons to prove my point. Firstly, I hate the fact that we have to spend our summers in the sweltry heat of the Month of May. Innovative games in the hot afternoons is such a task you know! And then the summers are not very playtime friendly. First of all it’s too sunny out there, chances of getting dehydrated are very high. I know of instances when my friends have got heat strokes while playing their heart out in the summers. I mean you want us to have fun when the weather is so bad already! 😳 😡

I think summers is the time when you are at your all time creative low.

As opposed to this, look at the onset of monsoon. It’s such a creative time of the year. Haven’t you ever enjoyed watching the fresh showers rushing towards Mother Earth and happily losing their identity in order to paint that enchanting picture of rains! The moist trees join in the celebration, with some dancing on the beats of the flowing care-free wind. Droplets of water line up on the safety grills of the apartments. It’s fun to peer through and see the convex images of the windows opposite to ours. Even to slide your finger across the line and destroy the formed droplets is some meaningless fun; we have all indulged into.

And while we had our innocent gaze stalled on this brilliant choreography of nature, there comes a shout from inside the house. “Enough of loitering around. Get back to your books. Your school is starting tomorrow. Come on, check your time table and pack you bag!”

It’s like someone waking you up in the middle of a dream, with a splash of water; just when you are about to have that bite of fully loaded burger, sitting on a bench outside a surreal house in the hills.

School reopening in Mid June comes with lot of agony. Both emotional and physical. You have to have to wake up early to the misty mornings and push yourself out of the house to catch the school bus in time; With eyes struggling hard for a clear vision and eyelids functioning on an extremely low shutter speed.

Change in weather takes a toll on the already diminished resistance power of the urban young. Cold, cough, fever are the most common uninvited guests, who sort of come over for a vacation; during the whole month of June.

The schools surely get a commission from the local doctors, for inducing so much clientele during this period.

And how do we forget the books! How much ever waterproofing each of our bags and raincoats ever had, some amount of rainwater used to find it’s way inside. So the books have to be doubly coated with plastic covers; corners of which poke into your arms and chest every time you lean on your desks, to write.

So,

Dear Schools,

While the nature refreshes itself with new ideas, you throw the naive kids into a completely authoritarian four walled space, with windows shut to the rhythmic dance of nature outside.

And that’s why I say, mid June is not a great idea to re-open schools. Can we push it to July ? #justasking