We cannot, said Pritish Nandy with all due respect to the court, have an entire nation sitting in front of the TV watching Cartoon Network. Oh. Hmm… Er… May I ask why? Cartoon Network is not bad. Not all that bad anyway. As Dumbledore would put it, “There are worse things.”

Mr. Nandy was talking about the telecast of U and U/A cetificate movies being banned from Mumbai television. There must be a lot of people who would have reason to agree with this decree. I do not doubt their reasons. What with all the uncomfortable groping around for the remote control when the actors suddenly decide to do what they shouldn’t do in front of your grandmother. I understand. I really do.

Figure this out. A second grader loses marks in her monthly test because she thought ’sat’ rhymes with ‘bat’. Apparently, her teacher swears by the students’ guidebook, which lists only ‘cat’ and ‘mat’ as the right answers.

A six year old in grade one, when asked the number of days in a week, happily recites, “Sunday, Monday, Tuesday… Saturday,” and promptly loses points for it. The right answer, obviously, is 7.

Welcome to the zombie schools.

These are but two actual instances of how our schools’ produce is hardwired to see the world in black and white. They enter an unforgiving multi-colour world oblivious to the existence of anything beyond right answers and wrong answers.

They go through life convinced that exams determine one’s worth in life, that teaching and learning are done in schools (!) alone (!!). They don’t find it funny that their intelligence is measured against how much they know of books of someone else’s choice.

But, like everyone else, they get through life and… here’s the interesting bit. Some of them become teachers!