IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

POEM -AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASSROOM IN A SLUM

Question.1. What change does the poet hope for in the lives of the slum children?

Question.2. To whom does the poet in the poem, ‘An Elementary School Classroom in a
Slum’ make an appeal? What is his appeal?

Question.3. Which words/phrases in the poem, ‘An Elementary School Classroom in a

Slum’ show that the slum children are suffering from acute malnutrition?

Question.4. The poet says, “And yet, for these children, these windows, not this map, their
world.” Which world do these children belong to? Which world is inaccessible to them?

Question.5. How does the poet describe the classroom walls?

Question.6. What message does Stephen Spender convey through the poem, ‘An
Elementary School Classroom in a Slum’?

Question.7. Why does Stephen Spender say that the pictures and maps in the elementary
school classroom are not meaningful?

Question.8. What does the poet wish for the children of the slums?

Question.9. Why does the poet Stephen Spender call the map a bad example?

Question.10. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

“With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal….

For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes From fog to endless night?”

(a) Who are ‘them’ referred to in the first line? “

(b) What tempts them?
(c) What does the poet say about their lives?
(d) What do you understand by “from fog to endless night”

QUESTION 11.

Surely, Shakespeare is wicked, the map a bad example,

With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal For lives that slyly turn in their
cramped holes From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children ‘ Wear
skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel With mended glass, like bottle
bits on stones

(a) Why is Shakespeare described as wicked?

(b) Explain, “from fog to endless night.”
(c) What does the reference to ‘slag heap’ mean?
(d) How do they live in their holes?