Naseer Ahmad Wani
School plays a significant role in the socialisation process of a child. It acts as a bridge between family and society. Nurturing good thoughts, inculcating good values in students is among the prime functions of the schooling. Cleanliness of body, clothes, and surroundings as a value/habit is as old as human society itself. Cleanliness as an ideal and most desirable value/practice in schools/societies finds its importance on the walls of the classrooms, themes in the competitions, morning assemblies and aims of billion budgeted government schemes. Unfortunately, the Government Primary and Middle schools, nurturing spaces for more than half of the student population of our society are Schools without Sweepers. Imagine for a moment, how would a hospital function without sweepers, despite having all other staff and facilities available? As this is the fact that hospitals need the presence of sweepers prior to the doctors. The same is true for all other institutions. So how can schools function without sweepers, where hundreds of students spent six hours a day? Two kids at home create a mess. And in little spaces of schools with hundreds of kids with increasing usage of junk foods, need for a full time sweeper becomes indispensable.
Presence of a sweeper in a school means practical manifestation of the ideal of cleanliness. Having a sweeper in school is linked with the rights of the children. To keep school clean without a sweeper in school, teachers frame strict prohibitions for the children. Such strict prohibitions at times contradict the Right to Development and Right to Participation, of a child. Chances of involving students in cleaning activities at schools especially girl students get increased without a sweeper in a school. At times, cleaning the staff room and offices of these schools leads to conflict among the staff. Beautification of school is an important feature for attracting the children towards the school. Cleanliness is prior to beautification. Where cleanliness in schools is a dream, how can they think of beautification?
In fact, there is a provision of CPW (Contingent Paid Worker) for sweeping these elementary schools. In most of the Middle schools, CPWs are in place, while less number of primary schools are having CPWs. Most of the CPWs work at the rate of Rs 100 to 200 per month. Local funds of the schools meet out their honorarium of Rs 100 to 200. And there are CPWs, who are paid 500 to 1000 out of the pocket of teachers of the school. In former case, the CPWs have pay roll statement in their respective schools and find place in government records. While in the latter case, their chapter gets closed with the honorarium. What we can expect from a CPW out of Rs 100. Headmasters expect regular duty of the CPW to clean the school and CPW in turn expects higher honorarium and regularisation. This approach creates hostilities between the staff of the school and CPW. CPWs worked for decades in the hope of increasing wages or regularisation. Between their hope and duty of cleaning schools once in a week/fortnight/month, schools have suffered a lot.
Cleanliness and neatness of a school in fact is a vital feature for attracting the children and their parents towards the schools. So school without sweeper is itself one among the reasons for decreasing roll of the govt schools. To understand the difference between the School without Sweeper and School with Sweeper, just enter a private school and government school and see the difference. There is beautiful Kashmiri saying, (Chaed Che Fale Daade Parayshaan) means sparrow is distressed for a grain. Just like a sparrow, in spite of having wings and nest is worried about a grain. The Headmaster of a School without a Sweeper is also distressed about the cleanliness issue, despite, having infrastructure, staff, teaching learning material. As cleanliness is the face of his school. All the stakeholders concerned especially policy framers must be well familiar with the fact that a little hole in a ship sinks the whole ship; similarly, little mistakes in our policies can lead to undesired results.
Author is a school teacher and can be reached at dr.naseerwani11@gmail.com
