Daijiworld Media Network – Udupi (SP)

Udupi, Sep 16: State primary and secondary education minister, Vishveshwar Hegde Kageri, urged the union government to adopt the policy of supporting mother tongue as medium of instruction, by filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court to that effect.

“As the issue of medium of instruction is before the apex court at present, and as the court has made the union government as a party to the suit, I ardently hope that the centre will take a mother tongue-friendly stance in the issue. We will hold discussions with union human resources minister, Kapil Sibal, and law minister, Veerappa Moily, on this issue,” he explained.

Kageri was addressing a press conference in the city on Wednesday September 15.

Kageri said that under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan of the central government, children studying in schools having a strength of less than 20 have to be shifted to nearby schools. However, the state has issued instructions to close only those schools where the strength is less than five, he revealed. “About 500 such schools have since been closed. Although we have now asked schools with less than ten children to close down, we have not strictly implemented this order, to ensure that the children get quality education,” he added.

He noted that the parents of small children in particular, have a leaning towards schools where the medium of instruction is English. He opined that the government schools also can register good intake of students, if the quality of education is maintained, as English language is also taught there. He sighted the example of Volakadu government school here as an example of schools that have retained their popularity by laying stress on quality education imparted there.

Questioned about the purported saffronization of education, he said the government wants to Indianize the education by making the children aware of the country’s rich traditions and heritage, and thereby kindling in them a sense of pride about the country. While supporting the union government’s initiatives to implement common syllabus for science and mathematics on an experimental basis, he said he is against the human resource minister’s plans to scrap board examinations. He revealed that the second PU examinations will henceforth, be conducted through the examination board. So far, these examinations were conducted by the examination division of the directorate of PU education.

City municipal president, Kiran Kumar, deputy director of public instruction, Dr B V Mahidas, BJP district president, K Udayakumar Shetty and other dignitaries were present at the press conference.