Indian schools and holidays

When I was in school, years ago, every holiday announcement was greeted with loud cheers and desk thumping, and we would all rush out of the class even almost forgetting our schoolbags.

But after I started working, any sort of holiday (apart from weekend that is), just feels like an annoying inconvenience. Most people would take this as a weirdo syndrome but hear me out here. A holiday means:

1. More work load the day after
2. Unfinished task to worry about
3. Break in the flow
4. Add more

For me, it also means getting my routine messed up with my students. Holidays are in fact a big problem here. Sometimes it feels like they have a holiday every other day! There are the three national holidays: the Independence Day, the Republic Day and Gandhi Jayanti (Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday). Then there are the religious and regional festivals. Also the births and deaths days of important personalities must be observed with a holiday. So far they’ve had: Goru Gobin Singh Jyanthi, Pongal (which goes on for a week here in Andhra Pradesh), Good Friday, Id-e-Milad-un-Nabi, Holi, Ambedkar Jayanti, May Day, Buddha Purnima, and tomorrow is Independence Day. And of course there’s more coming up! The schools even had a “precaution from rain” kinda holiday on Monday!

Out of 365 days, there are 52 Sundays and most Saturdays are holidays too, and over 20-30 days are other holidays, so schools are usually left with only about 240 working days. And with major teacher leaves and absentees, the working days come down even more. Add to that the usual summer end of academic year breaks (about two months long) and the winter break (usually a month), and you begin to wonder if the compulsory school education policy is all a myth.

The authorities should realize that too many holidays are counterproductive. An occasional holiday makes for a refreshing break, but too many of them serve no real purpose and in fact get in the way of the important project of educating our children. It’s time something was done to minimize the number of holidays.

Important occasions still need to be observed, and they should be—that’s part of the education we give to the children. But not working or learning on these days sends out the wrong message. In fact, maybe we could have, instead of a holiday, some other ways of marking the occasion: extra-curricular activities like a ‘literary day,’ or an environment preservation activity, a drive to clean up your locality, or the like. Such activities will practically benefit the students, and not lose precious school time.