25/08/2009

Poppadum, poppadum, po-ppa-dum

Poppadum, poppadum, po-ppa-dum,
Please bring our teachers back to school
We been languishing and anguishing for so long
And everybody is already down with flu

Poppadum, poppadum, po-ppa-dum,
Lure them and cure them of this jam
We stuck in the middle with a twiddle-thumbing Diddle
Saying "Later, agitator." What a sham!

6 comments:

  1. Is the teacher's strike ethical?

    ReplyDelete
  2. You. are. brilliant.

    And when it goes on for THIS LONG with no real prospects - NO!

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  3. :D I like the full-stop emphasis there. Ooh, I feel good!

    Yesterday, at nine a.m in the morning, my views on the teacher's strike went through an x-ray when my Dad decided to take a "day's mass casual leave", with 200 other colleagues. (He's a professor at IIT Bombay.)

    It was a weird situation at home. I had been ranting on and on about how the teachers were quite unjustified in their strike, and then Dad snucked out and became a part of something similar himself!

    The point to be noted here is, "similar situation". It's a simple fact that the two strikes can't be compared.

    Why?

    Because the IIT profs were smarter. They went on a silent protest for one day, and NDTV was right there, taking hot coffee views straight from the profs themselves. Public consensus, (seems to be) on their side. The MU teachers have been on strike for 41 days now, have had no tangible results (the CM is currently visiting his constituency owing to impending elections in the state, and has curtly told the agitating teachers to meet him after the elections) and do not have a lot of favourable public consensus. IITians (yet) do not have their graduation at stake, but we do. Our mid-term October exams seem to be on the verge of cancellation, and if the strike continues for a month longer, we may have our end-terms in October 2010. Effectively, the turn of events for a month longer determines whether we graduate this academic year or the next.

    But the side of the teachers cannot be ignored. With the Union Finance Minister giving his nod for the required budget allocation, it's the State Education Minister, Rajesh Tope, who refuses to see reason. The CM appears quite blithely unconcerned. The teachers are losing pay, and I personally don't think the strike is easy for them either. What are they to do as well? If for a month and a half of agitating - on such a large scale - turns them over to deaf ears, what will make them be heard?

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  4. Er, Vini. WE JUST ARGUED ABOUT THIS TODAY!

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  5. Yeah, I know :) This post was yesterday. Of course, there's been no message from Nirmolak (yet) about the strike being called off, and till then I'm still wondering what the solution is.

    Another problem is time. A lot of it has already been lost. We could consider the University cutting our portion for our Finals but a) there's a strong possibility that won't happen and b) much as our evaluation system is flawed, does it seem like a compromise if we cut down on the portion?

    And the question still remains. What do you do if your government refuses to listen (after so much)? What is the solution - do you go on strike and compromise the education of lakhs of students, or do you do whatever it takes to make the authorities listen, and keep up the struggle?

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  6. You don't give up on your struggle -- and find a way to save the life of your students.

    Molu tells me that the philo teachers are doing this already.

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goodness.

 My first response to reading this blog again was, seriously, a post on parenting - that was what I last posted about? I can't help but ...