Long way to school
Some 140 kids, out of about 7000 students, of the MES Indian School travel to school and back home in extra luxury. They get huge 50-seater air-conditioned and curtained buses, soft cushiony pushback seats, a toilet inside the bus and a whole lot of goodies, like chips, chocolates and sandwiches kept in their bags along with their text books.
And not for nothing do these selected 140 students get the added luxuries, as opposed to the other students, who travel in the near 70 regular rickety school buses that ply in and around the capital.
These 140 kids come to their school in Doha all the way from Dukhan, the other end of the desert peninsula about 110 km away, every day. Of course leaving aside Fridays and Saturdays, the school’s off days.
“It takes over an hour for us to get to school and another hour to get back home. We’d better get these added features in our buses,” said an eleventh standard girl student, who didn’t wish to be named.
She added, she and several other of her fellow students were “ready to swap the apparent luxury, with a school nearby” their homes any given day.
“Other students who travel in the regular school buses keep telling us that we travel in style and wish they would get these kind of buses too, but they don’t understand that we get to sleep just about four or five hours in a day, which affects our health and performance in our studies to a great extent,” she said.
A commerce student, the girl said she woke up every day at about 4am to catch the bus at 4.50 am and got back home after a grueling day at school only at about 3 pm. “After a couple of hours of rest, I’d hit the books, attend two hours’ tuition for math everyday and sleep only at about midnight to wake up four hours later again.”
But these children of Qatar Petroleum (QP) staffers, who work and live in company provided accommodation in Dukhan, the heart of the country’s oil industry, have no other choice.
A town with a population of only 20,000, Dukhan has just one school – the Dukhan English School – that follows the British curriculum, which according to parents does not suit the Indians.
“I wouldn’t want my kid to be in a British school,” said a father of a 10th standard student of MES. “Eventually, we have to go back to India, and I’d want my boy to be educated in the standard Indian CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) form.”
He said his son, though an “above average” student, could perform a lot better had he not been wasting two hours traveling to and from school every day. “And it’s never just two hours that are wasted. After traveling so much, the kid gets tired. So we’re talking about two or three hours of relaxing to get fresh to start studying,” the father added.
There are four of these private luxury buses – two for the girls and two for the boys - provided not by the school but by QP free of cost for the 140 students of MES.
But Srinivasan, the driver of one of the buses, informed that the 140 MES students weren’t the only ones coming to Doha to study.
“A total of 12 buses (including the four for MES) help commute as many as about 400 students from Dukhan to Doha and back,” he said. “There are a few students from Ideal Indian School, a few from the Jordanian School, Syrian School, Pakistan Education Centre (PEC) etc. But the maximum number of students are from MES.”
MES Indian School, one of the biggest schools in the country, has about 70 of its own buses, which are availed by about 5000 of the 7000 students.
The farthest an MES school bus goes is Al Khor, said Ravindran, the school’s transport in charge.
“We’ve never really have had to have school buses for Dukhan or Umm Said,” he told Gulf Times. “They have always been provided by companies like QP or KAMCO as a facility for their staffers’ children.”
Fidda, a Pakistani driver of one of the four luxury buses, complaining how low his salary was – “just QR800 a month” – to drive such a huge bus across the country five days a week, with added responsibility of the safety of the children, said, “Several times while traveling back there have been break downs, mostly a flat tyre.”
“We have to wait at least an hour or two with the children for another bus to arrive all the way from Dukhan,” he said.
But Parvati Venugopal, a 12th standard science student, who’s been in MES for 12 years now, has become “totally used to” the grueling two-hour journey to school and back home.
“Ever since I was a kid this was my routine. It’s become part of my system probably,” she said. “I’d probably find it weird now if I had to travel just 15 minutes or half an hour to get to school,” she laughed.
Parvati wakes up at 4am to take the 4.50am bus and utilizes the one hour traveling time to school studying. “Sure, my bus-mates think I’m a geek, who’s always studying, but Science is a tough stream,” she said.
On her way back from school, she said she preferred to use that one hour to relax, sometimes even take a quick nap, so that she’d be ready and fresh to hit the books as soon as she got home.
Paravati, who takes tuitions for chemistry for an hour a day, studies till about midnight before hitting the sack.
“Playtime? What playtime,” she reacts. “TV? What TV? I’m doing science, and my school is a 110 km away!”
Due of the tight daily routine of Parvati and her younger brother Prashant, who studies in the 6th standard, certainly the parents have an early start as well.
“When the children wake up, my wife and I obviously have to wake up as well to prepare their breakfast, get them ready for school,” said TC Venugopal, Parvati and Prashant’s father.
While the mother, a housewife, makes sure that Prashant goes to sleep at 9.30 pm “sharp” after an hour of television, she stays awake till Paravti is studying just to see if she might need anything, “like milk, or some snacks, or maybe just some pep talk.”
Clearly the rules of Dr. James B Mass, America’s top sleep educator, who gave a lecture in Doha last month about students needing at least nine hours of sleep to perform to the best of their ability, don’t apply to Parvati and the other near-400 students that travel 110 km to get to school everyday.
But school councilor, Sheriffa Raisy said students should “stop making the long journey to school and back home an excuse for bad performance and accept the facts.”
“The fact is that we can’t build a school in Dukhan overnight. The fact is that they have to travel the distance. And it’s a fact that they cannot be left out as exceptions if they are not performing well in school just because of how far they stay. At school, we can’t be biased to a few students,” she said.
Raisy said she got “many students” who lived far away coming to her “almost crying that they can’t manage their time properly.”
“I understand their problem. I sympathise with them, but they just have to accept reality. So I try and motivate them,” she said. “They need to be self assertive. They need to do some self-talk. They need to figure out their plus points and the negative points, and just work towards it without even thinking the distance is an issue.”
And not for nothing do these selected 140 students get the added luxuries, as opposed to the other students, who travel in the near 70 regular rickety school buses that ply in and around the capital.
These 140 kids come to their school in Doha all the way from Dukhan, the other end of the desert peninsula about 110 km away, every day. Of course leaving aside Fridays and Saturdays, the school’s off days.
“It takes over an hour for us to get to school and another hour to get back home. We’d better get these added features in our buses,” said an eleventh standard girl student, who didn’t wish to be named.
She added, she and several other of her fellow students were “ready to swap the apparent luxury, with a school nearby” their homes any given day.
“Other students who travel in the regular school buses keep telling us that we travel in style and wish they would get these kind of buses too, but they don’t understand that we get to sleep just about four or five hours in a day, which affects our health and performance in our studies to a great extent,” she said.
A commerce student, the girl said she woke up every day at about 4am to catch the bus at 4.50 am and got back home after a grueling day at school only at about 3 pm. “After a couple of hours of rest, I’d hit the books, attend two hours’ tuition for math everyday and sleep only at about midnight to wake up four hours later again.”
But these children of Qatar Petroleum (QP) staffers, who work and live in company provided accommodation in Dukhan, the heart of the country’s oil industry, have no other choice.
A town with a population of only 20,000, Dukhan has just one school – the Dukhan English School – that follows the British curriculum, which according to parents does not suit the Indians.
“I wouldn’t want my kid to be in a British school,” said a father of a 10th standard student of MES. “Eventually, we have to go back to India, and I’d want my boy to be educated in the standard Indian CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) form.”
He said his son, though an “above average” student, could perform a lot better had he not been wasting two hours traveling to and from school every day. “And it’s never just two hours that are wasted. After traveling so much, the kid gets tired. So we’re talking about two or three hours of relaxing to get fresh to start studying,” the father added.
There are four of these private luxury buses – two for the girls and two for the boys - provided not by the school but by QP free of cost for the 140 students of MES.
But Srinivasan, the driver of one of the buses, informed that the 140 MES students weren’t the only ones coming to Doha to study.
“A total of 12 buses (including the four for MES) help commute as many as about 400 students from Dukhan to Doha and back,” he said. “There are a few students from Ideal Indian School, a few from the Jordanian School, Syrian School, Pakistan Education Centre (PEC) etc. But the maximum number of students are from MES.”
MES Indian School, one of the biggest schools in the country, has about 70 of its own buses, which are availed by about 5000 of the 7000 students.
The farthest an MES school bus goes is Al Khor, said Ravindran, the school’s transport in charge.
“We’ve never really have had to have school buses for Dukhan or Umm Said,” he told Gulf Times. “They have always been provided by companies like QP or KAMCO as a facility for their staffers’ children.”
Fidda, a Pakistani driver of one of the four luxury buses, complaining how low his salary was – “just QR800 a month” – to drive such a huge bus across the country five days a week, with added responsibility of the safety of the children, said, “Several times while traveling back there have been break downs, mostly a flat tyre.”
“We have to wait at least an hour or two with the children for another bus to arrive all the way from Dukhan,” he said.
But Parvati Venugopal, a 12th standard science student, who’s been in MES for 12 years now, has become “totally used to” the grueling two-hour journey to school and back home.
“Ever since I was a kid this was my routine. It’s become part of my system probably,” she said. “I’d probably find it weird now if I had to travel just 15 minutes or half an hour to get to school,” she laughed.
Parvati wakes up at 4am to take the 4.50am bus and utilizes the one hour traveling time to school studying. “Sure, my bus-mates think I’m a geek, who’s always studying, but Science is a tough stream,” she said.
On her way back from school, she said she preferred to use that one hour to relax, sometimes even take a quick nap, so that she’d be ready and fresh to hit the books as soon as she got home.
Paravati, who takes tuitions for chemistry for an hour a day, studies till about midnight before hitting the sack.
“Playtime? What playtime,” she reacts. “TV? What TV? I’m doing science, and my school is a 110 km away!”
Due of the tight daily routine of Parvati and her younger brother Prashant, who studies in the 6th standard, certainly the parents have an early start as well.
“When the children wake up, my wife and I obviously have to wake up as well to prepare their breakfast, get them ready for school,” said TC Venugopal, Parvati and Prashant’s father.
While the mother, a housewife, makes sure that Prashant goes to sleep at 9.30 pm “sharp” after an hour of television, she stays awake till Paravti is studying just to see if she might need anything, “like milk, or some snacks, or maybe just some pep talk.”
Clearly the rules of Dr. James B Mass, America’s top sleep educator, who gave a lecture in Doha last month about students needing at least nine hours of sleep to perform to the best of their ability, don’t apply to Parvati and the other near-400 students that travel 110 km to get to school everyday.
But school councilor, Sheriffa Raisy said students should “stop making the long journey to school and back home an excuse for bad performance and accept the facts.”
“The fact is that we can’t build a school in Dukhan overnight. The fact is that they have to travel the distance. And it’s a fact that they cannot be left out as exceptions if they are not performing well in school just because of how far they stay. At school, we can’t be biased to a few students,” she said.
Raisy said she got “many students” who lived far away coming to her “almost crying that they can’t manage their time properly.”
“I understand their problem. I sympathise with them, but they just have to accept reality. So I try and motivate them,” she said. “They need to be self assertive. They need to do some self-talk. They need to figure out their plus points and the negative points, and just work towards it without even thinking the distance is an issue.”
posted by Once the Conman at 10:35 AM
1 Comments:
Awww 5 hours sleep for kids is not good...
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