The recent row between the current dispensation in office and the Rehbar-e-Taleem teachers community has caused an unbecoming uncertainty in the state. The dispensation is adamant to give at least some of the inservice lot a screening test, while the teachers on their part are sure to be not a fit case for the same. The views that are put forth by the two sides as the part of their justifying campaign have so far failed to convince any one of them, resulting a deadlock and a widening breach of trust between the two important players of educational system of the state. The conflict that has now proportionated into grudges between the state as the employer and the teachers as the employees is pointing towards a more dismal picture of the state of affairs of the education of poor students rather govt school education.
In such a situation, it was the think tank comprised of the intelligentsia to come forward to clear the air of subjective interpretations by providing a more objective analysis of the row. However those who rushed to write with a wrong fed conscience brought only further entanglement. They declared an aspirant an ret and weaved a whole fabrication over that very presumption.
An urgent improvement in education system is the need of hour and anybody intending to start a process aiming at that very objective must be appreciated and supported by every one. However, this urgent and long pressed desire should never be used as an opportunity to promote wholesale harassment and arrogance with out considering the greater cause of collective good. Natural justice demands that no person should act as a judge for his own cause(nemo iudex in causa sua) and the opposite side must be given a hearing judiciously(Audi alteram partam). Thus the dispensation as such must motivate the general public of its gueniuenty of thought and action. It must also uphold the principle of no manipulation and ex post facto.
Then and then only can a required mass public support be garnered for the steps taken by it. No doubt in a welfare state the govt should provide a qualitatively comparable kind of education to its subjects. It should ensure that no officiation whatever kind of essentiality is allowed to take toll on the very basic objective of teaching learning process. Ironically since the moment the rich and the middle class people have withdrawn their children from govt schools and these schools have been virtually confined to the children of unprivileged stratum of the society, the officiation has taken the front seat.
The only difference between the govt owned and the private sector schools(who deserve to be appreciated for their good work and not taken to be as ' the other') is of the oversupplied officials, who as their part of work, keep interfering in the main activities of the govt schools. The desire of an improvised system of education is as such a mere dream in the absence of any steps rectifying the same. The curriculum and management is to be upgraded to give the lost credibility of govt schools a flip to recover. Further more, policies are made for future, not to dig the past as it was never there, but a lesson for the present. Let a good intention not fall flat for a wrong step of false prestige.
Fayaz Ahmad Wagay,Yaripora.
(Maraz Adabi Sangam, Shopian)