THE MONSTER CALLED THE SCHOOL BUS...
THE MONSTER CALLED THE SCHOOL BUS...
the speeding school bus to me often represents the first monster that the child encounters in the system of education, the angry and speeding driver is a representative of the system itself, intolerant, insensitive to the child's need, adhering to its own demands of pace and not at all in the interest of the child.
in my morning walk with my daughter, i often see these monsters cruise past at break-neck speed, splashing the overnight rains that have become road-side slush on one and all, honking their multi-lingual, polyphonic horns in complete impatience, steering in and out of narrow lanes to pick up children, reversing into some, rushing into others, climbing narrow walkways to make tight turns so as to quickly pick-up that one child unwilling to go, but brought to the slaughter station of pick-up points by the faithful parents and grand parents - those who have faith in the system of education, that it will eliminate some unknown darkness that they feel their child is born with, an unknown fear that they themselves haven't overcome as adults and feel somehow the child will overcome because it goes to school everyday, to overcome the hurdles through schooling in achieving the aspirations of the parents and grandparents.
a child of 9 slipped through a hole in one of these monsters yesterday in the city and was run over in front of her parents' eyes, a few months ago another child was knocked down by a reversing monster, in another case the monster knocked down a waiting child...the monsters seem to gobble few of the faithfuls in sincere regularity to sustain its monster hood, to maintain the threat that it is supposed to instill, to provide an opportunity for all and sundry to claim its sanctity, lay more rules to guide its ways, clear its pathways, provide it with more celebration of colours, rules, privileges and yes, fees.
if factory schooling is feeding the corporate economy, the monsters that fetch the children to the factor schools feed the image of 'development', the first shots of many development movies start with the monster shown in slow motion, happy children, daintily dressed for the occasion, being paraded in or out of the monster buses appear in every corporate social responsibility promotional videos.
do we need these monsters? what do they enable? they enable in remote villages, children being displaced for the first time from their habitat, enjoining displacement with learning, forever looking at their own villages as places of residence and the school as places of learning. in cities and small towns, they enable the frenzy of class-conscious schooling, making all schools accessible if one desires and affords them, the real price being how much is one willing to sacrifice the child's freedom and time at the altar of education.
if there was a law banning them, we will have more local educational places, perhaps better learning opportunities in each neighbourhoods, we may even start to demand better pedestrian walk ways, perhaps we will even have different kind of thinking emerging in our ideas of education. the newspapers today are talking about the corruption of transport officials who may have inspected and approved the vehicles that are not safe, a crowd yesterday burnt the bus responsible for mowing down the child, that doesn't stop more monsters being made nor eliminate the root cause of the problem.
why do we need the monster in the first place?
ram / 26/07/2012
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