Suman K Sharma
My lasting memory of SRML (Govt Shri Ranbir Multi-Lateral Senior Secondary School, Jammu, to give the venerable institution its full name) is that of a sound knock on my head. The year was 1962 and I was a fresher in the school. A dreamy 13-year old, I was passing before the Principal’s office, when something hit upon my head with the severity of an iron rod. I looked up in shock. It was not a rod but a solid piece of a steel girder hung from a stout branch of the tree that stands there even now like an ageless sentry guarding the head of the institution’s door. In those painful moments I realized that I had banged my head against the school ‘bell’. The offensive girder is gone, its place having been taken by a gong housed in an eye-catching stand. But half-a-century across, the memory of that knock still rings true in my head like a stern rebuke from an elder: do not mix day-dreaming and walking.
There are other memories too. Of Mr Ram Lal Bhargotra being replaced by Pt Tej Ram Khajuria as the school principal. Mr Bhargotra had thick hair; Pt Khajuria’s head was as bare as one’s soul before God. There was the drawing master, the tall and scrawny, Mr Moti Ram, who never let go of any opportunity to use his cane or a choice Mirpuri expletive for the smallest error in outlining a ‘block’ letter; or a reticent Mr Raina, who taught us English and did not see anything amiss while dictating this opening sentence of a model essay on Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru: “Nehru is India and India is Nehru…”. Those were the days when the country was passing through difficult times. We faced a losing war with China, not to say large scale hunger and mal-nourishment. During the recess at the school, patriotic songs such as ‘hum laye hain toofan se kashti nikaal ke/Is desh ko rakhna mere baccho sambhaal ke’ were played on the school’s pa system and we lined up before the tuck-shop with big tumblers in our hands for warm and sugary dose of powder-milk-in-water resourced from foreign donors. The rolly polly man at the tuck shop made our wait interesting by conjuring a little water-mill out of an onion (or was it a potato?) and some reeds. As the water flowed out of the drain, the sunflower stuck at the top of the clever device went round and round and round….
Old schools are like mothers grown old. You don’t fear them any more, you only want to be with them, if only the Time’s irreversible turnings could allow you. SRML is much older than the living memory goes. The school was founded by Maharaja Ranbir Singh in 1872, but it was his successor, Maharaja Pratap Singh, who inaugurated it eight years later with the name – you guess – ‘Jammu Collegiate School’. The school acquired its present name much later. The tag of ‘Multi-lateral’ has long outlived its meaning in that the school runs purely on academic lines and no more conducts classes for artisans.
The planners of yesteryears couldn’t have chosen a better site for the school: located at the brink of the old city, it is far from its din, yet accessible enough. The city’s landmarks, the Ranbireshwar Temple, the Hari Singh Zenana Park and the Parade Ground are close by. The prime location gave the school premises many opportunities to be of use to the state for purposes other than education. The information department ran from its Commerce Block for over a decade. The Tennis Hall played host to the fledgling Radio Kashmir Jammu for fifteen years before it was shifted to its own building near the Mubarak Mandi. At one point of time, the block meant for the 9th and 10th grades served as an Army Base Camp.
In fact, the three-tier school campus with play grounds, gardens and imposing structures is big enough to house a brigade, if not an army division. The school building itself is among the grandest public utility buildings. And it is no empty boast. In some aspects, it looks grander even than the GGM Science College, which is of equal vintage. Among its alumni, SRML School can rightly boast of personages like Justice AS Anand, Chief Justice of India from 1998-2001, an ex-Army Chief (General NC Vij), a Padmashree, Sh RK Shastri, a singer of the stature of Kundan Lal Sehgal and at least four IAS officers. That would not have been possible if the institution did not have a complement of qualified and dedicated teachers and the requisite infrastructure of well equipped labs, class rooms, a library and of course the right kind of ambience that challenged and inspired young minds to outdo their best.
Sadly though, all this is changing fast, and for the worse. Beneath the white and red paint, there are signs of decay, a grandma hiding her age under an overdone makeup. Academically, there is an imbalance in student enrolment. There are about 2500 students on the school roles. But the number of students at the entry level of 9th grade is far less than the students in 11th and 12th grades, rues the soft-spoken Principal, Mr Sudan.
Is it because the choosy parents of the 9th graders think that the school is not good enough for their wards? We come face to face with a paradox here. Compared to a private school, government-run schools like the SRML are far cheaper and much more capable in terms of staff, equipment and resources than private schools to give better results. But parents generally prefer to let their wards study in private schools till the youngsters feel the heat of the secondary classes. Public and private schools of repute would not allow low-scoring students to pick up high-end subjects at plus 2 level and then the defeated parents have perforce to turn to sarkari schools. That perhaps explains why SRML has more students in plus-2 classes than in its IX and X grades.
Apparently, the imbalance in class strength takes a heavy toll of the school’s resources. Because a large number of the students in plus-two classes are new entrants to the school, the teachers are hard put to prepare them for the exams. It would not be wrong to say that the extra effort and time the teachers have to devote to the higher classes is at the expense of the feeder grades of ninth and tenth, with adverse consequences for the junior classes. And so the vicious circle goes on.
But what if the SRML starts taking only the brighter of the students to its 9th grade? Let this august institution be a centre of excellence in academics, and let all the 8th-pass students – girls included – compete for admission at the entry level of 9th grade. Alternatively, the school authorities may consider prescribing cut off percentages for admission to the 9th and the higher grades. Such steps would be in line with the concept of ‘Golden’ sections for each grade in which only the brighter of the students are admitted and focused upon. The school has been following the practice for more than two generations.
Something needs to be done to restore SRML to its pristine glory. And fast.
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