Teachers seek protection Act, moral science classes

VELLORE: The Madanur Government Higher Secondary School incident where a Class 12 student abused and threatened to attack a teacher has forced teachers associations to reiterate their long-pending demand for an act to ensure their safety, according to TN Vocational School Teachers Association state president SN Janardhanan.

“We have been seeking legal protection from 2014 when two teachers were attacked by students in two Chennai schools,” said TN primary school teachers Association’s Vellore district secretary A Srinivasan.

Pointing out that associations were regularly demanding such an act on par with that provided for doctors, TN PG Teachers Association’s Vellore district secretary RS Azis Kumar wondered why the government was dragging its feet on the issue when there was no financial issue involved.

Whenever we raise the teachers’ protection act demand during interactions with officials we get the standard reply that such incidents won’t be allowed to recur, Janardhanan said.

Association members also are slowly starting to demand the return of moral science classes in schools. Such classes were stopped more than two decades and after government prohibited corporal punishment, incidents of students abusing teachers have increased, they said.