COIMBATORE : At a time when the Tamil Nadu education department is gearing up to set up smart classrooms in government schools, Coimbatore Central Prison is leaving no stones unturned to impart basic lessons to its inmates. A total of 120 convicts are rushing to enrol for smart classes set up by the prison department. Until a month ago, convicts looked down upon the blackboard and only 40 of them had shown interest in attending the classes. The classes are organised by the prison department in an effort to educate the convicts, most of whom come in as illiterates. They start from learning alphabets and numbers.
In February, after the Prison Department had managed to set up smart classrooms with projector and speakers, the number of convicts attending the basic education classes increased to 120. Prison senior teacher K Sakthivel confirms this development. “The inmates are eager to attend the classes as they can understand better through the smart class education system.” He says though they may have been notorious persons earlier, they will be being treated with a lot of respect by his students regardless of the cases against them.
Apart from convicted prisoners, undertrial prisoners in the ‘Sub Jail’ and ‘Wall Made’ jail block are also given basic education in the newly set up smart classroom. “As the Sub Jail has first-time offenders and the ‘Wall Made’ jail blocks have habitual offenders, classes are conducted at different places at different times to ensure that they don’t meet or interact with each other,” an official source in Coimbatore Prison told The Sunday Standard.
Prison officials say that the model is also being used to impart Thirukkural and Aathichudi and is part of the prisoners’ reformation programme. They hope that the moral value classes have taken away value outside the prison for the undertrials. The teachers use the smart system and play videos to take classes on Thirukkural and Aathichudi.