‘COLLEGE FEELS SO CONSTRICTING’

After studying at Ahmedabad’s Riverside alternative school since Class 1, Kunal

Lalchandani (above) is finding college quite an inhibited experience.

“I soon realised it was all about the rules. There are rules for attendance, penalties for not attending things you don’t like,” says Lalchandani, 21, who is now studying Business Administration in Mumbai. “Anything not in the rules, becomes about passing the buck — everyone thinks it’s the peon’s job to switch off fans and lights, upright toppled dustbins… I can’t come to terms with this approach.”

In his school, each class had 25 children, four students to a table. Teachers used icecream sticks to teach addition and sub- traction. “The children looked happy and teachers smiled,” Kunal says. “We didn’t rote-learn formulae, but understood the why behind everything. The school focused on producing human beings, not rankers,” he says.

In college, people were irritated by his questions. In a class of 60, teachers don’t have as much of a bond with each student.

“It gets stressful to feel like I’ve been thrown into a crowd of people I meet every day but don’t know,” he says.

His mother, Kiran, feels these problems are part of the price to be paid for the opportunities he’s had in school.

“He’ll learn to adjust; everyone does eventually,” she says.