Schools or Prisons?

Schools will no longer be schools. CCTV cameras and watchmen will make the children think of the new Melrose Prison built at a cost of more than 2 billion rupees. The children will no longer be students. They were already imprisoned within straitjacketed syllabuses, first at the level of the CPE, then SC and HSC.                                                  
How can we expect them not to rebel against a system that reduces them to robots and does not inculcate in them the skills and values necessary to lead a full life, socially and economically?  
The Minister of Education, in his wisdom, is treating the symptoms instead of looking at the causes affecting  the reactions of children to the pressures of society and to the inappropriate curricula which “do not provide them with the ability to learn what they need to in whatever circumstances they find themselves”.
The Guardian newspaper, in its edition of 17 july last, has reported how a letter from the Head Teacher of a primary school in Lancashire, UK, to all its pupils, whilst praising them for their efforts in the Key Stage 2 tests, also told them that the people who set these tests “do not know that you can play a musical instrument or that you can dance or paint a picture. They do not know that your friends count on you to be there for them or that your laughter can brighten the dreariest day”.
In short the Headteacher was pointing her finger at what was missing in the education of the children. The letter “captured the public imagination” after it was posted on Twitter. The school’s motto is “learn to love and love to learn”. What we are thrusting on our children in the name of education is much worse than what the Lancashire Headteacher pointed out in her letter. Are we therefore surprised that the children rebel in the way they do against a system that wants to transform them  into robots and kill their creativity and joie de vivre?
A week earlier the French newspaper Libération commented on reports about inequalities in the French education system. “Des études menées entre autres par l’Education Nationale montrent que l’écart se creuse entre académies et que, loin de les corriger, le système accentue les disparités”. Académies in France and its overseas territories are Regional Education Authorities like our ‘Zones’. But our Zones are much smaller. We are therefore in a much better position to reduce inequalities through positive discrimination at school, such as a hot breakfast for those children who would otherwise start their school day on an empty stomach.
Coming back to the curriculum it is important for the school to cater for the all-round development of the child and NOT to brand them as failures as soon as they step into the primary school. It is in the interest of all of us to encourage all our children to grow up into healthy, happy and useful adults, and not in a prison like environment.