Dear Mr. Mohandas Pai,This has reference to your interview by Sri.G.Mahadevan of Hindu on 26 July, and of which the excerpts have been published in ‘The Hindu’ dated 28 July, 2008.
While thanking you for stressing and elaborating on the need for Kerala to educate its youth for making use of its human capital in a better and different way, let me humbly put a few thoughts in the following lines.
The rulers of Kerala believe that ‘being a literate state’ (as they claim it) is something great. I am sorry to say that they are really illiterate, and are unable to understand the meaning of literacy. You made it very clear that literacy in the modern world is not the ability to read or write alphabets, but literacy should strictly mean “educated with ability to do intellectual jobs”.
The rulers and leaders of Kerala society believe that “Kerala is an educated society”. This, as you hinted in your views, is absolutely false. Kerala is not an educated society. (Please don’t make any comparisons !). Education refers to higher level intellectual activities, and ‘educated’ means having a higher intellectual ability with refined behaviour and ability to do such jobs. Having a large population holding ‘degrees’ (of the useless levels) is not necessarily an educated society.
Firstly, the rulers themselves should be educated and possess a high degree of behavioural and intellectual qualities, with high level of thinking and vision. We, in Kerala, lacks this. Then, how do someone say that ‘Kerala is great’.
Many of us think that “Kerala is God’s own country, and is great”. But its not so. And sadly, no one tries to change that state.
About the “English” skills, you made it very clear. The level of English, even for the Engineering students, is really pathetic. Let all these students go back to school and learn English.
Another important thing to say here is that 'there are no good teachers to teach English in schools and colleges' ( as a matter of fact, for any subject ). Because, teachers are the least paid. They how'll someone like to be a teacher. So, the scraps get into teaching profession (Except a few, who like and chose the profession) .
In Kerala, Teachers (Guru) are not respected. Leave alone respect; did you not hear that a set of students killed their teacher ? TVs showed us how they handle the teachers !
Teachers in Kerala are the lowest paid. A teacher in the 12th standard is paid a couple of thousand Rupees only. A casual worker (manual work, like a painter) gets not less than Rs. 400 per day ! That's over 10,000/- per month. A teacher gets not even half of this !! In this wonderland of Kerala !!!
Dear Pai, please keep telling these people – our leaders, policy makers, and experts. Let them be aware of what’s needed to change.
Wishing you and INFOSYS all the best.
