The Colonial Ghost - 4

Releasing Learners’ Creative Work

‘Shall we go downstairs for the morning assembly? The teacher suggested.’
‘Of course!’
We all moved downstairs and reached the assembly ground. A few girls stood in the verandah of the staff room to make use of the amplified system.



Fig: The Morning Assembly

The assembly started with the rituals like Morning Prayer and taking the pledge. This was followed by the releasing of news papers and magazines written by children both in English and Malayalam. Kaladharan and I were privileged with the releasing of the creative work of children. However, some of the themes appeared odd to us. For example there was a write up on religious festivals. The first sentence of the write up was ’Onam is a Hindu religious festival. The sentence constructions and the vocabulary used were of high linguistic standards. The justification came from us. Those children who presented write ups in English belong to English medium divisions running in the school. it appeared that the teachers of the school were taking pride in the performance of children studying in English medium divisions.
The duration of the assembly got prolonged because of the releasing of a number of magazines. But it may be pardonable because what was happened in the assembly was the celebration of what children were able to accomplish in the form of creative writing.