Schools of Thought

A chain of schools is working towards raising children with an understanding of inheriting the 'world's greatest civilisation'

- Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

ABOUT 12 years ago, the day Debshankar Santra turned four years, four months and four days old, his school, Saraswati Shishu Mandir at Sepoy Bazar area in Midnapore town of West Bengal, organised a hatey khowri or aksharavyasam—a Hindu ceremony marking a child’s formal entry to education—with a yajna at the school premises. His parents, Durgaprasad and Banashree were present. After the yajna, the priest initiated him to learn the alphabet, starting with OM.

Banashree and Durgaprasad were impressed and relieved. A school that makes such elaborate arrangements for a Hindu household ceremony like hatey khowri could be trusted with taking care of the child, they thought.

Now that Debshankar has been jointly ranked seventh in the state in the Madhyamik Pariksha— the secondary exam of the state board— Banashree is happy that their first impressions of the school were not wrong.

They had enrolled Debshankar in the school in the pre-primary section called Arun for children above three years of age. The school taught him basic skills like running, jumping and pouring water from a bottle. After the pre-primary Arun and Uday sections, he studied there till class IV. Then they enrolled him in class V at the Saraswati Vidya Mandir, the secondary section run by the same management in the Jamunabali area a few km away. Now, despite the fact that his results give him a chance to enroll in a more reputed school for class XI, Debshankar says he is going to continue here for his higher secondary education.