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While reading through this issue I was disappointed to observe the poor number of best teacher nominations for the awards. You should have been flooded with entries from all parts of the country. However I am sure next year you will get a better response. If there is any way we can help you in this drive, it will be our pleasure.

I firmly believe that teaching is one of the noblest professions. A teacher who is not passionate, who is not totally committed, is not a teacher. A teacher is a role model, a nation builder. He/ she shoulders a heavy responsibility. And the nation needs to support every teacher. In a country endowed with the guru-shishya tradition, we need to do a lot more to uphold the prestige and dignity of teachers.

I congratulate all the teachers who won the awards and those who were shortlisted. They deserve all the kudos and I am sure other teachers will be inspired by the example they have set. If I could have the addresses of the winners I will felicitate them individually. I also want to congratulate you, your dedicated editorial team and TCS for this noble gesture and hard work.

Brig. Sushil Bhasin
Empower Activity Camps
Mumbai

Thanks for your cover story on the National Curriculum Framework 2005 (EW July). It was detailed and well written. As a mother of two school-going children I’m happy to read that the prime objective of the framework is to reduce "curriculum load and the tyranny of examinations". The current school curriculum is too books and exam centric. It does not test whether a child has really understood the concepts behind a theory or idea; students have to merely regurgitate what they learn in class in a year-end exam. Moreover in high school thanks to the curriculum overload students are so stressed that they abandon all extra-curricular and sports activities.

Also the claim made by Union human resource development minister Arjun Singh that the NCF draft is being circulated among educationists, school-teachers and the general public for debate is untrue. At least in the school where my children study neither teachers nor parents have a copy of this draft. And when we asked our local examination board for a copy we were told it’s available only in Delhi!

Suma Gopinath
Bangalore

Congratulations for your detailed cover story on the draft national school curriculum 2005 (EW July). Yours is the first and only publication which has discussed this vitally important document in detail. All the other magazines and newspapers have ignored the draft new curriculum which will shape India’s next generation.

In particular you have done well in highlighting the ivory tower quality of the draft curriculum which hasn’t made any estimate of the resource mobilisation effort required to implement the recommen-dations of the draft NCF 2005. As Dr. Seetharamu has commented it is wholly unrealistic to expect implementation of the proposed new curriculum in our dilapidated school system where little learning is happening currently, without massive investment in school infrastructure.

Moreover I am glad that you have taken the framers of the draft curriculum to task for pussy-footing around the subject of medium of instruction. The steering committee has recommended the three-language formula and primary school education in the mother tongue at a time when even the poorest peasant yearns to provide his children with English learning opportunity as early as possible. As you rightly deduce ‘education for the classes and mere literacy for the masses’ continues to drive the learned framers of the draft new curriculum.

The situation is particularly bad in Karnataka where language chauvinists with an eye on Kannada textbook printing rackets are insistent that English shouldn’t be taught at all until class V. I wonder if these champions of Kannada will step forward when graduates of these govern-ment schools become unemployable because of their poor command of the English language.

Mary Verghese
Mangalore

The special report ‘Educating slum children: Shukla Bose shows the way’ (EW July) made interesting reading. I would like to congratulate the Parikrma team for having evolved a unique and replicable model to educate slum children and EducationWorld for writing about it. Mostly, great initiatives such as Parikrma go unappreciated because Page 3 obsessed newspapers and magazines don’t find them interesting enough to write about.

In a country where more than 90 percent of school-going children attend government schools where the medium of instruction is a vernacular language, I was particularly impressed that Parikrma offers English medium schooling. There is no arguing that the language of global business is English and students who are well versed in English grab the best jobs. Education ministers and bureaucrats should understand that by depriving children an opportunity to learn English they condemn them to a life of poverty.

Ramnath Hegde
Bidar

The teacher-to-teacher column titled ‘Propagating universal religion’ (EW July) has been published at the right time, when the whole world is threatened by strife and religious hatred. The attack on the Ayodhya shrine and the London bomb blasts are recent examples of religious hatred and fanaticism.

As your columnist Jagdish Gandhi rightly observes, today’s school children are confounded by conflicting messages they receive from news media, religious heads, films etc on the issue of religion. In such a scenario a teacher is the right person to build a peaceful and harmonious world.

Simon Avinash
Delhi