Sikh Schools and Sikh Prachar for young children.

 My elder sisters studied in a school in Delhi run by the Sikh Gurudwara body. These schools are minority run institutions which are supposed to be run to promote the students of particular minorities to get education. The mission of the school where my sisters studied has fourteen points. The point about Sikhism is only one, at point number 10 which states the school mission to 'encourage students to follow the Sikh Religion and belief.'  The other points are about important professional and social goal related missions. But interestingly, the first one is 'To provide secular education to students from all communities.'

For survival, educational institutions of minorities must open themselves up and talk the language of inclusiveness and secularism. But, at the same time, the reason for creation of the minority institutions as per the Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee Act of 1971 must be highlighted. The Act states the purpose being 'to spread education, especially the knowledge of Panjabi and Gurmukhi, to establish educational institutions and libraries and to give aid to such institutions and stipends the students......and to do such other religious and charitable acts as the Board thinks fit.' 

 Secularism and inclusiveness are golden ideals that must be taught to each and every human being and this forms the basis of every Human Right. 

But, at the same time, a minority run institution, must never forget the heritage, language and the religious beliefs that it set out to promote and propagate in the first place. These Sikh management run schools may be seeing a drop in the number of sikh student enrolling in these. This needs to be fact checked, but based on the trend of students around me in these schools, the graph seems downwards. There may also be a reason that school admissions currently work on a point based system, where the students get points for proximity to the school compared to the earlier trend of a non point based system where people had much greater freedom. But for the sake of an argument, lets assume for an instance that there is a dip in the number of Sikh students studying in Sikh management run schools?

A question related to this would be: Why would Sikh parents be willing in sending their children to schools run by Christian convents and where they would do English prayers or even christian prayers. They may do this even when there is an availability of a Sikh management run school in their city and within their reach. 

Well, Sikh parents seem to be sending their children to schools with the most modern education, the best facilities and foremost, good education-viz, alumni doing great professionally after passing out of these schools. This makes absolute sense as this is the aim of every parent towards their children. 

So then the question that needs to be asked in this? Is there something deficient in the schools run by Sikh religious bodies? Are they not professional run? Are they not transparent? Do these schools not churn out pass outs that are doing well in life?

These seem to be a questions that needs to be really looked at and instrospected by the Sikhs society as well as the  Sikh management committee. There needs to be very strong oversight of the management of schools, if it is already not there. School teachers hiring, HR management and timely salaries must be ensured to make sure the best and the most talented teachers are hired. The focus, in hiring may be placed on talent and capability rather that any consideration. 

To attract the best students, the model of the other schools run by religious institutions must be adopted where the religious teaching is in place, but there seems to be no compromise with the professional management of these institutions. 

On the other side, if we assume that Sikh schools are properly run and well managed, It makes us wonder, do Sikh prefer schools which keep their children moderate and not too religious? Well, is it more acceptable to Sikh parents to send their children to schools of other religions and not their own? Is there something deep related to the lack of closeness with Sikhs religion and heritage? 

These are again questions that must be looked into by the Sikh society and Gurudwara management committees. 

Apart from being excellent in profession and career, the need for cherishing the religious heritage as well as getting answers to spiritual questions and respite from issues with everyday life issues can be answered by one's religion. 

Sikh students must be provided the platform to be able to get counselling on life matters, and there must be relevance to daily life is the children. The Singh Sabha Gurudwaras along with schools can play this very important role. I remember that my own knowledge about Sikhism was only possible due to a Sikh pracahrak who held classes on Sikhism and the translation of Japji sahib, a gurbani that is part of Sikh daily prayer. It is the influwnce or this pracharak that brought me close to the Sikh thought and philosophy. 

There are organised setups today which undertake Sikh camps and other youth training initiatives. Such should be given utmost priority as the lessons learnt here are most effective to young children. 

Our Sikh Singh Sabha Gurudwaras and schools are the fundamental basis of promoting the relation internally among the Sikh society and the young Sikhs.