A Principal with a passion for excellence in school education
J.V. Yakhmi
During the English language class in my 11th standard, the Principal of our school, Mr. Madan Gopal Chopra (MGC), suddenly broke off to tell us what is Raga Bhairavi in Indian classical music. He started singing, “Nandlal, Gopal, Dayal Prabhu….”. This was not unexpected from him, since he had a passion to ensure that his students learn about every aspect of education, as far as possible. Though himself a B.A., B.T. and M.A. both in History and in Political Science, he was a consummate teacher of English, and strived to impart to us the best in grammar, pronunciation and spellings, beside the content of prose or verse. I recall he once taught our class what are the syllables from which the words are composed. Using the word ‘interest’ as an example, he didn’t proceed further till each student in our class of about 60 could spell and pronounce it, to his satisfaction. Mind you, this was in rural Punjab in the year 1961.
Starting initially as a teacher in 1930 in our boys’ school, known as A.S. High School, at Khanna, he became its Headmaster in 1949, a post that he held for 13 years. Our school was upgraded to the Higher Secondary system in 1958, and with the passing out of its first batch in 1961, MGC was appointed the Principal of A.S. Higher Secondary School, which by then was catering to nearly 2500 students, availing of education from standard 5th to 11th, each of which was divided into six sections. However, most of us kept referring to him as ‘Headmaster’, by force of habit. He was passionate about excellence in the quality and completeness of education provided. It was like a life-time mission for him, with which he lived every year of his life.
The school building with a Heritage red-stone structure stood out on the famous G.T. Road, and attracted students from within a radius of about 10 kms, most of whom walked on foot, but hundreds came on bicycles, too (there was a large bicycle shed in a corner of the school). Hardly anyone had a wrist-watch those days, hence to remind them of the approaching school time, a heavy bronze bell was rung a few times some minutes before the school started. The bell is still there on top of the building, but is no longer rung. The heavy bell had a wheel attached, around which a thick rope was wound with one end hanging to the ground floor, where it was fun to pull it, in our days. There was an auditorium, named Dayanand Hall, at the center, with a stage, but no seats. Schoolboys sat on floor to watch events, like the science show by Hans Raj ‘Wireless’ enjoyed by me and my classmates. The auditorium and its two smaller side-halls came handy to conduct written exams. Hanging on one wall of the auditorium are wooden boards with the name of merit-list holders’ year-wise.
There was a large ground on the back of the main building where the assembly of the whole school — all students and about 70 teachers, was held ceremoniously, every morning, for prayers and for announcements. Students were required to come to the prayer ground, in an orderly manner, immediately after keeping their school bags in their respective class-rooms. Students of each Section, comprising about 60 boys, sat in two adjacent rows, at the space allotted. It was the job of the Monitor to ensure compliance by his Section. The assembly session started with the chanting of a ‘shloka’ by a Sanskrit teacher, Mr. Vasudev, on the microphone. ‘Om Vishwani Dev Savitra’ was his pet, but at times he would shift to other shlokas like the Gayatri Mantra. Next person to speak was, invariably, Principal Chopra beginning always with the words, “Pyare Vidyaarthio” (Dear Students!), before making any policy announcements. At the end, the PT teachers supervised the dispersal of all students in sequence by Class, and by Section, who walked back to their class-rooms to the rhythm of the beats of a large drum (Dagga).
Our school had a hostel, too, though it accommodated only a limited number of students in just a few rooms. It was supervised by a hostel warden, who lived in residential quarters, on site.
Principal Chopra made sure that our school didn’t lack in any facility, especially after it got upgraded from High School matriculation system to Higher Secondary system in 1958, under which electives were to be taken, either medical or non-medical, equivalent to Pre-university classes in some colleges. That needed labs for P, C and B. The Physics lab was constructed new. Biology was offered by fewer students, so a corner room was converted into a Bio-lab with facilities for dissections of frogs, etc.
Even though our batch entering the 9th standard in 1959 was just the second one to enter the Higher Secondary education stream, we already had an upgraded Chemistry lab. The LPG had not arrived during that era. Therefore, to avoid the use of low-efficiency spirit lamps for the generation of small flames for chemistry experiments, a gas cracker plant was installed just outside this lab, so that piped gas could be brought direct to the taps of Bunsen burners to perform chemical reactions in heated test-tubes held by clamps. We had facilities for gravimetry and for volumetric analysis. And we were among very few schools to provide facilities for salt analysis to guess the elements and formula of a given salt, by going stepwise through the prescribed six Tables of Analysis to arrive at the final formula.
We not only had excellent science labs, but also best facilities for sports. We had a tennis court and a basketball ground, both cemented. We also had a volleyball court and an in-door badminton court. Being very ambitious, Principal Chopra wanted the school to have an open-air stadium with facilities for athletics, a regular track for races, and a hockey ground, etc. In 1958, a large parcel of land was acquired for this, not far from the school premises, and thereafter, all track and field sports were conducted there. Adjacent to this open-air stadium, another piece of land was bought by the school in 1962 to build a swimming pool, an idea close to the heart of Principal Chopra. In a rush, a structure was built with plain walls rising about 10 feet high on all sides, without seeking any professional architectural advice. As soon as water was pumped in, a portion of one of its walls collapsed since the structure couldn’t hold the weight of the vast amount of water. But never to give up, MGC got the necessary load-bearing improvements done quickly and presto, the school had a swimming pool, too. There was an excellent art-room in our school with several paintings done by the Art teachers to inspire the students.
The school had trees, flower plants and lawns. A green triangle welcomed a visitor entering the school through its gate on Samrala Road. Alas, a substantial part of the school lawns and open spaces were sacrificed to construct A.S. Public School in 1971 (re-named later after Madan Gopal Chopra) - a school within a school, in the premises of the parent A.S. Senior Secondary School. Having known MGC for several years, I cannot bring myself to think that the idea to do so was approved by him, because he was a man who never had an agenda for expensive education and school-buses, which the students from the lower strata would not afford.
About 15 minutes before the school time, MGC would stand every morning at a spot near his office to watch the students coming to school, in groups. At times, he would ask one of them, at random, to show if his nails had been cut, to build a habit of personal hygiene among them.
A cool thing at our school was to go for the PT period in hot summer! This was because PT was conducted under the cool shades of 4–5 Jamun (Indian blackberry) trees. Ripened black jamun-fruits would fall over (a la Newton’s apple!), or in between, the rows of the students performing exercises. After a gap of about 60 years, I made a round of the school in 2017, and was thrilled to find the Jamun trees still standing, where they were, and even the school bell, ringing of which heralded each period was still there – a piece of an iron girder hanging from a hook, which was hit by a hammer by the inimitable Padam Chand, the peon. The cracker unit just outside the window of the Chemistry lab, pointed out by me earlier was also there, though I was not sure if it worked after 46 years.
Library of the school was located at mezzanine floor on one side of the high ceiling Dayanand Hall. It was approached using the rear stair-case. Many hours of my leisured reading were spent there, including in glossing over Chandamama, or looking at the cartoon Dhabooji. We students could get books issued, too, though the collection of books was not huge. I once went to the chamber of MGC to complain why I could not get the book ‘Torch-bearers of Freedom’ issued to me, and why it is repeatedly issued to the same student of our final-year class? MGC could see the chagrin writ large on my face in response to which he found a quick solution. He got up and pulled out a book from the large collection of books stacked up on the shelves of the racks lining the walls of his room. He gave it to me stating that the book was as good as the one that I was complaining about.
Our school had just two sources of funds: fees paid by the pupils and donations from the local businessmen and industrialists. The funds collected by way of fees faced an archaic limitation, a self-imposed rule which stated that when boys from the same family were students, concurrently, then only the eldest brother would pay full fee, and each of his younger siblings would be charged only half-fee. This was the forerunner of a business-like discount offered by shopping malls these days, viz. pay full price for one, then 50% discount for all the similar items bought. But this ate into the fee collections, and vastly reduced the capacity of the school to provide fee-waivers for any poor deserving candidates, which were duly sanctioned by a committee of teachers appointed by MGC, under approval of the school Management. I recall that when in 7th standard, I, too had applied for a fee-waiver, since my father had lost his job due to prolonged sickness and we were hard up. While presenting my case before the fee-waiver committee, I (then all of 11 years of age), was asked “how many brothers you have”, to which my reply was NONE, since I was the only child of my parents. This brought a quick rejection of my case, with the committee commenting, ‘why can’t the parents pay fees for just one child?’. Mind you, this was in 1957, years before the Family Planning movement was ushered in India, and this was the time when a bachelor employee paid more income tax than a married employee, and the latter paid more than those who also had children, to ‘subsidize’ the running of families. Angered by the rejection of fee-waiver in my case, a local politician, Mr. Mohan Lal Singhi, met MGC and questioned him on the logic of providing half-fee waivers to all the younger brothers of a student on rolls, even when their father was a rich businessman, and denying a fee-waiver to me, whose family had no source of income. MGC could see through the fallacy of the idea and intervened, so that I was paid half-fee waiver for the whole year from the Poor Boys’ Fund, maintained by the school. It was an equivalent of the present-day ‘crowdfunding’, and was based on the voluntary donations in the form of coins collected by every monitor from the boys of his Section just before the dispersal of the Saturday morning assembly of our school.
It was not common those days for privately-run schools to get regular financial grants from the state government. Money often fell short. One modus operandi adopted in 1950s and 1960s by our school, when in dire straits, was to send a group of about 4 - 5 very elderly teachers to the local market. The shopkeepers would stand up in respect seeing some of their former teachers and would gladly pay the amount in charity as desired by the group of teachers who would give each donor a receipt for the same, on the spot. The group of teachers would end the day in bolstering the school finances by a few thousands of rupees, a handsome amount then.
Our school had students from all the financial strata of the society, but the majority belonged to lower middle class or poor families. Hence, no school dress was specified, lest it put an unwarranted financial load on poor parents. I recall most boys, including I, wore pajamas stitched from striped cotton cloth, and a long flowing shirt to school. A few wore white pajamas, too, upkeep of which required more effort, and expense. Very few students came wearing trousers or proper shoes to school. In fact, chappals were the common footwear. MGC was disturbed at this, rightly so, but he didn’t impose a school uniform or wearing of shoes since that would have upset the budget of poor parents. In 1958, Bata introduced inexpensive brown canvas shoes. MGC was quick in making a deal with the local Bata outlet that they would sell those shoes at a large discount, charging only Rs. 2 per pair to any student from our school, who came to buy. But even those canvas shoes fell within the purchasing power of not more than half of the students.
The school had a dispensary, where first-aid was given. A local doctor, Dr. R.L. Vaid, came for about two hours daily to attend to any sick boys. A compounder sat all day, and could provide standard remedies for stomach ache or sore throat, etc. I recall him keeping a few large glass jars filled with solutions, each jar numbered. Our favorite concoction was a mixture of № 26 and № 29, a digestive mixture (called Chhabbee Unnattee in Punjabi) for curing upset stomachs. Getting a throat paint for sore throats was also popular, and one just had to ask for it. Called a ‘dakka’ in local language, it was essentially a thin stick of bamboo, with a cotton swab wrapped around one end, which was dipped in glycerin and applied to soothe a sore throat.
During the period 2012–2015, I served as the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Education Society (DAE) which runs 31 schools and Junior Colleges across India, on the rolls of which are about 28,000 students and over 1400 teaching staff. We felt that some of our very talented teachers, too, could not make it to the list of the winners of National awards bestowed on Teachers’ Day annually, because of the stiff competition for the limited number of awards. Hence, we introduced our own scheme called AEES Annual Awards under which 37 awards are now given, annually, to teaching and non-teaching staff of AEES. First such Awards were given away on Sep. 5, 2015, the Teachers’ Day. I have often thought why couldn’t A.S. High School Khanna Trust & Management Society formulate its own scheme to honor its teachers by selecting one of them at least for Best Teacher award, annually. I recall crème of the crème teachers we had in our days at A.S. School, namely M.L. Babbar (Maths and English), Hem Raj (Maths), V.P. Kapoor (Physics), K.L. Batta (Trigonometry), and Principal Chopra (English), himself, who could beat the best of teachers anywhere in the world. In fact, I have been recently dedicating my Talks/seminars to K.L. Batta, my teacher mentioned above who could effortlessly draw a perfect circle on the black-board, a capability rare to find in a trigonometry teacher anywhere!
MGC was against accepting any extra benefits for himself, when in service. In fact, he was donating a large chunk of his own salary back to the school. Any awards accepted by him were after he retired in 1974. But it beats me why he didn’t influence the school management to initiate a scheme of Awards for his own fellow-teachers, who were excellent. Was MGC possessive of the limelight singularly extended to him by the small town of Khanna? He also made no attempt to share organizational management responsibilities with any other teacher or to delegate some non-teaching jobs of importance to fellow-teachers to lessen his burden.
Another thing that rankles in my mind is why MGC didn’t take much interest in the Punjabi-medium students belonging mostly to the nearby villages, who were normally huddled into E and F sections of every class. Was MGC engaged so heavily in his passionate attempts to take the school to new heights of education and learning, leaving him no time to make any worthwhile efforts for these rural students to have opportunities to shine?
For that matter, did MGC have any concrete plan to offer even to the English medium students of his school for their all-round growth, or for counseling them to help them in securing admission in professional colleges which had become a rage suddenly after the introduction of medical and non-medical streams in the Higher Secondary system? A very small number of students of our school who passed out with good marks did secure admissions in professional streams, but they belonged to families who had access to the requisite information.
My own case was there for all to see. I was ranked 4th among the 8 students who secured Merit List positions in 1962 from our Higher Secondary batch. During my 11th standard (final year) MGC knew about my lack of financial resources and personal turmoil after my father passed away. He did show concern for me when he wrote on black-board during our class, “That savage beast would eat up the orphaned Jatinder Vir”, referring to my thrashing by a well-built bully in our class, for no fault of mine, just before MGC entered the class-room.
I had no guidance on my future career options or course of action to be taken after passing out from school. Not once was I called by MGC for any counseling! I didn’t even know that I would be getting a State Government stipend, a good enough amount per month, adequate to cover tuition fees and all hostel expenses during my Bachelor’s degree course. But I learnt about the Govt. stipend after the first semester at my college was over. Leave the career guidance alone, MGC, with all his expertise could have at least given me a hint about my stipend, based on which I could have secured admission in an engineering college. I eventually did a 3-years course of B.Sc. (Hons.). MGC left me alone to fend for myself, like he did in the case of all other students, including those who brought glory to him and to his school. There was only one exception to the rule though, a student, his pet, whom he coached at every stage, and provided opportunities.
