This is a story of how humour and innovative thinking can make the most miserable of situations beautiful.
A school in the idyllic village of Crets en Belledonne in France at the foothills of the Alps threatened to close one of its classes due to the dwindling number of students. The parents were told that one of its classes would be shut because the student numbers had fallen from 266 to 261.
And the parents were shocked by this announcement but were certainly not defeated. They were determined to not let the classes shut down and came up with an ingenious idea to counter this vile move.
One fine morning, a local herder came in with fifty of his sheep, of which fifteen had been “officially” enrolled in the school. Yes! You read it right. The sheep had their birth certificates submitted to the school and were admitted as students, resulting in an increase in the student number to the stipulated level.
So, one new pupil was “Baa-bete” and another was “Saute-Mouton.” All of them were enrolled in the school in a ceremony that was watched by all the stakeholders such as the teachers of the school, the parents, and the other children.
Gaelle Laval, one of the parents behind this inventive plan, smiled and said that the school now would not have to shut classes because the stipulated numbers had been met. He also, though, accused the national authority of education of being more concerned with the number of enrollments rather than the development and welfare of children.
We are extremely happy about the school not having to be shut down though. Isn’t this story a wonderful example of how out-of-box thinking can make you jump out of the darkest of situations? What do you think?
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