Page 26 - EW Jan 2024_Neat

Education News

KARNATAKA children — especially
Toilets cleaning row girl children — drop-
ping out of senior school
is lack of clean, usable
wo back-to-back incidents and separate toilets for
of children in government them. According to the
Tschools being forced to clean Annual Status of Educa-
toilets of their schools have provoked tion Report 2022, 24.2
public outrage in the state. The first percent of the state’s
incident was reported on December government schools had
18 when photographs and video “unusable” toilets and
clips of some students of the Morarji 8.5 percent didn’t have
Desai Residential School in Malur, separate girls’ toilets as
Kolar district, cleansing toilets under mandated by the Right
a teacher’s supervision went viral. of Children to Free and
Four days later on December 22, Girls toilet inauguration: caste shadow Compulsory Education
another incident of students clean- (RTE) Act, 2009.
ing toilets of a government higher water, maintenance of libraries, play- However these incidents and the
primary school in Bengaluru was grounds, laboratories and lavato- indignant middle class reaction to it
reported. After a flash protest by ries. Self-evidently this allocation is has prompted enlightened educa-
parents, the state government sus- wholly inadequate for school campus tors to discern a shadow of India’s
pended the headmistress of the latter and infrastructure maintenance. shameful and ineradicable caste sys-
school. Chandrashekar Nuggali, tem under which low-end jobs such
Madhu Bangarappa, minister general secretary of the Karnataka as disposal of civic waste and cleans-
for school education and literacy of State Primary School Teachers As- ing of toilets is off-loaded to lowest
the state’s recently elected Congress sociation, met with chief minister castes of the Hindu varna system.
government, strongly condemned Siddaramaiah on December 26 and In countries such as Japan, it is
both incidents. “The government will submitted a memorandum de- “routine for students to clean up
not mince words in criticising this. manding that the state government their classrooms and toilets at the
We will ensure that such incidents do transfer the onus of maintenance end of every day. If government
not repeat again. I will act in the days of government schools including schools don’t have sufficient funding,
to come. This is shameful,” he told cleaning of toilets and classrooms, teachers should set an example to
media personnel. to local governments. “It’s not the students and join with them to clean
However these incidents have job of teachers to maintain school school premises. In this connection
raised the larger question of why infrastructure. We have demanded it’s pertinent to recall that Mahatma
children shouldn’t learn hygiene that in rural areas, the government Gandhi had no problem with clean-
and sanitation in their early years by entrust the responsibility of cleaning ing toilets. In his Sabarmati Ashram
cleaning toilets of their own schools. toilets either to the gram panchayat everyone including himself and wife
Particularly, since unlike private in- or direct private CSR (corporate Kasturba had toilet cleaning duties.
stitutions, government schools don’t social responsibility) funds to be If children learn to keep toilets clean
employ housekeeping staff. used to maintain toilets in govern- from young age, the whole country
In the state’s 49,679 government ment schools. In urban areas such as will become cleaner and the cruel
schools the management is obliged Bengaluru, the city municipal cor- caste system will suffer a blow. All
to maintain the school campus in- poration which has a large number schools should encourage children
cluding toilets. The state’s education of civic workers, should be given the from young age to take up cleanli-
ministry allocates every government additional responsibility of keep- ness tasks including classroom and
school an annual maintenance sum ing government schools clean. Most toilet cleansing,” says Prof. A.S.
dependent on student enrolment — government schools get a meagre Seetharamu, former professor of
Rs.20,000 per annum for schools Rs.8,000 per month for cleaning/ education, Institute of Social & Eco-
with 50 students, Rs.28,000 for upto maintenance and providing potable nomic change, Bengaluru.
100 students, Rs.33,000 for 500 water. This is wholly insufficient,” But with the caste system deeply
students and Rs.45,000 for over 501 says Nuggali. entrenched within the middle class
students. Principals/teachers are Unsurprisingly, one of the most and intelligentsia, this good advice is
obliged to spread this modest annual off-putting characteristics of govern- likely to fall on deaf ears. Emulating
provision to cover supply of drinking ment schools and a major cause of Japan’s excellent institution mainte-

26 EDUCATIONWORLD JANUARY 2024