Hypocritical Times: A Reflection on the Ethos of what it means to be a Dosco

The jewel of the court. For the last eight decades, we have been at the crest of the coming wave, the epitome of innovation in education. The School has always excelled at doing things differently, but for the last few years, in the name of unique, we have constructed the façade of a jewel around ourselves. We make those beyond Chandbagh believe what we want them to, but inside this lush, green campus it’s another story. We perpetrate acts of hypocrisy every day, and we don’t even know it. 

Education is not only our academia. It does not only comprise textbooks or tested knowledge but of what we learn in totality. It is what we mean when we hear the phrase ‘a well-rounded education’. However, it has also become the epicenter of the fractures in our jewel. An integral quality we look for in our new inductees is their love for reading. Yet, beyond the interview it holds no importance. On entering the Doon stream of life, we are submerged in layers of sport, co-curriculars, academia. We have no time or opportunity to learn of new perspectives and worlds, of our own histories, of knowledge outside the mandated textbooks. We no longer read as much as we used to. Parents are led to believe that Doscos are well-read creatures while there is no change in the status-quo. As a result of last month’s school council, the School has become aware of the decrease in reading all batches. With the proposal to making reading a certain number of books, we can surely expect some change in the habits of Doscos. But it doesn’t end here. 

Since 2017, we have been participating in the global movement ‘No Shave November’. The way it is treated within our campus walls shows that it is nothing more than a publicity stunt. In the first week of November, for the last two years we have been having assemblies that announce the start of the movement and the ‘Best Beard’ competition and have the school doctor talk about men’s health. In the end, it boils down to a day of speeches, with an award ceremony for ‘Best Beard’ a month later. Ultimately, there is no meaning behind the movement in School. What is ironically most stressed upon throughout the movement, is our mental health. Ironic because beyond that one assembly talk, no one takes any action, despite the gravity of the issue. In a bubble of five hundred and eighty teenagers, one would expect it to be the most seriously taken. Our teenage years are the time we begin to experience high amounts of confusion and stress, which is exacerbated by the hyperactive ecosystem that is Doon. It is the time when we begin to understand our mentality, our sexuality, the people we choose to become. Further compounded by the life-changing decisions we must make, we are constantly under great strain. In all honesty, we know more about the curricula we study than our mental well-being. There is little use in explaining academics to a child if they experience constant stress for a decade until adulthood/ maturity. This constant strain combined with the pressure we face under the label of a Dosco, from our parents and our teachers, puts us at risk. 

Our hidden curriculum also plays a part. A recent addition to my vocabulary, the ‘hidden curriculum’ is a set of perspectives and values that we unknowingly integrate into our being by being a part of any institution, in this case Doon. Here, we learn to adopt an air of toxic masculinity and aggressiveness as part of our creed. From experience and general practice, we learn that to be vulgar as the façade of a tough hide, and corked emotions are best qualities in a community of male majority, something that certainly does not hold true for the world outside. What we fail to understand is that corked emotions do age like wine, but into a more poisonous mixture; a toxic form of emotional stunting.  We adopt aggressiveness through our love for competition, with 20 competitions of various natures taking place in the last thirty days of this calendared term. By adopting such a violent creed, we become the ideal, misconstrued idea of a Dosco. In the eyes of Arthur Foot, “The foundations of your career that have been laid in the last five years will have given you the discipline of mind and body, the love of many good things in books and art and music and sport that will always be there to make your life more vivid and more worth living. But have you been able to learn the secret of non-attachment to material things—that what you are and what you do and what you feel are more important than the material things that you have?”

Penultimately, we have the school schedule itself. Despite our administration’s best efforts to maintain our well-rounded education, to balance and fulfill our well-being in all aspects, we have been in constant flux for the last three years. We have changed the term and weekly schedules numerous times. At the same time, we suffer from sleep deprivation because of competitions and examinations being crunched up in the last few days of term. This forces us to juggle more than there are hours in the day. We are constantly running around, trying to complete as much as we can in the available time, but even choosing not to sleep can go so far. I do know that we as Doscos must adapt to change. But to constantly exhaust ourselves with not enough time for rest makes for a highly toxic term. 

The trinity of the fragile teenage mind, our toxic masculinity, and our hyperactive ecosystem are the origin for our heightened stress levels and stunted EQ. Despite all the stress on mental health, our school continuously remains oblivious to the reality in front of them. Our innovation, our drive to be ahead of the curve, and sacrifice our mental health to achieve individual goals is proving to be detrimental to our mentality. We must realise that we have been so focused on our academic futures that we have never stopped to consider whether we even have the mental capacity and well-being necessary to achieve them. Our institution of which we are a part (myself included), has forgotten what was once given great importance. A simple remedy would be to have talks and one-on-one sessions with our well-being counsellors before the career counsellors for once. Another remedy would be to have a cost-benefit analysis of all the actions that we as a school take, letting the mental fitness of the Doscos be at the center of the analysis. 

Every constituent of this institution is not blameless of hypocrisy, including me. We have for far too long ignored what our institution truly stands for, devolving into something misinterpreted all these years. It is time we all took a step forward, out of the ruins of this aristocracy of hypocrisy and into an institution which has earned the right to lead others. To lead them into an age of innovation and well-being.