Kundapur: School life turns nightmarish - Parents protest, complain to govt

Silvester D’Souza
Daijiworld Media Network – Kundapur (SP)

Kundapur, Jul 3: Parents of the students studying in Golihole-Areshirur high school organized a protest on Tuesday July 2 against the inhuman treatment of their children by the teachers of a high school which is managed out of grants of a temple.

The venue of the protest was the premises of Golihole-Areshirur Sri Mookambika Aided High School in the taluk. The villagers of Areshirur, who had been patiently watching the high-handed behavior of an English language teacher and a peon of the school since long, have now decided that enough is enough.

In a letter written to the commissioner in the department of religious endowments, a villager named Vasant S Hegde, has stated that the school has been left to suffer on account of political upmanship. He said that the previous headmaster, Shivaram Bhat, who had been working strenuously for achieving the overall progress of the school even by spending from his own pocket at times, was transferred because of political conspiracy hatched by the managing director of Kollur Goddess Mookambika Temple governing council, Krishnaprasad Adyantaya, and teachers of this school, Vishwanath Shetty and Govind Gonda.

He has alleged that one of the teachers, Vishwanath Shetty, has been in the habit of beating up and assaulting the students at the slightest pretext. “When the parents question his behaviour, Shetty gives the stock reply that to get better marks in the examinations, there is no other go but to employ this method. A large scale political conspiracy has worked behind the silence owned by the school development and monitoring committee of the school and the concerned department about physical abuse going on in the school, which is barred by law,” he claimed, speaking to the media.

One of the students alleged that the teacher in question, Vishwanath Shetty, who has been working in this institution since the last several years, had slapped him on June 8 for not being able to memorize the spelling of a word. Since then, he has remained absent from school. “I find learning English language difficult. If a question is suddenly posed, I get confused. If I make a mistake, I get beaten up. Hence I have decided to be absent from school,” he explained.

The parents of several students want a proper response from the education department and school development and monitoring committee for such student dropouts in the face of prevalence of corporal punishment in this school. The protestors also recollect that after a girl student’s head was held by her hair and banged against the wall by the teacher, she had to be admitted into a private hospital for treatment.

When the protest was on, all the teachers were seated on benches laid inside the class rooms. But peon of the school named Ganesh, who was sitting on a desk, had spread his legs on a bench. This is just an example about the overbearing power wielded by this employee in the school. Many students say that this peon gets his work done through the school students.

“We are not hell-bent on getting back our previous headmaster, Shivaram Bhat. But we are fed up with the harassment and violent behavior of Vishwanath Shetty and Ganesh,” the students were heard pleading.