India’s top school Alpine convent school the building exactly looks like a typical convent school in fact it has more than 10 branches in PAN India level but it is not actually a convent school. This school is built by a couple from Gurgaon in 1996 with just 15 students and when sources talked with the founders they said that they studied about Mussoorie’s convent school and understood that parents in India blindly trust such convent schools. And hence they intentionally made the infrastructure of the school like a convent.
Now what to call this practice opportunist or business mind but such is the marketability of convent schools even Bollywood movies also shows such convent schools like St. Teresa’s, St. Xavier’s and more which are so popular in India.
So here the question is why people are so much obsessed with convent schools?
Well the simple one word answer is the convent’s centuries old and well maintained credibility so basically from early middle age period the education center of west was Roman Catholic Church which means wherever the talk of education comes the priest and Christian monks comes first in mind. And slowly slowly these Roman Catholic Churches opened schools and colleges world wide with the help of Christian monks and priest. And now the situation is something like the Catholic Church is the largest nongovernment provider of education and medical services in the world. In 2010, the Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Pastorol Assistance to Health care workers said that the church manages 26 percent of health care facilities in the world, including hospitals, clinics, orphanages, pharmacies and centers for those with leprosy.
Now usually from such Catholic Churches many organisations are also associated one of them being JESUITS which means the Society of Jesus and Jesuits are those who first introduced convent education in back 16th century by setting up the famous St. Xavier’s in Goa. Now it’s true that their thoughts were good but for some reasons the reach of Jesuits in India was quite low and limited until the Britishers came and they changed the game and as Britishers arrived India they soon realised that Indians can be the good workers in low wages but the obstacles was Indians don’t know English so they started promoting English language in India for their betterment with the help of Christian missionaries mainly Jesuits and this becomes the starting point of English education in India.
And it is already obvious that from other religion Christian religion peoples are more fluent in English speaking with more than 15 percent of population and result in India it is noted that if parents send their Childs to such schools they will also become more fluent and fast in speaking English. Example, we have seen in Bollywood movies that a fathers and sisters of the church deals very politely and calmly with the kids but if they gets indiscipline they become rude and rough. And because of this politeness and strict balance value system convents are the parents preferred choice, apparently convent schools are pretty committed to their value systems and the difference between a Convent school and Private school is Value Education like moral science which is mandatory in convent schools but not so much in private schools. And not only inside the classrooms but as well outside Convent schools does not stops this practice.
Now to kick start this policy they again come up with other policy called Chater Act 1813 through this act along with education funding missionaries got official permission to come and set up convent schools in India. So it looks straight that Britishers used indirectly missionaries to come to India. Apart of this Woods Dispatch also known as Magna Carta of Education of 1854 Macaulay’s Minute and etc policies built on all these recommendations to promote missionaries education in India. And it’s fact that behind all these scenario there was a selfish motive of the Britishers but the interesting thing is that Indians themselves thought that education will help them in enhance and improve their employee abilities. And they had big hopes that once they able to speak English as the Britishers then maybe they can stand shoulder to shoulder and therefore that thought in mind started the story of English education system in India. Because after this til now as we all know the value of English language is very high and also the connection between English language and convent schools is known to everyone out there.
The most important question how Indians can differentiate between real convent schools and pretentious convent schools?
Now to answer this question who is better than Secretary of Jesuits Education Association, Father Sunny Jacob so according to him parents should supposed to do two investigation, first is Convent’s education methodology called Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm which basically integrate convent’s value system to learning process and second is logo which shows its affiliation. Convent schools name over the centuries based on the name of different different saint so it is not technically possible to get trade mark of every saint but the biggest problem is to misuse the name rather than coping like St. Xavier’s School of Gurgaon claims that it is affiliated from St. Xavier’s organisation but according to the CBSE directory this school is manged by a trust of Delhi named OTAGO community Trust of catholic association. So in this way who is the blamed for such blunder Convent schools, Fake management or parents? And the most important question is there any full proved solution for this? Well still there are some wonderful Convent schools in India which literally provide good and positive environment for the children and helping many underprivileged children and they always had a secular and disciplined approach towards everyone. In fact some are used to promote and teach Hindi shlokas and Ancient language like Sanskrit and moreover they do celebrate almost every Indian festivals.