Important Questions: Poem 2 - An Elementary School in a Slum | English Class 12 PDF Download

Questions:

Q1. Who is the unlucky heir? Why is he called unlucky?

Ans.  The thin slum boy is the unlucky heir. He is so called because he has inherited poverty, despair and disease from his parents.

Q2. Who sits back unnoted? Why?

Ans. A young boy sits at the back. This boy is different from the others as ‘his eyes live’ in a dream – he is dreaming and probably thinking about a better future. He is lost in his own world, therefore, not sad like the others. This boy thinks of the ‘squirrel’s game’. He wants to enjoy and play freely like the squirrel in the garden outside.

Q3. Pick two images each of despair and disease from these lines.

Ans. The images of despair are – ‘unlucky heir’, ‘dim class’, and that of diseases are – ‘twisted bones, gnarled disease’.

Read the following extracts and answer the questions that follow:

And yet, for these

Children, these windows, not this map, their world,

Where all their future’s painted with a fog,

A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky

Far far from rivers, capes and stars of words.

Questions

Q1. Who are these children?

Ans. These are the slum children of Tyrol Valley.

Q2. What is their world like? 

Ans. The school windows are their world because they cannot move beyond them.

Q3. What kind of future does the poet foresee for them? 

Ans. The future of these children is quite dim. As we can’t see things in the fog, in the same way the future of these children is looming under darkness. Their future is bleak.

Q4. Why does the poet say that the narrow street is sealed?

Ans. The narrow street is sealed as these provide no opportunity to make an access to the outer world of wisdom.

Read the following extracts and answer the questions that follow:

Break O break open till they break the town

And show the children to green fields, and make their world
 Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues

Run naked into books, the white and green leaves open

History theirs whose language is the sun.

Questions:

Q1. What should they break?

Ans. They should break all barriers and obstructions that hinder the school children’s growth.

Q2.  What kind of a world does the poet imagine for these children?

Ans. The poet imagines a world where these children run around in the fields or on sea beaches in a carefree manner. They should also enjoy freedom of knowledge and expression.

Q3.  What does the word ‘sun’ symbolize?

Ans. ‘Sun’ symbolizes light and brightness which, comes from education. Proper education alone can improve the lives of these slum children.

Read the following extracts and answer the questions that follow:

Unless, governor, inspector, visitor,

This map becomes their window and these windows

That shut upon their lives like catacombs,

Break O break open till they break the town

And show the children to green fields, and make their world

Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues

Run naked into books, the white and white green leaves open

History is theirs whose language is the son.

Questions:

Q1. Who can improve the lot of the poor slum children?

Ans. The rulers, the educationists, the teachers and the general public can pool their efforts to give a better life to the poor slum children.

Q2. What kind of life do they live?

Ans.They are shut up in their dim classrooms and small hovels like dead bodies in the grave.

Q3. What is the poet’s appeal to the upper class people?

Ans. The poet urges them to bring some light into the lives of the slum children. They may be imparted education in a healthy atmosphere.

Q4. What is the poet’s advice?

Ans.The poet suggests that the slum children should not only be educated properly but also removed from their dirty surroundings to sunny and green fields.

Q5. Explain: “History is theirs whose language is the sun.”

Ans. The language that has warmth and power of the sun only can mould and write history.

Short Answer Type Questions

Q. What does the poet want for the children of the slums? How can their lives be made to change?

The poet wants an improvement in the quality of the lives of the slum children. He feels that the government has a moral obligation to provide a meaningful education to these children and to break down the barriers that stand in the way of improving their lives.