Lone Teacher runs school

Only one teacher has been appointed to take responsibility of running a government school in Madhupur, Jharkhand. In today's video, our young Community Correspondent Mukesh Rajak exposes the inefficient functioning of a school in his community. In the Harijan Colony of Madhupur, 112 dalit children, varying between the ages of 5 and 10, attend a municipal primary school that has only one teach. Suresh Chandra Mehra teaches all the children that attend this primary school. Though he may not be trained in all subjects, he teaches all subjects like Math, English and Science to the kids. Not only this, but he also undertakes the serving of food to children at lunch, and doing administrative work for the school. Although the children at the school are very grateful to Suresh, they are not able to learn properly when he is the only one juggling all the work. "Our teacher does not come regularly, and so we cannot study properly." says one student of the school. The Government of India claims to have had education and literacy as its top priority ever since independence. Operation Blackboard, launched in 1986, was designed so as to provide a minimum of 2 teachers for every primary school. In 2010, the Right to Education was made a Fundamental Right; every child between the ages of 6 and 14 can now demand free and elementary education. The Dalit children of Madhupur can attend school without any problems, but if the government doesn't bother providing the right infrastructure, how will these kids learn anything? Our Community Correspondent Mukesh has grown up in an environment where corruption is rampant in schools, especially those in which under privileged children are the majority. "Even though Suresh Mehra and other villagers have been registering complaints to the government for the last two years, demanding them to better the situation, they have received no positive response. Still, the people have not given up yet."

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• community media
• participatory video
• video volunteers
• grassroots journalism
• activism
• video advocacy
• india unheard
• mukesh rajat
• madhupur
• jharkhand
• schools
• education
• dalit
• harijan
• children
• students
• government
• teachers
• infrastructure