Page 27 - EducationWorld November 2020

wide. And the possibility of their catching the virus is giv- THEY SAID IT IN OCTOBER
ing everybody the jitters.
“We are taking consent from parents with the help of “We have this unfortunate situation where
Google forms before restarting senior school classes af- everybody from the Supreme Court to the
ter having made all preparations including cleansing and Central government wants to ‘regulate’ the
sanitisation of premises and providing masks, sanitisers media. People, aam janata, by and large are
and face shields. Even so commuting to school and back
poses dangers since children are a high-risk group, and tired and sniggering at us.”
school managements are not fully confident about being Veteran journalist Shekhar Gupta on status of divided
able to maintain social distance among students. On the news media (Business Standard, October 10)
other side, with half the academic year gone we are worried
about preparing our class X and XII students to write their “We are encouraging students, profession-
board exams next March. Teaching children online has its als to stay back and work in India rather than
limitations,” says Sudha Malini, principal of the CBSE- settling abroad. The new National Education
affiliated RMK Senior Secondary School, Thiruverkadu Policy will help us with this by making our
which has an enrolment of 1,700 children and 90 teachers. roots stronger. Stay in India should be our
cross the country, motive through which we can achieve our
Aand certainly in Tam- Prime Minister’s vision of Aatmanirbhar
il Nadu, parents — espe- Bharat. NEP will bring in a new era in India’s
cially in upper middle and
elite households — seem education — from access to assessment,
to be ready to write-off the inclusion to integration that will facilitate edu-
academic year 2020-21 as cation right from the primary level to higher
a gap year during which education in the country.”
children are encouraged Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal, Union HRD minister, speaking at
to develop co-curricular IIT-Roorkee (October 13)
education skills — learn-
ing music, painting, read- “ Seven decades ago, the Dalit icon, B.R.
ing and culinary skills at Ajeeth Ambedkar called the Indian village a ‘sink of
home while attending on- Prasad Jain localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mind-
line classes. “Ninety per- edness and communalism’. Not much has
cent of children studying changed since then, except that our popula-
in classes IX-XII have not been exposed to the external en-
vironment for seven months and are likely to be vulnerable tion has quadrupled. Dalits, especially Dalit
to the Covid-19 virus. With half the academic year gone women, are the worst sufferers of our unjust
and a vaccine likely to be in the market within the next society.”
two months, it’s better to endure the status quo for the rest Editor Aroon Purie on the Hathras (UP) gang-rape
of the academic year,” says Indumathi, a Chennai-based outrage of September 14 (India Today, October 19)
mother of a ten-year-old child enrolled in RMK Senior Sec.
School, Chennai. “Every day she would gather in a classroom
Ajeeth Prasath Jain, former principal of the up- with women from several other cells, where
scale Chennai-based Bhavan’s Rajaji Vidyashram, ranked they would have to study ‘Xi Jinping Thought’.
among the city’s Top 20 schools in EWISR 2020-21, con- As they left, guards would ask them, ‘Is there
curs. “Most of our parents are of the opinion that they can- a God?’ A ‘yes’ would earn a beating.”
not accept any risk to health and lives of their children and
are also worried about elders at home who could become Narrative of religiously persecuted Uighur Muslim
woman in China (The Economist, October 26)
infected. The majority are prepared to wait until the vac-
cine becomes available,” he says.
But at the time of filing this report (November 10) the “The vision of India’s new educational system
state resolve to resume on-campus classes seems to be has been crafted to ensure that it touches the
weakening. There’s a deafening silence on the issue from life of each and every citizen consistent with
the AIADMK leadership and the education ministry in par- their needs and necessities besides creating a
ticular. The shadow of the looming assembly election next just and equitable society.”
summer seems to be forcing a re-think of the issue. Dr. K. Kasturirangan, former chairman of ISRO, on NEP
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) 2020 (The New Indian Express, October 31)

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