Editorial:-
Winter refuses to leave, but the winter break in schools across the State has ended. The rush for uniforms and textbooks is already underway, and by this time next week Sikkim should have a clear idea on whether the Department that is responsible for education in the State has done any learning while the students and teachers were away. The Department had announced that uniforms and textbooks would be waiting for students when schools reopen. Time to check and ascertain this claim. Also this session, moral science and disaster management will return and debut as independent subjects in classrooms. The embarrassment of copy-editing blunders in school textbooks is barely a year old and one hopes that the new syllabus has been more professionally put together and that the transition of these subjects into classrooms is smoothly handled. One also hopes that students are not made to waste time and energy awaiting the appointment of designated teachers for them. One also hopes that the new academic session will be more about students and schools and less about departmental hierarchies and ‘projects & schemes’ or the complaints of ad-hoc teachers or the pettiness of politics in teacher or student associations – a very plausible situation in an election year. One hopes that this year, the Department will busy itself more with improving the infrastructure in schools rather than occupying itself with arranging transfers [save when it is to fill vacancies]. This is election year and pressure tactics can be expected to be at its severest to unravel some of the bolder decisions [transfers and staring down the ad-hoc protests being some of them] taken by the Department in the recent past to staff rural schools more adequately. That said, the impact of the 18 September 2011 earthquake on government school infrastructure has still not been repaired to complete normalcy yet, and excuses are now truly running out. School infrastructure should be priority No. 1. It should already have been [through the winter break]. Many laudable and ambitious programmes and scholarships have been initiated in the recent past to attend to student aspirations, and while these have been path-breaking and heart-warmingly successful, these are still available only to students already strong in academics. As a new academic year begins, one hopes that similar efforts are also directed at the ‘average’ and even, for want of a better word, ‘academically underperforming’ students. One also hopes that the process begins to make school interesting so that fewer students drop out. One hopes that there are fewer schools this year which are short-staffed and more teachers who motivate learning.
Winter refuses to leave, but the winter break in schools across the State has ended. The rush for uniforms and textbooks is already underway, and by this time next week Sikkim should have a clear idea on whether the Department that is responsible for education in the State has done any learning while the students and teachers were away. The Department had announced that uniforms and textbooks would be waiting for students when schools reopen. Time to check and ascertain this claim. Also this session, moral science and disaster management will return and debut as independent subjects in classrooms. The embarrassment of copy-editing blunders in school textbooks is barely a year old and one hopes that the new syllabus has been more professionally put together and that the transition of these subjects into classrooms is smoothly handled. One also hopes that students are not made to waste time and energy awaiting the appointment of designated teachers for them. One also hopes that the new academic session will be more about students and schools and less about departmental hierarchies and ‘projects & schemes’ or the complaints of ad-hoc teachers or the pettiness of politics in teacher or student associations – a very plausible situation in an election year. One hopes that this year, the Department will busy itself more with improving the infrastructure in schools rather than occupying itself with arranging transfers [save when it is to fill vacancies]. This is election year and pressure tactics can be expected to be at its severest to unravel some of the bolder decisions [transfers and staring down the ad-hoc protests being some of them] taken by the Department in the recent past to staff rural schools more adequately. That said, the impact of the 18 September 2011 earthquake on government school infrastructure has still not been repaired to complete normalcy yet, and excuses are now truly running out. School infrastructure should be priority No. 1. It should already have been [through the winter break]. Many laudable and ambitious programmes and scholarships have been initiated in the recent past to attend to student aspirations, and while these have been path-breaking and heart-warmingly successful, these are still available only to students already strong in academics. As a new academic year begins, one hopes that similar efforts are also directed at the ‘average’ and even, for want of a better word, ‘academically underperforming’ students. One also hopes that the process begins to make school interesting so that fewer students drop out. One hopes that there are fewer schools this year which are short-staffed and more teachers who motivate learning.
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