<img alt="" src="/imagedata/2010/aug/paro1234.jpg" align="left" border="1" />Some parents are in a tizzy because Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) laws are being changed. (PTA laws were news to me, but then I'm not a parent.) As per the new rules, PTAs will be constituted by selection rather than election. So, parents are worried about puppet PTAs -- an important concern in these days of privatised education. As with many democratic processes, how the PTA works seems to depend greatly on the values of those involved. Some PTAs in unaided schools have apparently instituted a pension for retired teachers. Others complain about how most parents are unwilling to volunteer. Obviously, the latter are not the kind we see obsessing about parenting (spoken in Barbara Cartland breathlessness) -- the kind with surplus income that allows one partner, usually the woman, to be a full-time parent. They send their children to schools and after-school programmes that promise to turn out Spanish-speaking, ballet-dancing, brain-gymming, precious wonders in touch with nature and their inner artiste via new teaching methods and air-conditioned classrooms. These experimental schools are often expensive -- but good air-conditioning and CCTVs don't come cheap. And you need good security to keep the kids in, and other kids out. Frankly, as a child, this sort of scrutiny would have sent me into permanent depression -- I longed at all times to escape everything in the real world of adult anxiety and injustice, and retreat to one of my own making -- but I accept I'm not the ideal these parents and teachers are aspiring to. What is their vision, though? Is it a vision that the Right to Education Act is interfering with, perhaps? I quote from a circular to parents issued this week by Bengaluru's Bethany High School: "Under this Act, all private unaided schools will have to accommodate 25 per cent of their strength of children around the neighbourhood without any screening. This means any child will have to be allowed into school and share the classroom with your child. Eminent psychologists have said that this will be detrimental to the psyche of all children, yours and others...." It goes on to imply that if such children smoke or misbehave with girls, the school can do nothing. <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2010/aug/2908-PAROMITA.jpg" border="0" /> Parents have quickly defended the circular because it's not saying underprivileged children will be ill-behaved but that if they happen to be, the school is not empowered to act against them. The school has piously declared it educates 20 children free. You don't need school (or parents) to teach you that meanings lurk between lines. The school seems to have a problem affording poor children a right to education, has no issue giving it away as charity, because charity keeps the power equation clear. The parents are uncomfortable with the idea of poor kids being in the same class as their kids. They are not bad people. But, their goodness prevents them from articulating exactly why they have this problem. Today, I watched a video of a popular guru dishing out gyaan on parenting -- to be a good parent you just need to stop living a distorted life and be the best according to your ideas. Isn't it cool how he never defined those ideas -- spiritual freedom, baby! I'm not a parent, godperson or even an eminent psychologist, but I guess it'll have to do that I'm a former child: as bad as parents who can't be bothered, are parents who care so preciously about their own little princes and princesses. They really have to think about all kids -- and teach their own kids to do so too. How else are their kids going to be good parents -- or teachers?

Private lives in public places

Some parents are in a tizzy because Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) laws are being changed

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