Tag: Schools

Dayananda School contd’

I had been to Dayananda School yesterday as I had wanted to know things first hand.

Located in the foothills of Yelagiri hills ( near the Vainu Pappu Observatory), Kurusilampattu is a writer’s paradise. While clouds kissed the hilltops and created a permanent shield of pleasantness, the school stood majestically at the same time painting a sordid melancholy hue.

The school has Singapore curriculum based teaching for classes upto 8 and later shifts to TN State Matric Board. Special books sourced from a publisher in Mumbai are used to train the children. The school buses, numbering 7, are not operational due to Covid and hence would need Rs 50,000 per bus to become operational once schools are allowed to reopen after COVID.

I don’t want to write anything more on the school except publish some pictures and a short video of my interview with the founder Shri.Saravanan. I leave it to your conscience to help the 927 students realise their dreams.

To sum it up: The school needs a sponsorship of Rs 10,000 per student per year. This would help the school tide over the current salary payment crisis enforced due to COVID. Once schools reopen, parents would start remitting fees and that would help stabilise the situation.

A reader-friend, who had accompanied me , was so taken in by the situation and the works on the ground that he has taken it upon himself to support as many students as possible through his friends’ and office network.

If you know of any other school that provides Singapore curriculum based education upto class 8 in this fee range, I would like to visit that. It is a challenge.

Dayananda School needs help

Pujya Shri Swami Dayanand Saraswati had expressed shock at the lack of good dharmic schools in Tirupattur / Vaniyambadi region and had asked one of his devotees, Shri.Saravanan, to start a school that provided Dharmic values.

Saravanan (42), a bachelor committed to HH Swamiji’s teachings, started the Dayananda Vidyalya at Kurusilampattu, selling off his land holdings and pledging his uncle’s properties. A couple of investors also had advanced Rs 50 lakhs towards this effort.

In addition to  matriculation education, the school also provides regular spiritual classes to the underprivileged children.

The school has 900 students and 27 full time teachers. Due to the current corona issue, Saravanan has run into financial difficulties and needs help. Sensing his difficulties, he is being approached by non-dharmic schools with vested interests to sell the school to them. 

Incidentally, during the approval process for the school, when Saravanan had faced bureaucratic difficulties, Shri. Gurumurthy, Editor – Thuglak, had used his good offices to get approval from the government, without any out of turn payment to the authorities.

Saravanan has a financial plan prepared earlier with the help of Shri. Badri Seshadri ( Kizakku Publishers) who is also in the academic advisory board of the school.  The other donors and well-wishers, who had backed Saravanan’s effort when HH Swamiji was around, are seen to be backing off after HH entered maha samadhi.

Saravanan also provides scholarships to children who can’t afford the meagre fees. 30% of the students either don’t pay any fees due to poverty or are on scholarship that Saravanan provides.

I am coordinating with some friends to help this school now as the COVID situation has worsened the financial situation of Saravanan’s Manam Malarattum Trust that runs the school.

While long term help is being secured, the immediate need is to support the school financially to pay the salaries to the teachers who are conducting online classes to the children. Also note that Saravanan had to downsize the teacher count from 57 to 27 to reduce the cost of operations and it takes Rs 4 lakhs per month for teachers’ salaries alone.

Hence most urgent ask is for emergency funding to pay salaries to the teachers. Bank details are as below. 80G benefit exists for donations.

Name: Manam Malarattum

A/C Number: 902907151

A/C Type: Current

IFSC: IDIB000M184

Bank : Indian Bank,

Branch : Mittur

Please send a mail to manam(.)malarattum(@)gmail(.)com with reference number / screen shot and your name to get your receipts.

The school is here.

Some pictures of the school:

Freedom at school

I recently met two children – twins – who had recently shifted school. They had moved from an extremely strict school to a relatively free school in Chennai.

I asked them whether they were happy in their new school. Both children jumped in joy and said they were extremely happy in the new school. I asked them the reason.

‘I can keep my hair in any fashion- single braid, double, pony tail, anything.’

‘Don’t you have any other reason?’

‘Yes, one more. Teachers don’t scold like what our earlier school teachers did.’

I think the children hit it on the nail. They need freedom- freedom from fear and the freedom to conduct themselves in a manner they deem fit and be happy.

The older school has stupid rules such as below :

  1. Children shall not bring snacks to school.
  2. Leave letters should be given as computer print outs in a standard template.
  3. Parents cannot ask the teachers any questions.
  4. In PTMs, teacher would pronounce the verdict and the parent has to hear. Parents cannot ask any questions even in the PTMs.
  5. Parent cannot contact the teacher in any manner to inquire about the child.
  6. Children would be expelled if any of the above are not adhered.

These are distilled stupidities camouflaged as rules in the guise of instilling discipline.

I am not going to name the schools. But teachers who read this, please note.

The Art of being a fool

The art of being a fool is not necessarily taught in schools. Probably this art might be offered as an elective. But I doubt if that is taught as a core subject. One can major in this art in college by pursuing one of the engineering degrees in any of the thousands of engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu – the southern part of India.

Being a fool is ones’ own prerogative. One can choose to study in such a college and declare to the world that he has acquired the art of being a fool or he can watch a Tamil film and acquire that status in a matter of two hours ( Tamil used to be  a language spoken in the state of Tamil nadu. Now the people there speak a dialect of this language Tamil ).

The sequence of events that form a Tamil movie are evidence themselves to the fact that the audience shall acquire the art of being foolish in no time. I don’t wish to elaborate on the sequences lest I should become one such. The very fact that the audience ( read people at the end of the spectrum of being sane ) throw currency notes at the movie screen and shout at the top of their voice as and when the main protagonist of the film appears on the screen for the first time is reason enough to declare that movie houses are the incubators of lunacy.

That is not all. One can acquire expertise in being foolish by watching a Telugu movie in a much shorter time – say in a matter of thirty minutes to one hour. Telugu movies have the inalienable right to produce Ph.Ds in lunacy. The more I dwell on that language film, more is the likelihood of myself becoming a lunatic without even watching those films once.

Now-a-days Tamil nadu has started to re-gain its position of being the number one state in lunacy just by a stroke of genius – its schools especially that are allowed to mushroom in the Namakkal region of the state. Lunacy is inculcated in the most meticulous fashion in the students that they begin to act like one as soon as they enter those schools. And who better to inculcate into the spirit of lunacy than the elder lunatics ? The result – most number of centums in subjects such as English and Tamil.

Let us suppose there are two “students” who score 490 out of 500 marks. The one that has taken Tamil as the second language would be declared the first rank holder in the state while the other who would probably have taken French or Sanskrit would not even be mentioned about. What is this mentality to be called other than ‘luncay’  for want of a better word ?

Once these lunactic luminaries march out of their asylums, they are automatically shepherded into the the premier asylums called ‘engineering colleges’ about which we have seen in the first paragraph. Any person of an enviable reputation of having a couple of criminal and civil cases against him and a couple of millions in his bank and is close to a politician ( a glorified lunatic ) , is entitled to start a college with strange sounding names that resemble all the permutations and combinations of the English character set.

And what better place than Namakkal to start such schools ? Namakkal is also the hub of the broiler poultry industry. Chicken and eggs from the hatcheries of Namakkal are known all over India and are even exported. I see no difference between the way the chicken are reared for being butchered and the way students are incubated to be butchered of their intellectual abilities in Namakkal schools.

And these schools serve one purpose – kill creativity and diversity. Chicken don’t need to be creative, you see.

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