To Catch a Mouse

Carol, Michelle & I were very excited. Armed with bread pieces, cake crumbs and a mouse trap, we were all set to hunt for those irritating rodents that scamper about the house as soon as the lights are out.

Michelle carefully placed some cake crumbs into the trap and set the trap in position on the window-sill. Then, after putting out the lights, the three of us huddled together on the bed in silence with our ears perked up to catch the slightest sound. “I think something’s moving” whispered Carol, staring into the darkness with us straining our eyes to see what she seemed to be seeing. Suddenly, ‘Thwack’, the trap clapped shut. We squealed and jumped off the bed and hurried to admire our first, unfortunate victim. The little mouse was running around in circles, trying hard to find a way out of its prison.

 Michelle carried the trap and its temporary occupant and rushed outside to transfer him into the open drain across the street. Carol and I followed her and cheered loudly when the mouse slid out of the trap and disappeared into the dark depths of the gutter. Then, after performing a little victory dance of sorts, we returned home and set the trap in position once again.

When the trap clapped shut again, we switched on the lights to find an even tinier mouse caught with his head in the trap while his body wriggled outside in vain. Carol ‘ooohed’ and ‘aaahd’ over him, calling him cute, but she quickly changed her opinion when we suggested she should take him home with her. Soon mouse number two was united with mouse number one.

The trap was set all over again, but for quite some time nothing moved. Carol began to doze off and I was already curled up under the blanket, ready to follow her example. Michelle went up to the trap and peeped into the empty cage and rattled it a little as if that would somehow make a mouse appear inside it. Carol got up and declared she had hunted enough for one night and was off to bed. Michelle followed her sister and I took myself to bed as well.

Lying there in the silent darkness, I could almost feel little beady eyes eyeing me as I tucked myself into bed. I agreed with Carol, two mice in one night was a good haul. Probably tomorrow we’d try again, then the night after...and I fell asleep with my head full of mice, mice & still more mice                     

Peanuts=Monkeys

Ms. Priya joined our school about a year ago. She teaches us English and tells us to ‘on the lights’ when we enter class and shouts at us when we ‘did not got’ our books to class. When she says the word swan, it rhymes with ‘ran’ and she tells us that all answers not written verbatim from the text will be marked wrong (probably because she doesn’t seem to know anything beyond the text herself). And she’s not the only one. You should sit for Mrs. Fonseca’s History class. She drones on and on, reading from the already dull textbooks, and teaches us about all the people of the past. By the time she’s half way through the lesson, we’re all wishing we were dead too. She teaches us about democracy and right to speech, but does not entertain even a single question during class. Mrs. Dixit is even worse. She taught us about ocean currents, and when asked what currents meant, she told us to jump into the ocean and find out for ourselves. She teaches us about the planets by drawing circles in the air and also says that deserts have no rivers. I mentioned the Nile. She said that wasn’t counted as the Nile is Egypt’s gift to us. (???)

If teachers are so nutty, can you imagine what the students will turn out to be? So many of the fresher stock hardly know to speak well, worse still, they barely know their subject matter. Most of them seem to have any inclination to teach. Now, now, don’t go criticizing teachers already. There are many teachers who are absolutely wonderful in every way. But think about it, how interested would you be in spending eight hours a day, teaching five different subjects to 250 students each day, correcting their assignments, grading their test papers, listening to their woes, wiping away their tears, doing some personal counseling with them and tending to each one of them, all of whom have different needs and personalities, and expect each of them to excel somehow or the other. And all that for a monthly salary of Rs.3000/- of which about Rs.40/- are deducted as some tax or the other. Interested?

If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 60 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job. 

Teachers have a salary of only 3/4000 p.m. no health or dental insurance, no pension, no overtime payment and almost no promotion. It seems to be the only field where being too educated is not acceptable; as the government refuses to accept anyone above a 12^th std passed D.Ed to teach students up to class VIII. Graduates & Post Graduates (+B.Ed) are supposedly over qualified for the post. And in any case, which sane person, after having studied so much will accept working for peanuts with absolutely no assurance that the government will make them permanent? Would you, today, join the teaching profession?

Our parents are aware of the problems the teachers are facing, but they refuse to do anything about it, because they don’t think it really affects us kids. Don’t they realize that nothing good can come out of any interaction between a lousy teacher and her students? With more & more teachers like Ms. Priya, Mrs. Fonseca & Mrs.Dixit coming into schools, very soon we children will also begin ‘onning the lights and offing them again’. If the teachers themselves have no interest or motivation, how can we children be interested and motivated?

Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “The school is the last expenditure upon which any country should be willing to economize.” How right he was! The government needs to invest in better infra-structure, better textbooks, teaching aids, a better examination system. It has to accept that only quality teachers will ensure that students have a certain standing and excellence. The government has to invest more in treating teachers better, not just because it’s the fair thing to do, but also because if they’re paying teachers peanuts, all they will produce from the educational institutions are monkeys.