Kids these days

Kids these days are too rude: they do not have the sense to believe the truth of what we tell them.  They think they can tell the difference between truth and falsehood, even when what they call truth is really nothing more than the fanciful thoughts that they want to believe.  Today’s children do not believe me when I tell them that back in the 70s the roads were paved with broken glass and they tossed salt over these roads daily.  They say I’m lying when I tell them that we had to walk barefooted for at least twenty miles on these broken glass roads everyday to go to school.

They roll their eyes upwards when I tell them that back then, the teachers used strands of barbed wire tied in a bunch to whip students who failed to do their homework.  I told them that after the flailing, we would rub lime on our backs, hands, legs to avoid getting infection from the rusted barbed wires.  And, if anyone was caught screaming in pain, he or she would be taken to the ant hill behind the building, tied on it and had honey or sugar water poured on them.

They start to lose interest when I tell them that we used to have weekly stake burnings where students who committed offences like failing to beg for mercy on their knees were tied to the stake and burned alive in front of a school assembly.  When I tell them that students who failed in any subject would be taken to a special room behind the teachers’ room and never be seen or heard from again, they just shake their heads.  They don’t take me seriously when I tell them that there is a hole behind the staff room where they dump the dead or dying bodies of tortured students. I tell them that we used to hear the screams and dying cries of these students but they simply switch off.

They show me pictures supposedly taken in the 70s of teachers walking around with files and bags when I tell them that teachers back then carried whips and flamethrowers wherever they went in school.

We had to make sacrifices to get knowledge in those days.  Perhaps that is why many say that the quality education these days has declined. The weekly assembly whippings, the classroom racks and the iron maidens and the garrotes are no longer there but I hear there might be hope. I was recently told that in a nearby school, the students were made to sit in hall and listen to a teacher read the text of a speech from a minister. On second thought, perhaps this was stepping beyond the limit, certain kinds of tortures are simply too inhuman to inflict on anyone, even your worst enemy, let alone students.  Even I sweat at this prospect.