Page 23 - EducationWorld September 2020

such as FITJEE and Aakash in which test prep course fees THEY SAID IT IN AUGUST
are Rs.2-3 lakh. This year, a large number of thoroughly
coached and prepared students couldn’t reach their cho- “In the year after the pandemic schools will
sen exam centres because of lockdown-related problems. have to revisit, in some part at least, the
Although the state government had asked all state instruction undertaken during the pandemic
public transport utilities to commence services from 5 months and allow their students some lee-
a.m from September 1-6, several candidates from North way to accommodate the gaps that may have
24 Parganas, Berhampur, Malda and Siliguri districts
claimed they had to endure long waits braving monsoon crept in... e idea is not to treat them with kid
rains to get buses to reach their test centres, even as lo- gloves.... rather focus on allowing children to
cal train services remained suspended because of local regroup and resettle after the unnatural times
lockdowns. of the pandemic.”
he desperation of Historian Sharmistha Gooptu on how to correct for
Tschool-leavers in the unevenness of home-based schooling post the
the state to write IIT- pandemic (Times of India, August 20)
JEE and NEET is under-
standable. During 34 “Although nurseries routinely use the
years of uninterrupted rhetoric of play-way, their programmes are
rule (1977-2011) of the
CPM (Communist Par- mostly a downward extension of school.
ty of India-Marxist)-led is social reality makes early childhood
Left Front government education in its present form a mixed
in West Bengal — once blessing. By promoting foundational literacy
post-independence and numeracy as a key educational target of
India’s most industri- early schooling, we are likely to further stress
alised state — there was an already embattled childhood.”
a continuous flight of Mamata Banerjee Krishna Kumar, former director of NCERT, on the NEP
capital out of the state. 2020 and perils of prematurely imparted literacy (The
As a result, unemployment has become a major problem Hindu, August 27)
inherited by the Trinamool Congress government led by
stormy petrel Mamata Banerjee who routed the Left Front “ e New Education Policy has set ambitious
in the historic state legislative election of 2011, and again goals. It is short, however, on how these goals
in 2016. Nevertheless with a population of 7.6 million will be achieved… where will we find teachers
registered unemployed youth, engineering and medical
degrees are widely regarded as the only hope for gainful who will be able to deliver these? How will we
employment. Hence the hysteria over IIT-JEE and NEET replace or transform inadequately prepared
exams. and poorly incentivised and often absent
With the next assembly elections less than a year away, teachers that currently exist?”
political commentators in Kolkata believe that Banerjee’s Bhagwan Chowdhry, professor of finance at Indian
aggressive stand against holding these entrance exami- School of Business, Hyderabad, on NEP 2020 imple-
nations amid the Covid pandemic has struck a respon- mentation challenges (Deccan Herald, August 27)
sive chord in the state’s struggling but influential middle
class. Meanwhile, promulgation of the National Educa- “At a time when India faces a huge threat from
tion Policy (NEP) 2020 by the BJP government on July COVID; at a time when the economy is in deep
29, has been interpreted as a policy to radically privatise trouble; at a time when people are struggling
education and has rubbed the state’s influential intelli- to get businesses back on track; when China
gentsia the wrong way. Moreover, the Centre’s insistence has virtually invaded a part of Indian terri-
on staging these crucial public examinations amidst the tory and refuses to back off — at this time, the
pandemic has disenchanted the students’ community.
The IIT-JEE and NEET ill-wind that blew over West wall to wall, tabloid, grotesque TV coverage of
Bengal seems to have done Banerjee some good. The the Sushant Singh Rajput story is even more
West Bengal legislative assembly elections are scheduled sickening.”
for next summer with Banerjee facing a third term anti- Nidhi Razdan, associate professor of journalism,
incumbency wave. Harvard University, on the television coverage of the
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Sushant Singh suicide story (www.ndtv.com)

SEPTEMBER 2020 EDUCATIONWORLD 23