Class X Strategy: My Unfolding Voyage 28

Class Ten Strategy:
Leadership role consistent with seniority was however not a priority. The firstt priority was to deal with the subjects of study and how to clear the examinations: I had been rather focused on getting the best marks in the two more subjects that would not remain in Class Eleven: these marks would appear in our Higher Secondary Examination score sheets but would not be counted for aggregate marks.

The first was Social Studies: at that time what we thought was a mixture of social history, economic history and social geography. We had a relatively easy reading textbook giving a new way of looking at people/ societies in the past and in different areas in the present. There was a chapter on the socio-economic conditions during the Mogul period. In the final Class X examinations, there was a question on the economic conditions of the poor people during Emperor Akbar’s reign. I had skipped that question tried other questions: five were required to be attempted out of seven questions. And, to my surprise, I found one of well-known weak students in the class continuing to write pages after pages answering the social studies in questions. We felt this classmate must have found great interest in social studies and prepared himself well for this subject. I thought that I might not be able to score the highest marks. When later the teacher announced the results of the Social Studies examination, that classmate was declared as having failed to score the minimum score required to pass the test: he got a big zero. We were really surprised. The teacher explained that my friend had answered only a single question. The question that he attempted to answer was the one on socio-economic conditions during Akbar’s time: he had written 10 pages just giving the list of prices of various commodities including those that were not available at that time! And, the prices were as per his imagination. We were all amazed at the friend’s sense of humor: he disliked the subject altogether and never even tried to prepare for the test. The only thing that he knew that in the text book, there were, at some places, a few short schedules of prices of different mass consumption articles. He really had patience to scribble 10 long pages of imaginary figures.

Compulsory Mathematics was the other subject that would be over at the end of class X. I had to live up to the expectations of the teachers that I had created during the first twelve months at this school. Besides, Compulsory Mathematics considerably aided my main two Mathematics papers in the Elective (Advanced) Mathematics. Equally important, Compulsory Mathematics introduced some new interesting topics: Solid geometry, mensuration and statistics. As usual geometry was interesting to me only up to a point. So I had to limit my effort allocation to geometry.

With these two subjects dealt with, what remained were the two Languages English and Bengali, Economics, History and Elective Mathematics. These would continue in Class XI.
The teachers in English were very fond of me. One of them, Indu Babu, tried hard to improve my grammar, vocabulary and use of idioms and phrases. I could barely satisfy him as I had little of my memory power allocated to these. The other teacher, Bhabani Babu, was more focused on translation, comprehension and precise writing. Precise writing practice was something I liked because less time was involved per unit of exercise. The same was true of comprehension tests. Translation helped my thoughts gather greater flexibility to move between two languages. The third teacher concentrated on literary composition. Earlier he used to teach English poetry, stories and literature selections. But the Higher Secondary English syllabus virtually got rid of English literature text books: we just had rapid readers that had to be red but no questions asked as to what the poets thought or what happened at that time and why or analyzing a character. So, this teacher, Priyanath Babu wanted to float in the flow of my English literary composition focusing on what I liked the style, the imagination and smoothness without picking up uncommon words from the dictionary. In a sense he spoiled me a bit. He made me write more words and sentences than examination duration would normally allow: he made me visualize going through environments that I had never been to and express them with implicit Romanticism. He cared little about my limited vocabulary and enjoyed my freedom of forms of expression in English, even if these were not standard. I enjoyed a special relationship with my teachers in the class and the answer scripts, but with most of them I hardly had any intersection outside the class room.

Our History teacher, Atin Homeroy provided the inspiration to my natural contrarian tendencies. He set a question in one examination: prove that Aurangzeb was the greatest among the Mogul emperors. That is what I always wanted in examinations: questions that had no standard answers in the text books, requiring one to think, argue and express in writing in the examination hall. Atin Babu was a teacher who made history texts, shorn of the dates and the narrative stories, appear interesting. His classes made me come to a belief history was not about persons, events and dates but about imagining logical connection and interactions among motives, beliefs, aspirations and various characteristics of leading personalities as also the peoples. For a quiet a while, I firmly study of political history and wars and battles should be banned till people become old: this would have helped children to avoid develop communal, racial pride, hatred and jealousy. I had felt that all history books should have been re-written on the basis of principles and theories that are justified on empirical testing across time and geographical wars. There should have been theorems on why wars take place under different circumstances and with what effect rather than narrating them in chronological calendar time, on why and how the closest become betrayers, on what gives strength to armies in winning battles and wars, on qualities of leaders and heroes that contributes to failures and successes under different circumstances, on progress of civilization through education, art and culture, science, technology, sacrifice, enterprise and innovation, on individual and group behavior, and so on. I still do not like children studying stories about kings and queens, their admirals, war heroes and empire expansion, the subjugation of one community / religious group/ race by another. How relevant is today for children to know about Alexander invading India, Ashoka spreading Buddhism, of the oppression by Aurangzeb, of the greatness of Akbar, of the British capturing India lands, of communal riots in Punjab and Bengal, of the Crusades and Jehads, of Napolean turning a democracy into monarchy, of Hitler’s holocaust, of the Russian Czar, the French, American and Russian revolutions or of the Atom Bomb in Hiroshima? They vitiate the child’s mind from what needs to be done in future as a human being, individually and in group to who was right and who was wrong, who was great and who was not, who oppressed whom and who should have retaliated, whose ancestors were and bad? The school text books should provide the lessons from history and not the history of events. The latter stories could be read even otherwise by any one at any stage: education should provide the means to deal with the future with the lessons from history, modern technology, imaginative thinking and human values. For three years, Class IX through Class XI, I had studied history in the School Indian history – ancient, medieval and modern as well as modern World history: I consider myself lucky that I could forget most of the narration: I did not want to remember any event that generate ill feelings towards any one else in this World because of what his / her ancestors did long time back in the past.

How would study of history as a subject in the school made me different from my juniors in the school? I would have more information on the past before my birth but no clue in shaping the present or the future for any one any better than others. But history would not leave me so easily yet.
The remaing three papers, Additional Mathematics, Economics and Bengali would require separate posts.

Senior for Two years: My Unfolding Voyage 27

Seniors for Two years
We moved to Class X and became the first batch of students in the school who would enjoy the status of the senior most class for two successive years. Such events take pace rarely unless you fail in the school-leaving examination. When we got promoted to Class X, the previous batch of Class X passed the School Final Examination and was out of the school: if they all passed, they would have got into a college to do one year Pre-University class and if any one failed they would not be able to get back to our school as there would be no longer any Class X for School Final Examination. So, we became the senior most class when we got into class X: in the next year we will go into Class XI – the first batch of Class XI in the school and would appear at the end of Class XI, the new order school leaving examination called the Higher Secondary Examination. So, in Class XI we would still be the senior most class batch in the school. Much later, however, education reforms would break up school education into three parts: Primary up to class IV, Secondary from Class V to Class X and then Higher Secondary covering classes XI and XII.

Becoming senior most class did give us an added sense of status to us. The teachers became much friendlier than before. They all became interested in preparing us for better performance at the Higher Secondary Board Examinations. We had greater say in the conduct of various school activities like school magazine, sports, etc. Two years of being the senior most was really pleasurable.
Senior students were obliged to take responsibility for various school events like the holding of the Saraswati Puja (worshiping the Goddess of learning) and the associated feast, sports, school magazines. But I for one was not at all interested in taking any organization responsibility at school. One reason was that I did not find interesting spending time at the school outside class hours – as I would like to get back home soon. I also did not like skipping some classes to attend to school’s other activities because, I was more comfortable in using the class hours to complete as much of my understanding of the subjects rather than labor at home to understand things on my own when the teachers’ assistance was readily available. I always wanted to know what the teachers had to say. Besides, there was a competition among students to lead and one needs to work under the guidance and supervision of teachers. I hated to compete with schoolmates, especially classmates in areas other than studies (examination performance). I was also not very comfortable mixing with the teachers outside the class hours because of a certain peculiar shyness. This is one reason why teachers thought I was only a good student. I did not want them to know and appreciate my involvement with sports or literature or organization. Moreover, I was already happy with my organization leadership roles in the local club of my friends who had already been comfortable with me. Rather, I had just started developing an attitude of influencing the club’s group’s activities without being a formal leader. As we grew in age, we were developing individual views and opinions on different social, political and club activity issues. As a leader, I did not want to argue with others on these issues and force my opinion. At that young age I had felt not all would appreciate my logic and arguments being separate from my individual preferences and from my position as the leader. I did not want that they perceived me as a dictator. On the other hand, leaving the official leadership position despite the friends’ request to continue helped me lift my position to one of a guide and a strategist rather than taking up execution and implementation responsibility. This role had the added advantage that no body saw in me any particular self interest or domination- motive in my logic and arguments. My local club and friends would drop many of their proposals/ ideas after listening to me and would refer to me as Narod (contrarian spoiler) with considerable affection.