Reopen schools before June 20 to teach full syllabus: Teachers

CHENNAI: Members of Tamil Nadu Teachers’ Association urged the School Education Department and Chief Minister MK Stalin to reopen schools for classes 1 to 12 before June 20 without reducing the syllabus in the coming academic year.

The final exam for students ended on May 13, following which, the education department announced summer vacation starting May 14. Meanwhile, the higher secondary students of classes 10, 11 and 12 are currently writing their final exam.

Though official sources and School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi have said the schools will be reopened on June 13, there is no official confirmation on the matter.

Hence, recalling how the syllabus was reduced to almost half and schools were working even on Saturdays of every month, the members of TN Teachers’ Association point out that such a step leads to immense stress and anxiety among students. Meanwhile, the teachers are too under pressure to finish the syllabus.

Commenting on this, PK Ilamaran, president of Tamil Nadu Teachers’ Association said, “The schools from September last year have been mostly working six days a week. This to a large extent causes stress to students. Meanwhile, it is also a well-known fact that teachers work under tremendous stress. Hence if the schools are reopened early, a full syllabus can be taught to students by working just five days a week.”

Ilamaran further went on to add that students will be able to perform better in competitive examinations only if the entire syllabus is covered in the coming academic year.

“Teachers along with students are putting complete efforts to catch up on the time lost during COVID-19 induced pandemic. Hence postponing offline classes will raise various issues,” he added.

Teachers express reservations about plan to include moral classes

A section of teachers has expressed reservations about the government recently announcing in the Assembly about including moral classes in schools to prevent teacher-student confrontations and improve student behavior.

“The expert committee to form the syllabus for the moral classes course is yet to be constituted. Still, the scheme will work only when the government switches to knowledge-oriented education instead of marks-oriented system,” said TN Vocational Teachers Kazhagam president SN Janardhanan.

“However, it is not as if government was totally at sea on the moral classes issue,” he said and added that “the Centre provided an NCERT based 72 guidelines on this issue.” However, “the guidelines provided mainly to school heads were never used due to the fixation on marks,” Janardhanan added.

Lamenting that “fixation on marks resulted in teachers lacking the time to provide moral guidance and hence teachers alone cannot be blamed as todays teachers are unable to act against students unruly behavior because of government orders,” said A Srinivasan, Vellore district secretary of the TN Post Graduate Teachers Federation.

“A retired DEO L Sadagopan conducts classes for school heads and teachers annually on how to improve values among students in Vellore,” Janardhanan said. Sadogopan told DT Next that “I along with some retired officials have for the last 15 years conducted value education classes for students on a voluntary basis.”

A section of teachers were happy that the government had at-least made a start on this issue.