Chirec Public School

The HPS, way back in the '70s, had a swimming pool. Kids playing hooky from class would duck into the pool to play football. The pool never had any water, you see, and the deep-side protected the juvenile criminals from the sweeping eyes of Big Brothers.

Chirec, unlike HPS, has a swimming pool that actually has water. And like every silver lining, it has a cloud. The pool, unfortunately and unjustifiably, has given the school a harder rap than it deserves.

After a peripatetic past, Chirec has settled in a 5-acre campus in Kondapur. The large, functional concrete buildings serve notice that the school has finally dropped anchor. Physically, at least, though it still lights a candle in the window for alternative education.

A school that advertises Mark Twain's remarks on education would do well to remember that Huckleberry Finn was banned from school libraries for a long, long while in his home country. The reasons are not hard to find. Encouraging individuality on the part of every child is good for parents who have a limted brood. But is hell for a school that is daily home to several hundred argumentative, lively, energy-packed, curious kids.

It's natural, therefore, for the school to resort to discipline. It's a great teacher indeed who never raises his/her voice. Chirec's teachers are as capable as those in several other schools, but most of them are in this profession for a profession. Not to answer a calling. This is fine. Most teachers, indeed most humans, are that way.

But given this, it is a little hard to fulfil the promises Chirec makes of not being a conventional school, of being a CHIldren's RECreation center.

Cast away the philosophy and get down to brass tacks, and you will find the real School. And that's not such a bad thing at all. Anchored to the CBSE curriculum, kids go through routines that well off kids go through the country over. The facilities are good though not in the 5-star class that the more expensive schools offer. Tennis and swimming set it apart from the smaller schools, while regular "middle-class" activities maintain the link.

Buses roll out across the city and carry the kids past the Botanical Gardens at Kondapur, to assemble within the sizeable campus. Assembly, with different daily themes, and the kids are off to class. The school is growing in population, and class sizes tend to get larger than the advertised 25. The pre-primary is in Jubilee Hills, and the school works 6 days a week for the higher grades.

Making slightly heavy weather of shrugging off its education-should-be-recreation past and fitting into the rigors of the daily struggle has taken some time. As of now, it seems, the school has firmly set its sights on becoming a "mainstream" body. A mathematics laboratory and a home science laboratory are in addition to the regular facilities that all mainstream schools have.

This is not a school for the alternative-minded. It's not a school for the international-minded. It's not a school for the super-rich. It's not a school for the financially challenged. The list of what this school is not, can run on for a few pages.

What this school is, on the other hand, is firmly middle class, with all the accompanying values, pressures and problems. You could do a lot worse.