ITANAGAR, Jul 30: The All India Federation of University & College Teachers’ Organization (AIFUCTO) has opposed the new education policy and said that “it will not be tolerated.”
Referring to the country’s struggle in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, the AIFUCTO said that “the central government considered it an opportunity to implement its ideology on the entire nation.”
“The national education policy (NEP) is not the reflection of collective consensus of the nation, nor does it exhibit the democratic views of all stakeholders, including the AIFUCTO. The claim of the government that before finalizing the policy wide range consultation has been made is merely eyewash and pretensions. Only persons with ideological affinity with them have been consulted.
They didn’t have the patience for approval in the parliament for reasons best known to the government,” AIFUCTO general secretary, Prof Arun Kumar said in a press statement on Thursday.
The AIFUCTO also said that with the unbridled spree for privatization of key public sectors, the present NEP would privatize the entire system, dealing a death knell to the AIFUCTO’s struggle for democratic, secular, scientific and inclusive education.
“Market, corporate and fundamentalist forces will take advantage of the situation and demolish the constitutional foundation of our education system. Democratic rights of the teachers and the autonomy of the institution will collapse like a house of cards,” it said.
It also said that the emphasis on online system of teaching and examination would open the system to commercialization and deprive a vast majority of the students of the benefits of the knowledge revolution of the 21st century.
“The communal overtone of the policy will rob from the students’ minds scientific temper and make them victims of emotional frenzy,” the AIFUCTO said.
It also claimed that the structural changes made in the policy is “mere cosmetic and has nothing to with quality education.”
“The phasing out of the affiliating system, provision for multidisciplinary institution and design to change curriculum will have a disastrous impact on the fate of the teachers and our pluralistic cultural diversity. There is no concrete roadmap for resource mobilization. That means the entire NEP is meant to consolidate the forces of centralization, communalization, corporatization, and commercialization,” Prof Kumar said.
The AIFUCTO rejected the NEP and appealed to all democratic, progressive and patriotic citizens of India to oppose the “anti-people, anti-students and anti-teachers policies inherent in the NEP.”
