Sept 5 honours go to unseen teachers in class of their own

NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 3: A teacher in Jharkhand who has abolished homework for primary classes, another who has aggressively wooed the likes of Saint Gobain and Afcons to contribute to his panchayat school’s infrastructure, a principal who paid out of his own pocket to build a hostel for poor students to arrest drop-outs and another whose innovative classroom teaching modules have been put up on its website by the Intel-USA — they and many more are among the 320 teachers who will be honoured with the National Award by President Pratibha Patil on September 5.

The headmaster of a panchayat union primary school in Vallakkottai in the Sriperumbudur block of Tamil Nadu, V Shamugam felt his duty did not end with the English, Tamil, maths and science classes he took. To get the best for his students, he decided to woo industries to help improve the school infrastructure.

If the school now has the best of sanitary facilities as well as computers courtesy Saint Gobain, infrastructure firm Afcons has sponsored furniture, including wooden screens to separate classrooms, boundary walls, school flooring and stainless steel cutlery. Shamugam even got the Centurion bank to donate footwear for the students and still others to sponsor a speaker system for the school assembly and the stationery. An Australian philanthropist pitched in to help drill a borewell and install a water pump for the school.

“There are poor children in our school and I felt they are also entitled to the best of facilities. I have managed with the public’s goodwill to collect Rs 10 lakh in terms of goods for the school. Our school has been studied as a model for sanitation by education departments of some other neighbouring countries as well,” Shamugam told The Indian Express.

Vijayam Kartha joined the Kerala Public School in Jamshedpur as a librarian-cum-teacher in 1981. The high-profile English-medium, ICSE-affiliated school catered to all except slum children. In 1992, Kartha became the school’s principal and against stiff opposition opened the school to slum children, and simultaneously abolished all homework for the primary sections. Impressed with her approach, the then Deputy Education Secretary took up the issue with other public schools of the area and eight such schools followed suit. What Kartha started with 90 slum children in 1991 has now grown to cover some 7,000 deprived children.

A firm Gandhian, she has ensured that teachers come to school clad in khadi every Monday, tries to have a class continue with the same class teacher for at least three years for continuity and has a system where answer copies are checked by one teacher apart from the subject teacher to ensure fair play.

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