28^th March, 2012

Grade Six, White-Islamiat assessment, fourth checkpoint-, B*****h**** School system

(Splash bench on the Sixes floor)

After the exam when I took, or more precisely, snatched Javeria’s paper she started crying. All the girls gathered around her, giving me snappy looks. What else was I supposed to do? All I had been hearing was rules-this and rules-that for a month. Taking her paper with everybody else at the fixed time was apparently the proper way of following the rules. I left the class after patting her on the cheek and wheedling her that she’d already filled two sheets while others hadn’t even used-up half of their first.

Right outside the classroom, I ran into my sister and told her the situation. “Oh you shouldn’t have taken her paper. Just give it back and let her complete it.”

“What about the other students I took it from. They’ll want it back too.”

“Javeria’s an intelligent girl. Give it back to her only. Call her out of the class or something to complete her paper,” was my sister’s smart advice.

I was supposed to snatch exam-sheets from everybody else when time was up because they were below average students, while an exception was to be made for the already above average students. In what world does that sound sane? What contorted form of class system is being injected into these children? They’re hardly twelve years of age and they know when to use their tears, with whom to tell a lie and when to shut-the-teacher-up by misbehaving. They are so shockingly conscious of their superiorities and inferiorities and also know how to deploy them in front of a person who’s there to teach them. I remember what a loser I was as compared to them in my sixth grade. Time is bound to change but sadly enough for the coming time we are preparing a generation with the lowest morals and humanity possible. It’s been a month in this school and how these children are being reared up and what capabilities I have seen in them are shocking. There are about 27 students in each section and there are 9 sections in total. What will happen when these roaches crawl out of their nest and spread in the world? I don’t know if I want to survive till their maturity. As I would say to K, “K mai mar jana chahti hoon!!”

The nymphs scare me.