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Education News

modest Rs.12,000 per month. With too few takers, con- THEY SAID IT
tract teachers lacking adequate subject knowledge are
signed up to teach children. This situation is getting worse “Viewed through the prism of brutality, thus,
and has adversely impacting enrolments in government history has few heroes. If the Mughals were
schools,” says Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary violent, it was not because they were Mu-
of the State Platform for Common School System, Tamil ghals; it was because they were royal.”
Nadu, adding that 18,862 teachers’ posts are vacant in Manu S. Pillai, historian and author, on many justifying
government schools. the NCERT’s deletion of chapters on Mughals in
To arrive at its conclu- school textbooks by pointing to their brutality (Times
sions about poor infra- of India, April 14)
structure, CAG personnel
sampled 108 government “India’s primary advantage in embracing the
schools and reported a China-plus-one challenge is the country’s
44 percent shortage of
classrooms in 48 schools demographic profile. We must devote more
equivalent to 227 class- attention to our children, youth and women to
rooms. Consequently, it’s realise our demographic dividend fully.”
not unusual for classes to Prince Gajendra Babu Viral Acharya, professor of finance at New York
be conducted in the open, University’s Stern School of Business, on why
under the shade of trees, under-construction buildings India needs an action plan to cash its demographic
and makeshift classrooms. Statewide, the CAG report es- advantage (Mint, April 20)
timates the shortage of classrooms at 11,711.
owever, some educationists contest CAG’s conclu- “Time for all of us to hang our heads in shame:
Hsions that poor infrastructure and teacher shortage India slips in World Press Freedom Index,
are the prime causes of declining standards in government ranks 161 out of 180 countries.”
schools. “It is not as if all private schools have good infra- Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP (Twitter, May 3)
structure. Small private schools in rural areas are run in
small houses and yet attract a sizeable number of children. “IIT should not be merely an educational
Infrastructure development is an ongoing process for all institute but become laboratory of pub-
schools. However, the teacher shortage is real. In all, there lic welfare ‘Lok-Kalyan’. IIT must be hub of
are 45,000 vacancies across the state in primary, second-
ary and higher secondary schools and a large number of entrepreneurship. The students must aspire
high schools function with one or two graduate teachers. to be job creators not just job seekers. IITians
For the enrollment decline, one also needs to look at long- must become the face of new India with no
term demographic data such as rural-urban migration,” discrimination.”
says Aruna Rathnam, a former education and child Dharmendra Pradhan, Union education minister,
protection specialist at Unicef, Chennai, and member of addressing the convocation ceremony of IIT-Bombay
the Murugesan Committee, constituted to formulate the (May 3)
state education policy.
Yet the elephant in the room that CAG and other re- “Seeing the tears in the eyes of sportsper-
ports side-step is the Tamil pride policy of the DMK and sons who won laurels for the country by their
predecessor governments. In government schools, Tamil dedication and hard work is very painful.
is the medium of instruction with English taught as the Their grievances should be heard, and justice
second language (and Hindi mandated under the three- be given.”
languages formula not taught at all). In private schools,
it’s the other way around, i.e, English is the medium of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, secretary of the All-India
Congress Committee on the protest by Olympic
instruction. Although politicians don’t seem to be aware, wrestlers against alleged sexual harassment (May 5,
every upwardly mobile household countrywide wants Telegraph)
their children to be proficient in English, the link lan-
guage of India, of the courts, business and international “Wake up and smell the coffee. (Article 370) is
communication. history. The sooner people realise it, the bet-
Tamil pride is all very well. But parents aren’t ready
to bet their children’s future on it. That’s why the falling ter it is.”
enrolment of Tamil Nadu’s government schools. S. Jaishankar, Union external affairs minister at the
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) meet of SCO foreign ministers (May 5)

26 EDUCATIONWORLD MAY 2023