Kerala Education Bill The Communist Government of Kerala has succeed in piloting through the Legislature the controversial Education Bill in the teeth of strong, persistent and State-wide protest. The opposition came from all political organizations hostile to the party in power –the Congress, P.S.P. and the Muslim League. While the hastily drafted measure whose authors had no patience to launch a comprehensive investigation into the current educational problems evoked public suspicion and disap [...]

Curate’s Egg For a legislative measure that evoked a very strong popular agitation against it in Kerala and widespread criticism in other States in Kerala Education Bill, as modified by the select committee, was passed by the State Assembly on Monday without a division and with surprising smoothness. The Bill even in its final form retains the much-criticised provision for the State Government’s taking over the management of aided schools in case of mismanagement, but it enables the management t [...]

Education in Kerala What will be the effects of the Kerala Education Bill which has been passed despite opposition both within and outside the State legislature? Will it lead to more efficient running of schools and speedier spread of education in the State? Direct answers to these questions are not contained in the Bill’s provisions several of which have been substantially modified. Teachers, perhaps, may have a better deal and it may no longer be possible for private agencies to mismanage scho [...]

Kerala Education Bill The huge demonstration in Trivandrum this week to protest against the Kerala Education Bill seems to show that a large section of the public is not satisfied with the Bill even after the considerable changes that have been suggested by the Select Committee. It is now clear that the Government were unwise to produce a Bill of this sort without first asking a competent and impartial educationalist to report in the state of primary education in Kerala. If they had done so, the [...]

A Controversial Bill If the previous Governments of what is now Kerala had done anything very substantial for the improvement of education then sweeping condemnation of the Kerala Education Bill would have been better justified. The Bill, indeed, can be much improved through modification and if the Government renounces some of the powers it originally claimed, that should reassure many. The announcement that the panel of teachers would be prepared by the Public Service Commission is welcome and [...]

Regimentation of Education The Education Bill sponsored by the Communist Government of Kerala, has some interesting features. One of them is the provision that teachers in aided schools will be paid directly from the Government Treasury and that they will be entitled to all pension, provident fund, insurance and other benefits available to teachers in Government service. For the ill-paid and irregularly paid teachers this would, of course, be a very welcome measure. The managements of schools wi [...]

Bowing to the Storm In agreeing to withdraw some of the more objectionable features in its Education Bill, the Kerala Government has shown not only tact but a fine sense of its own future interests. Though the main purpose was to give a statutory basis to existing practices, so as to make them easily and strictly enforceable, many of the provisions affecting the rights of managements and custing the jurisdiction of courts were, with some reason, suspected to be an attempt to acquire a strangleho [...]

THE FORTNIGHT AT HOME. The Kerala Education Bill. BY OBSERVER. Even if any measures sponsored by a Communist Government were not ipso facto suspect, there has been sufficient scare mongering by small-minded men in big organizations to prevent an unbiased and cool study of the legislative proposals of the Kerala administration. The ministry too has added to the confusion by some curious and ostensibly untenable statements. Last week it was suggested that the central Government had blessed the pro [...]

Reform of the “Reformers”. The Education Bill, introduced in to the Kerala Legislative Assembly by the Minister of Education, Mr. Joseph Mundassery, has given rise to a storm of protest. A controversialist in Malayalam literature, an unusually forceful critic, who has trodden on too many toes, Mr. Mundassery, obviously, does not mind criticisms. But it is a loss to letters in Kerala that he has, though perhaps only temporarily, withdrawn from writing, to take up administration. One is reminded o [...]

Red Herring The Kerala Government’s Education Bill is strong but necessary medicine. Its several ingredients are meant to cure various specific ills which afflict Primary and secondary schools in the State. For this reason it need not be paraded as a model for all other States to emulate. For the same reason it cannot be fairly examined outside the context of the concrete conditions obtaining in Kerala. What are these conditions? Whereas in India as a whole nearly 80 percent of the people are il [...]