This duty stinks

Last month, the Haryana government turned teachers into preachers. Now, the Bihar government wants them to be missionary photographers. Primary and middle schoolteachers have been instructed to click people defecating in the open — an activity fraught with the danger of turning unsavoury — as part of the state’s Open Defecation-Free campaign. Teachers in our country seem to be a dispensable lot, notwithstanding the fact that strengthening of the education sector should be a priority as most of our woes can be traced back to lack of proper schooling. Come any odd scheme, and the governments zero in on tutors to commandeer their services. While Census and poll duties have routinely been assigned to them, the present government’s push for its agendas is leading state governments to assign teachers to jobs that have little to do with their primary work of building the building blocks of the nation — the children.  

By engaging tutors for sundry work, the authorities betray a worrying oversight regarding the long-term and urgent task of meeting the challenges in school education. This distraction of teachers from secular pedagogical work to other engagements will only render their already poor report card poorer. The authorities seem to have consigned to the bin the Annual Status of Education Report-2016 released in January that revealed disappointing levels of basic learning (reading, arithmetic, etc) in primary students. Worse, the poor situation of both teachers and the taught persists even after 2009 when the Right to Education Act came into being. 

Often, as in Tamil Nadu these days, government teachers find themselves constrained to protest for a hike in their paltry wages. A Madras High Court judge has admonished them for the strike since only five of their students had secured medical seats. And, those criticising the judge on social media are facing the law. Admitted, the teachers must show results, but the government too must provide them the optimum environment. Only then can they feel themselves involved and accountable for the performance of the children.