An individual documenting Shillong’s history should take into account the history of the spread of education and educational institutes in the hill city and on its outskirts. Besides the European missionaries, Bengalis, especially those belonging to the progressive Brahmo Samaj, played a major role in the spread of education in Shillong. Laban Bengalee Boys’ Higher Secondary School is one such institution that has endured the challenges of time and successfully preserved the rich history attached to it.
Laban Bengalee Boys’ School was established in 1923 near Laban Bazar. Housed in a temporary thatched structure, it had only five students and two teachers. As the number of students increased, the need for a bigger building was felt. With the help of like-minded erudite Bengalis, a new building came up near the bazar. By 1930, the school was upgraded to secondary. It was only in the 1970s that the school was shifted to Streamlet Road, the current address. In 1946, Laban Boys’ became an English high school.
The school continued to produce brilliant students who were not only recognised by the then Assam government but also went on to excel in various fields of academics. The school also witnessed the struggle for identity and the birth of a state.
In the 1990s under Bimalendu Dasgupta, the then principal and an institution in himself, the school was upgraded to higher secondary.
Now called Laban Bengalee Boys’ Higher Secondary School, the institute, which is a deficit government-aided school, celebrated 95 years this week. Talking on the eventful and glorious past, the current principal, Dr Rinku Bhattacharjee, who joined the school in 1988 as Mathematics teacher, says the school back then had many intelligent students and teaching them was not only a pleasure but a challenge too.
“You had to come prepared in the class lest you were bombarded with questions,” she reminisces.
“However, our role has changed in the current situation. Now, we have to motivate our students,” Bhattacharjee, who is the first woman principal of the school, rues.
Bhattacharjee says the school has struggled against odds to retain its ‘Bengalee’ identity. The 550-odd students are from all communities and most of them come from economically weak families. Most of the students taking admission in the higher secondary section are academically weak “but the teachers work very hard to bring them up to the first division level”, says the principal and adds that there is only one teacher for each subject.
Despite such logistic and infrastructure constraints, the school’s performance in the state board examinations is laudable. The school also awards scholarships to meritorious students from Classes V to XII. “We try to give students a lump sum amount so that they can continue their studies. Our former students who are doing well help us a lot,” says Bhattacharjee.
The principal says she has a good team that takes care of the students and gives its best. But she emphasises the need for vernacular education in school for better performance of students who come from poor families. “How many of us speak in English at home? It is a foreign language. So it is imperative that students have knowledge of their own mother tongues, be it Bengali, Khasi, Garo or Nepali,” she says.
While Laban Boys’ school proudly wears the crown for being one of the early propagators of education in the city and works hard towards a better centenary, another school, much younger than the former, too basks in the achievements over 60 years. Auxilium Convent Girls’ Higher Secondary School celebrated its diamond jubilee, also this week.
Established and owned by the Salesian Sisters of The Northern India, the school was first started in the early fifties by Sister Rina Colussi, an Italian missionary. “It started as a Khasi school in a small hut. Back then, there was no school in Nongthymmai. Parents had to be coaxed to send their children to the school. There were nursery and lower primary,” said Principal Sister Joplin Suchiang who, despite the fatigue after the preparations for the jubilee day, agreed to speak briefly about the school and its journey.
There were only 18 students in the school. They walked to the school on the hilly and forested terrain every day. Around five years after the school started, the Salesian Sisters wished to take over the school and gradually develop it. Sister Colussi was the first in-charge of the new school from nursery to Class VI. Later, two more cottages were added to the infrastructure to accommodate students of classes VII to X and the school gradually started taking shape. Now, after 60 years’ journey, the school has become a part of the city’s history. The journey continues as it looks forward to a better future. ~ NM