Saturday, July 24, 2010

Language pill for minorities

After jobs for Muslims, it's time for quality education. English education, in fact.

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will be walking the next crucial step when he lays the foundation for an English-medium madarsa at Suri in Birbhum on July 31 — possibly the first such madarsa in the country. Over the next few months, each of the state's 12 minority dominated districts will have such institutions.

In February this year, Bhattacharjee — who also holds the minority welfare portfolio — had adopted the Ranganath Mishra Commission's recommendations ahead of the Centre by reserving 10% quota for backward Muslims. And by deciding to set up 14 new English-language madarsas (including three in Murshidabad), the Left Front government has again admitted that it was wrong in dropping English in primary education in the 1980s. The CM had himself acknowledged this while re-introducing English from Class I in 2001.

The rectification process continued with the government setting up state-run English-medium schools this year. It will come full circle with the English-medium madarsas. So far, the teaching medium in Bengal madarsas has been Urdu, Hindi or Bengali.

Full report here Times of India

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