Some parents say: from your roots don’t go astray
Education in the mother-tongue is the need of the day…
Other parents say: let our children have our way
Education in English will ensure an apt global pay…
But heed the children and what they have to say
Surely they would rather learn only the fun way!
A real mess is served in the education tray…
where the nut gets screwed and the gut gives way!
The syllabus is a maze real knotty, and hey…
Queries are termed naughty in the class bay!
Self-esteem is eclipsed in the mind where it held sway…
As irrelevant leads to irreverence with every passing day!
What’s the point of learning Geography, if on eclipse day
… parent and teacher retire to the dark superstition bay?
What’s the point of testing data from the Science tray…
…if the permission to experiment is stalled by a ‘nay’?
The wonderful world of mathematics goes regularly astray…
the mechanical obscures the elementary, every single way!
Dates and details get hammered into a mind turning clay,
as History lessons defeat the message in the factual fray!
Not just black on white, prose or verse is really about grey
… unbridled is imagination, but education narrows the way!
Why the compulsion to learn by rote without going astray?
Theatre-fun would be better for the Bard to seize the day!
Learning is directly proportional to the fun, they say…
Yet book is thrust in the hand that must play with clay!
‘Leave the kids alone’ sang Pink Floyd on another day
Languages are the drapes for expression, just another way
What use is the nut when the gut gives way?
What use is a label with learning far away?
The language is second to what the syllabus has to say
Education must empower the nut without the gut giving way!
- Pravin K. Sabnis
23 March 2011
