Is your child happy?

Yadu Raj Baral/Michigan, USA

Professionally, I am not a teacher. When my desired job sprung far off to knock the door of my destiny, I chose the job of a teacher temporarily. After a few years of this job in the terai, my heart declared a change ‘what about Kathmandu’ and I shifted there with my minor son and wife.

I didn’t have to struggle a lot for the job as there were mushrooming private schools and I was counted to be an eligible teacher by one of the schools’ authority. But, still I don’t know whether I have the qualities of a good teacher. In the previous schools too, the students and concerned schools’ family admired my services and in two of the schools I was designated principal and vice-principal respectively. What I knew more than other was perhaps, fluency in English and a few rules on grammar.

I rented a room in a big house and started my scholastic endeavours as usual. My room in such a big house often seemed dolorous to my friends and visiting relatives as it had scattered books and newspapers in an abundance for which they had hoped for television, computer set and every item of physical luxury. Wherever I go, with me I take the photos of Laxmi Prasadh Devkota, Narayan Gopal and William Shakespeare ready to be walled with a token of couplet tribute offered as homage at the end of each photo. Some of my friends said that these photos had saddened them most and complained that certain modern erotic posters should immediately replace them.

My wife, the supporter of my thoughts, was not even budged by the eye-catching atmosphere of Kathmandu. She easily got adjusted with what she had and never put on any demand for this and that thing having had her age of hopes and desires. I secretly observed her untold patience against the dire dearth that seemed every now and then to meet the challenges of the futurity. Instead, she always encouraged me to write from the day we got united into the single cord and instigated upon what I write. The spacious patience-room in females is really immeasurable.

Besides school hours, I visited in the vicinity and gained faith and popularity from the parents and friends. I respect my work as service to God and I always worked wholeheartedly and sincerely having hoped my services would add a scanty help in broadening the infant eyes. I didn’t fall back to suggest the school’s authority against the mismanagement and misguidance of the children as I see them smiling gently tomorrow by today’s affection and truthfulness. As a result in some cases, I proved to be an apple of discord to some of my good colleagues.

During one of such visits, the parents of class-three student requested me for home tuition. I surprised what use education in schools having paid high school fees and begetting low standard of education in the students! They too informed me to keep their child engaged in reading and writing before and after school hours besides Saturdays. I thought they wanted to shape their tender child into a bookworm rather than tomorrow’s an able progeny. The nature and its beauty, friends and play and fresh air for him seemed unmade. The other thing they made us (me and my student) promise was use of English language during teaching and private conversation. I wondered what about child’s interest of his mother tongue, which helps him reveal his identity as a Nepali!

My protest, when failed, I asked about them (parents) and found out that they liked to be called as ‘modern educated parents’. They said they had no time and had appointed me. They were ready to pay any amount in return as tuition fee and it was worth clear through their speech that they wanted their child to think in English too. Why are today’s children deprived of using their mother tongue on whom the entire nation’s and his own identity is to be shouldered tomorrow?
One day, when I heard him sob bitterly, I gently asked him what the matter was about. He replied, ‘I am not taught my mother tongue by my parents that I like to learn.’ As if mentally scared he too disclosed that his friends knew their mother tongue and he knew only Nepali and English, one language less than his friends. Is mother tongue not the axiomatic right of a child in the family where he or she is born? Are parents justified to see their children crying tomorrow by today’s negligence? The answer to these questions profoundly dwells in today’s so called modern parents.

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