We had 49 students in our class, not, 15. We had more friends!
We had standards, not, grades.
We were but one class, we did not have 8 divisions.
The teachers knew us, they did not have to hold up our I cards, to talk to us.
We had no I cards, our faces were our identity.
Gurkhaji knew each child's going home schedule, Fernandes bus child, new bus child, BEST bus child, car child etc, we did not have 10 security guards doing the job.
We had school at 10 am to 4 pm, not 7.30 am to 4 pm.
We had throwball and athletics, we did not have fancy extra curricullars.
We had one PT (physical training teacher) , we did not have a fancy team of PE (physical Education) teachers.
We were known by our names, even to the office staff,
On sight the teachers knew our record of pranks, academic excellence or non excellence, they did not have to drag us to office and drag out a file and look us up.
The teacher who taught me in KG also taught my 10 yrs older sister and 10 yrs younger sister in KG, they did not change every semester.
We had terms and not semesters.
We got no summer homework.
We got a holiday in pouring rain, we did not have to show our sincerity by rushing to school in knee deep water.
We played honest to goodness inter school games, arranged by the educational board, in semi playable grounds, we did not have special interschool tournaments organized.
We were atleast once hit by our teachers, and our parents applauded it, instead of coming to school with cavalry and names of politicians.
Our parents could never enter school just for the heck of it, corridor walking parents were not allowed.
We beat each other up and took care of the problem, our parents never heard of any issues.
We did not have fancy restaurants running our canteens, we DID NOT have a canteen.
We had a huge garden to play in, and not a rugged concrete passage.
We had ranks and marks and percentages, we did not have grades and percentiles.
We had 2 tests, 1 terminal exam, 1 Final exam (which decided the status of our promotion to next class) and not TOK, EE, IOC, IA, II, HI, WL, PP, CAS, and many other combinations of the english vowel and consonants.
You see , we went to school too!
