take a look:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8236636.stm

AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASSROOM IN A SLUM

- Stephen Spender

Far far from gusty waves these children’s faces.
Like rootless weeds, the hair torn around their pallor.
The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The paper-
seeming boy, with rat’s eyes. The stunted, unlucky heir
Of twisted bones, reciting a father’s gnarled disease,
His lesson from his desk. At back of the dim class
One unnoted, sweet and young. His eyes live in a dream,
Of squirrel’s game, in the tree room, other than this.

On sour cream walls, donations. Shakespeare’s head,
Cloudless at dawn, civilized dome riding all cities.
Belled, flowery, Tyrolese valley. Open-handed map
Awarding the world its world. And yet, for these
Children, these windows, not this world, are world,
Where all their future’s painted with a fog,
A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky,
Far far from rivers, capes, and stars of words.

Surely, Shakespeare is wicked, and the map a bad example
With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal–
For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes
From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children
Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel
With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.
All of their time and space are foggy slum.
So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.

Unless, governor, teacher, inspector, visitor,
This map becomes their window and these windows
That shut upon their lives like catacombs,
Break O break open ’till they break the town
And show the children green fields and make their world
Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues
Run naked into books, the white and green leaves open
History is theirs whose language is the sun.

The poem describes the unkempt classrooms, the minimal infrastructure, and most importantly an insight into the minds of children each representing an issue in our society. Moreover, it also shows their bleak future as a result of illiteracy.

Education now has become a fundamental right and it should be given. The only way to come out of the web of illiteracy is to have the motto: ‘each one teach one.’ Moreover, there should be programs for parent’s education, as children learn most by seeing their parents. This vicious cycle of poverty and illiteracy has to be stopped. Educational institutes dedicated to the rural development have to be set up and moreover awareness of illiteracy has to be created. The government needs to prioritize and allocate funds, resources and time for education. There is a need for volunteers who take a genuine interest in making India a developed country from a long endured developing country! The suffix change can make innumerous children’s, families dream to turn into reality and never allow the recital of the gnarled past!

Why does illiteracy still prevail, what can we do about it?

post in your comments!