Convent schools provide students with a ‘heart and soul’

Even a decade ago, or even less than that, convent school meant a girl’s school, run by Catholic nuns. It could be a boarding school or a day school. It was the school, where a number of girls hoped to be educated, for they learnt not just the curricula as laid down by the State’s education board, but gained inputs in leadership, etiquette and values. While girls in convent schools also learnt needlework and cooking, those of their age in other schools didn’t have this particular advantage. Then there were the boy’s schools run by Catholic priests that again most boys hoped to be educated in. Here again education went beyond textbooks spilling over to the sports field and also the stage. The teachers in these schools belonged to all faiths, there was no discrimination just as the students too belonged to all faiths and all strata of society. There were the economically well to do and the economically not so well to do sharing the same bench in the school and eating out of each other’s tiffin boxes at recess time. In these schools the Catholic boys and girls were taught catechism and those of other faiths were taught moral science. Nobody had a problem with that. Then something changed. The teachers and students are still of all faiths, but the perception of these schools under certain sections has changed.

Someone said that studying in convent schools in Goa led to a dilution of one’s culture and that parents of the majority community should not send their children to convent schools. That children that studied in convent schools forgot their culture and aped the Western ways. The convent schools didn’t allow girls to wear kumkum and Indian costumes.

From all these statements made over the past few months, the most recent came a week ago, one can infer that convent schools in Goa, have come to include boy’s schools and even parish schools managed by Diocesan priests but with a staff that is entirely made up of lay people of all religions. While members of the majority community have been told not to send their children to convent schools, they have not been told to refrain from working in convent schools. There are a number of headmasters and headmistress of Diocesan schools that are from the majority community. They appear to be happy in these schools and also have faced no discrimination as promotions have come with seniority and without a bias towards religion. This cannot be said of all other private schools, especially those which are family managed and prefer to have their own persons holding the charge of the school.

By no means can praying in a Church or studying in a convent school water down one’s Indian culture. This is a fallacious argument as there are any number of Indian leaders who have studied in convent and Catholic schools. One example in the current Indian government is that of Union Power minister Piyush Goyal. He studied at Don Bosco High School, Matunga, Mumbai and a few months ago addressed the students of his alma mater. It was a long speech that can be accessed online and what he said was this, “Don Bosco has provided me with that heart and soul that will always remain in my DNA irrespective of where I go, where I reach.” He has gone far and reached far, but he has not forgotten the time he spent in his school, in Don Bosco High School in Matunga, Mumbai.

If these schools are giving their students a ‘heart and 'soul’ then they are definitely not watering down Indian culture. It is all a matter of perception. It is time to clear the cobwebs in the mind and realize that ‘convent schools’ give their students more than just an education, they build them up to face the world with an open mind. And that, an open mind, is exactly what we require in order to appreciate what the convent schools are doing.