Youth in Titora discipline errant teachers

The village of Titora is situated 12 km from the district headquarters. There are 125 families and its total population is 1150. The youth facilitators are Mr Suraj Jatav and Ms Sanjana Jatav.

The major problem faced by the villagers was the lack of commitment of the two teachers who are deputed for the village school. They hardly came to the school, did not pay attention to the needs of the children and even discriminated according to caste. The problem was that one of their relatives was the member of Parliament from the area and the teachers used openly declared that no one could touch them because of their clout.

There were several irregularities in the school. The majority of the pupils are from the SC community and they did not get mid day meals regularly and adequately. In the previous year the scholarship for SC girls was not distributed and the names of girls who passed class 5 was not even recorded so that they could not attend higher education.

The group of boys met the teachers in January 2009 and even volunteered their own services in case they felt that their number was inadequate to handle the school children. However they received empty assurances and the situation remained as poor as earlier. In the middle of February they took the matter up with the Panchayat and with the consent of the Gram Sabha an application was sent to the district education officer. Again no action happened. Finally in July they met the district collector who appointed a female guest teacher. This was not a satisfactory solution since she was responsible for teaching all classes in the school. She also had other departmental responsibilities and situation worsened.

Now the boys along with the Panchayat alerted the media to the issue which received coverage in the local media. Following this the officers from the education department inspected the school and appointed another guest teacher. Since then the school has started functioning regularly. The group is now gearing up to agitate for the complete transfer of the offending teachers.

The next strategy is to encourage drop outs to resume their education. Some progress has already been achieved. Two children of class 2 and 3 have resumed their education after the group talked with their parents. The parents were casual labourers and had taken their children out because they wanted the children to accompany them when they went to work. In another case the family of a field labourer was so convinced about the value of education after talking with group that it not only resumed the education of its two children but on finding that the education in the village left much to be desired it admitted them to the private school in Barkhedi village 10 km away. The children go to the private school by themselves accompanying other children of the area.