NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Poetry 2: An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum

Discolouration has set in on the walls of the classroom. The cream colour has faded. The fading colour of the walls matches with the faces of the children.

(i) is ill and exhausted

(ii) thin, hungry and weak

(i) has an inherited disability

(iii) distracted from the lesson

(iii) are wasters

The children live in a dismal world of poverty and hunger. They are in sharp contrast to the pictures of poets, big buildings and beautiful valleys.

The poet suggests that the slum children may be removed from their surroundings to green field and sea-beaches under the the open sky. They should also be provided with the facility to read and write and watch the beauties of nature. After all history be made by people who live a healthy and free life.

The words or phrases in the poem which show that the slum children are suffering from acute malnutrition are, ‘the hair tom round their pallor’, ‘paper-seeming boy’, ‘stunted, unlucky heir of twisted bones’ and ‘wear skins peeped through by bones.’

Stephen Spender wants a better life for the children of the slums. He wants the officials to help these
poor children come out of their miserable surroundings. He wishes that these children should be given education, because education is the key to prosperity.

The poet makes an appeal to his readers, especially the educated and well-off people, to help the poor children of the slum come out and be freed from their miserable surroundings. His appeal is that these children should be given quality education, because education holds the key to their emancipation.

The poet wants freedom from a life of hunger and misery for the poor children. He wishes that the children should be provided with quality education. They should be brought out from their filthy surroundings into the comforting lap of nature.

The classroom walls are pale yellow and dirty. Donated items have been put up on these walls. All these are in complete contrast to the world of these children.

The pictures that have been put up on the classroom walls depict the civilised world. The portrait of Shakespeare is useless to the slum children because they will never read his works. The world shown in the map is not their world. Their world is confined to the walls of their classroom and the slum in which they live. Thus they are not meaningful.

Yes, I have visited such a school; it was a government school. It was in a pitiful state. It did not have
even the basic amenities like properly working fans and lights. Broken windows, damaged doors, broken benches and dirty walls greeted the students. Many of the teachers did not conduct the classes regularly. Even the washrooms were dirty and without any water.

The children born and brought up in slums have a dark future. They can grow to full height if they get out of the dark, narrow lanes and see the world. It is the duty of rulers and teachers to show them green fields and let them play on golden sands, and expose them to the world of books. Only those who grow in the light of the knowledge and warmth of the sun make history.

The colour of sour cream is pale yellow. The poet has used this expression to show the poor and grim environment of the classroom. Instead of bringing cheer to the unhappy existence of the children, these walls add to their misery and dreariness.

‘Shakespeare’ symbolises the study of literature, ‘buildings and domes’ symbolise power and wealth, the world maps represent the world outside and ‘beautiful valleys’ refer to nature’s beauty and bounty. All these stand in sharp contrast to the dingy, dismal and gloomy atmosphere in which these slum children live.

The poet keenly desires these children to break the bonds of living a life of despair in the slum. They should not remain dejected, depressed and isolated from the rest of the world. Their lives can be made to change by the officials, who should come forward to educate the children properly, giving them opportunities to experience the outside world through a better education.

The theme of Spender’s poem is to highlight the plight of slum children. Their dark homes and neglected schools are like tombs for them. They are far removed from the sunshine of knowledge and a normal civilised life. They need to be removed from their unhealthy surroundings. The poem reflects the rage of the poet against sub-human conditions of millions of slum children.

The elementary school is being run in a semi-dark and neglected classroom. It is far from the open sea-shores and waves. The children attending the school look pitiable, pale and pathetic. Their growth is poor and their bones are twisted. They hunger for open air and free play in the forest.On the drab walls of the school are pasted a picture of Shakespeare and a world map. But this is a mockery of education.

The children growing in such dark, dirty hutments and unhealthy classrooms can never go round the world or read Shakespeare. Such pictures will only rouse a desire in them to see the world, the rivers and the oceans. Such pictures will make their lives more discontented and miserable.

Slum children live in small, dark holes. They play on garbage dumps. Their broken and repaired spectacles look like bits of glass bottle on the road. The maps of the civilised world don’t show any slums. The children, it appears, are buried in their tombs of little dark huts. It is a crime to let them rot there.

They can be turned into useful citizens if they are removed from their unhealthy atmosphere, taken to green fields and given proper education. The rulers and teachers can get it done. After all, history is made only by freedom loving and intelligent people.

The unsung fighters as envisaged by Spender are the children growing up in the slums and getting their schooling there. Spender is deeply concerned about the next generation whose future is blocked in the slum areas. They need to be brought out in the sun so that they grow and prosper.

Jhuggis are like pock-marks on the face of every big city. They are breeding ground of unwanted children who feed on the filth and who take to crimes. The school has a large bunch of silent sufferers. But one child in the last row has got dreams. He wants to play freely, see green fields and feel the sun. Such sweet and young children need to be taken care of for the betterment of human race.

• Children’s face like rootless weeds.

• The papers seeming boy with rat’s eyes.

• The stunted unlucky heir of twisted bones.

The poet presents a grim picture of dark slums and narrow streets, fog and darkness and filth. There can be no teaching and no learning in such an unhealthy atmosphere, Shakespeare’s plays and the world map, literature and geography are meaningless for slum children.

These only make them more unhappy and dejected, because they have no scope for world tour and higher education. The poet offers a solution and hope to such god-forsaken children : Expose them to better life and better places, to sunshine and open air. Only the teachers and governors can provide such facilities.

Spender presents a grim realistic picture of the children growing in slums and attending the dark elementary schools there. They have never moved out of those dirty settlements. Poverty is the greatest curse for them. But this situation can be improved. There is a solution to the problem. This privileged class can provide facilities for the slum children. The first step is to improve the quality of life, in the slums. The next is to take the kids out of darkness to sunny and green places.

Shakespeare was a scholar. The world map shows only big cities. These are out of place in the dark, drab classrooms. They only tempt the slum children to cry for the moon, something beyond their reach.

(a) The map on the wall signifies that they do not belong to the world depicted in the map.
(b) These are slum children. Their world is like a narrow street with a lead sky. They can’t even see stars.
(c) The poet thinks that they can be turned into useful citizens by providing them proper education. The rulers and teachers can get it done.

The poet vents his dejection and despair in the numbing poverty of the life of the slum children in the poem. These children are ‘rootless’ as they lack stability in their lives. They are insecure and ill-fed, living a miserable life of pain and despair. The sour cream colour of their school walls reflects the despondent look of these students. They lack the usual exuberance of life.

They suffer the agony of being unwanted in their small world of the slums Their world is far removed from the outer world that is represented in school books, maps, picture of a Tyrolese valley and of Shakespeare. Education has shown them the path of liberation but they are ironically caught in a situation where their education only makes them aware of their miserly existence.

The study and the portrait of Shakespeare is wicked because these children fail to understand the true value of Shakespeare in English literature, as no quality education is imparted in this elementary school classroom in a slum. This school is different from other normal schools, where the study of Shakespeare is conducted properly, giving the children a constructive education.

The map of the world with its colourful projections of the earth is also a bad example to these slum children because they imagine the world from the maps and understand the fact that their world is different from that of the maps. Their future is dark and they live in a perpetual state of gloom, hunger and despair.

The poet has aptly used the imagery of despair and disease in the first stanza. The poet has employed a simile in the explicit comparison between the children’s faces and the rootless weeds, as these children are like weeds without any root or proper origin.

The description of the dim and pathetic classroom with its ‘sour cream’ walls is rich in visual imagery of colours. The walls that have turned yellowish suggests the pale existence of these children. The phrase ‘Break O Break’ consists of repetition to poetically emphasise the need of these children to come out into the outer world. There is rich colourful imagery in the line “Run azure on gold sands” which brings out the note of optimism and emancipation for these children to visualise the azure blue sky, the golden sands on the beaches and the deserts on the earth.

1. These children are the poor children who live in the slum.

2. By ‘gusty waves’ the poet means the beautiful sights of nature which are not visible in the slum.

3. The tall girl’s head has possibly been weighed down by being burdened with sad thoughts about her misfortune, which is making her feel depressed.

4. Simile is used in these lines when the unkempt hair is compared to rootless weeds.

1. The boy who has a stunted growth with twisted bones, sitting in the slum school classroom, is the ‘unlucky heir’.
2. He has inherited the arthritis of his father; as a result his growth remains stunted.
3. A sweet young boy is sitting at the back of the dim class. He is daydreaming of squirrels playing in a tree.
4. The unlucky heir is depicted with twisted bones which he has inherited from his father, who suffers from arthritis.

1. ‘Class’ refers to the classroom which is dark and dingy, as it is in a slum school, where nobody cares for the lighting. ‘Dim’ is also used to denote the future of these children in the class.
2. The child is called ‘sweet and young’ probably because he is an innocent child who is not concerned with what is going on in the classroom. Instead, he is daydreaming.
3. The child wants to enjoy seeing squirrels playing in the tree outside the classroom.
4. ‘This’ refers to the classroom, which does not interest the boy. He wants to go elsewhere, particularly outside, where the squirrels are playing in the tree.

1. The colour of the walls is pale yellow, like sour cream.
2. Various donated items have been put up on the walls of the classroom as the school cannot afford to buy them. These include a portrait of Shakespeare, a picture of the beautiful Tyrolese valley and a world map.
3. The map with its scaled representation divides the world into countries, big and small. It forms the world with boundaries as we know it, thus awarding the world its world in a miniature form.

1. The ‘children’ referred to here are the poor children living in the slum.
2. Their world is the dull and unpleasant classroom and its windows amongst the dirty surroundings of the slum. ‘
3. The children of the slum are emaciated and poverty-stricken, as against the other children who are healthy and have all the comforts and luxuries of life. The life of the slum children is filled with darkness and hopelessness.
4. The future of these children is dark and uncertain, meaning that it cannot be seen. So, the poet says that it is ‘painted with a fog.’

1. Them here refers to the poor, emaciated children of the slum.
2. They are tempted by all the beautiful things of the world, the luxuries and the lifestyle that the rich enjoy. They are tempted to steal them, as they cannot possess these otherwise.

3. The children of the slum live amidst dirty surroundings in cramped houses which are dark and unpleasant. The poet is not happy with the way these children are compelled to live.

4. ‘From fog to endless night’ means from morning till night. The poor children of the slum have a miserable existence; they suffer from morning to night everyday.

1. These children are the poor children who live in the slum.
2. Their slag heap refers to the hunger-stricken bodies of the children, which look just like heaps of garbage.
3. Their bones are visible under their skins because they are malnourished and very thin.
4. The phrase,’with mended glass’ means that the glass of the spectacles had cracked and the pieces had been stuck together, instead of getting a new glass. This is another sign of their poverty.

1. The poet wants to bring these children out of their filthy surroundings. He wants them to break the shackles that this slum has put on them, so that they can see the outside world.
2. ‘They’ refers to the poor, emaciated children of the slum.
3. The poet wants that these children should be properly educated, because, according to him, history is written by those whose language has the energy and warmth of the sun.
4. The poet wishes the children to break the shackles of the slum so that they can come out of their dirty surroundings into an open area of freedom.

The poem ‘An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum’ deals with the theme of social injustice and class inequalities in our society, the irony that is rooted in the marginalized existence of these slum children and their poor system of education. The poet has reflected this irony in saying that these children, as they read, run their tongues naked into the books because they do not understand the meaning of the words and blankly utter the sentences.

They fail to understand the true message of education contained in the books. Their spectacles are like ‘bottle bits’ suggesting the poverty of their lives. It is a poetic appeal to the people in authority, like the governor, inspector and visitor, to rescue these oppressed children from their limited lives of ignorance and gloom. The poet wishes for the emancipation of these imprisoned minds into a new world of freedom and happiness.

(a) is ill and exhausted.

(a) thin, hungry and weak,

(a) has an inherited disability.

(c) distracted from the lesson.

a) are insecure

(i) The poem is An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum, written by Stephen Spender.
(ii) The poet depicts the pitiable looks and bleak future of slum children.
(iii) The children in general are paper-thin, dwarf-like and worthless weeds. But one boy still has dreams of playing freely in the forest.

(i) The school classroom is in ruins. The children studying there are bony, have rat’s eyes and a dark future.
(ii) The bust of Shakespeare painted on the wall and the map of the world seem to be mocking the slum children. These children can never hope to see the wide world or read Shakespeare.
(iii)

• The map is meant for the city folk who are well-off.

• But these children have no hope, no light in their lives.

(i) Shakespeare was a scholar. The world map shows only big cities. These are out of place in the dark, drab classroom. They only tempt the slum children to cry for the moon, something beyond their reach.
(ii) The children studying in a slum school cannot learn anything in the unhealthy atmosphere. No social activist will bother to improve the lot of these deprived children.
(iii) The mended glasses of their spectacles look like the broken bits of glass bottle on the pavement (Simile).
(iii) The poet is deeply concerned about the dismal life and future of slum children. He urges the rulers and teachers to remove these unfortunate children from their dark hutments and schools.

(i) The map of the world is the only window of the slum children on the vast world. They will remain imprisoned in their dark dirty world.
(ii) The poet urges the teachers and rulers to bring some light into the lives of the slum children. They may take them to green fields and golden beaches. They may be imparted education in a healthy atmosphere.
(iii) History can be made and studied only in the sunshine of knowledge and better living conditions.