Help wanted: 25lac teachers

Teacher's Day is around the corner and Shashi Tharoor's column in this Sunday's Times of India talked about the state of teaching and education in India today. He said that "in India, teachers are too often underpaid, under-appreciated and therefore under-motivated."

He went on to say:

"Teachers are, or should be, the biggest influence on their impressionable charges, at least after the parents. Their impact on young lives is profound and long lasting. They shape the character, curiosity level and intellectual potential of their students. In other words, they help shape our society.

Of all the many paradoxes with which our country abounds, the saddest must be that we are a country where nearly half the population is illiterate but which has produced the world's second largest pool of trained scientists and engineers. A country which invents more sophisticated software for US computer manufacturers than any other country in the world, and yet, in which there are at least 35 million children who have not seen the inside of a school.

On a typical day, roughly 290 million students are attending classes somewhere in our country. And yet, India has made only uneven progress in educating its population. Our national literacy level officially stands at 66%. But one must be wary of these official figures. UNESCO defines an illiterate person as one who cannot, with understanding, both read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life. By that definition, i fear that fewer than half our population would really qualify as literate. And while Kerala has a literacy rate of nearly 100%, Bihar is only at 44% (and has a female literacy rate of only 29%). No wonder, we are ranked 147th out of 177 countries measured for literacy by UNESCO."

To read the whole article click here.

To make a difference, sponsor the salary of a teacher for one month for Rs1000 (appx US$23) through the NGO Development Research & Action Group (DRAG).