CHENNAI: “The matriculation syllabus is closer to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), but the Samacheer Kalvi looks like it will increase the gap rather than bridge it,” said Suresh Kumar, a lawyer, while speaking about the uncertainty of the future of the samacheer kalvi scheme, at a discussion organised by the GK Vasan Pasarai (GKVP), on Wednesday, on the nuances of the scheme.
Raja Mohan, state leader of the organisation, pointed out that even though there were four different boards of education up till Class X, all of them were permitted to join Class XI if they passed. “What can be more equal than this? You can’t stop the person who is running first in the race and tell him to wait for the last runner to catch up,” he said. Raja Mohan also said that the idea of Samacheer was to give everyone equal opportunity, not pull down everyone to a lower standard.
Christudoss, a member of the Samacheer Kalvi text book panel, also presented his view on how the group worked. “We wanted to involve the younger generation in the process. We also wanted to bring up the standard of primary education,” he said. Speaking on the lack of infrastructure in government schools, he said, “It is easy to print many books. The important thing is to build schools with proper facilities.” However, these claims were refuted by educationist Ratna Sabapathy, who said that all government schools are not bad and not all private school following higher syllabi were good, “Samacheer was not even in the picture. It has been blown up. Right now the issue is quality of text books. Why are people not happy with the books? Force feeding facts is not quality education.
Sabapathy also said, “In criticising the books, you put down the hard work of so many hard working teachers. You cannot say its ok to put `200 crore down the drain, the kids are what is important.”