The Memoirs of an Eighty year old- Episode II

Episode: Schooling years – primary school

Listening to the stories of grandpa’s childhood I asked him to tell me about his schooling years. The education system back then wasn’t this competitive or stressful. Grandpa collected his thoughts and began by saying that he doesn’t remember much about his school till his 3rd standard. Being a merit student he was promoted to 4th standard mid- year, which meant he had to leave his classmates behind and go to the next higher class. This he says saddened him as a child but they share such good friendship that most of them are still in contact with each other even after all these years. 

The school he studied was an aided school which had classes up to 7th standard in only Telugu medium. The school building was donated by some rich person from the village and the classes were run by government teachers. When in the final class in the school one teacher advised grandpa’s father to send him to the ZPHS (Zilla Parishad High School) in the village adjacent to theirs for the higher classes. But those High schools had English language as one of the subjects and grandpa was not even taught the basics. So the same teacher whom grandpa considers his mentor selected a handful of bright students and began teaching them English in spare time after the school hours. 

It is because of this man’s selfless hard work and dedication that grandpa says he passed the entrance test and got a seat in the 8th standard in the High school. If the test wasn’t cleared grandpa would have had to either repeat 7th standard again in his local school or get admitted into 6th standard in the High school. 

Grandpa talks about his teacher with much love and respect. He says he can never forget how encouraging and supporting the teacher was. He continues saying that he along with grandmother used to go to his teacher house, take blessings and make sure they were living comfortably, whenever they could make time. The tradition of going for the teacher’s blessings and offering them new clothes was continued by his juniors and other friends as well.