We visit a "slum school" with Sister Dunn

We went to visit a "slum school" with Sister Dunn, the LDS Humanitarian Services missionary in our area (with her husband). She had worked with these kids for well over a year, and they loved her. We went because the Young Women of our branch were working on a project (alphabet decorations for classrooms) and we wanted to see the school and meet the principal before Sister Dunn left India (which happened a few weeks later).
There is not much glass in the windows, no working A/C, no maps, no charts, no library. The kids are cheerful, clean, and neat in their uniforms. The principal seemed to have it going on, and doing great with her limited resources. These kids go to school year-round - not for classes, necessarily - she told us they have school in the summer months basically to give the kids somewhere to go. They mostly do art projects and crafts during that time, not core classes.
Sister Dunn had taught music to them. They sang with her one last time and she cried. It was very sweet to see the way they responded to her.
One of the fundamental things wrong with this country, in my opinion, is the lack of emphasis on education for everyone. There is no law requiring or providing education for everyone up to a certain age. (Even if there was, so few births are registered officially, who would know how many kids are out there that should be in school, and how can you force them to go when their family needs them to work? It is a broken system.) Many kids are working by 9 or 10 years of age, and even if they go to school, many attend Hindi medium school not English, which limits them somewhat. Teachers are paid little, the facilites are appalling, books, paper and pencils are in very short supply. In many schools, there is two shifts of kids - one morning and one afternoon - to get the most out of the school buildings. Many families send only their sons to school, just one more way they demonstrate how girls are of less value here. The newspaper started an initiative called "Teach India" some months ago, and they match volunteers with schools, to teach 2 hours a week. It has really caught on, with nearly 50,000 people signing up to teach across the country. It is a brilliant idea, and it certainly can't hurt, where the government system is such a joke. One of the guys at Randy's factory is teaching kids every Friday. Right now, there is a waiting list - of volunteers!