School

After leaving school for more than 20 years, I was back to school again, the primary one. All this possible because of my daugther. She will enrol to Standard One this coming 2nd January 2013. Having a brief visit to the school, I realised that nowasday the students are so lucky with luxury of hard infrastructure. Every classroom is equipped with fans, pa system, LCD projector and big screen. The hall is air-conditioned. The basketball court is covered. The walkway from the main gate to the classroom is covered. However, it comes with a price, I think. The compound is hardly having a green space, let alone the footfield. Most of the available land have been concretised. Perhaps the present planning standard of allocating 30% of school land as green open space shall be amended as well with this current transformation of school buildings layout. Having said this, looking at the size of school bag and many of them having wheel trolley type of bag, I am a bit pity for the small kid. It is definitely of a burden for them to carry. Some, I saw even with the bag touching the ground. Why should they carry so much books and material? Why can't a cabinet allocated to them for storing? Or, better still to have the E-Learning and E-Submission of Home Work? Perhaps with the emerging of digital age, this should be looked into and accepted by the older generation as a way forward. The school is having 3600 pupils and more than 110 teachers. It is a community by itself and functioning from 6am to 6pm every weekday. While it is a place to produce the leaders of future and for the mankind, its' impact on environment is great. It consumes a lot of energy, water, and food as well as generating the waste and carbon. How wonderful if the school can turn into a Zero-Waste Emission establishment, in line with the 3R at source concept. I wish I could contribute towards achieving this objective.