“I will remove politics from education, if I become the Minister for Education,” said Babar Ali, who is said to be youngest headmaster in the world, here on Monday.
Mr. Ali, who runs a free-school at Murshidabad in West Bengal for poor students, was participating in an interactive session with the students of BGS PU College here.
During the interactive session, one of the students asked Mr. Ali what he would like to do if he were to become a Minister for Education. Welcoming the question with a smile, Mr. Ali said, “First thing I want to do is to remove politics from educational sector. Nowadays, if a person wants to get appointed as a teacher in a primary school in my State, he or she does not require merit. The applicant should have political influence and money,” he said.
At the college level, students were involved in activities of various unions that were affiliated to different political parties. “Intervention of politics dilutes the essence of education. The second area I will stress on will be to make the teachers responsible for the growth of their students,” he said.
Medium of isntruction
To another question on the medium of instruction in primary schools, Mr. Ali said that children should be taught in their mother tongue. “In West Bengal, children should be taught in Bengali and similarly, in Karnataka the medium of instruction should be Kannada. Children understand the lessons better if they are taught in their mother tongue. I have understood this through my experience,” he said.
In response to another question, Mr. Ali said that all government officials should send their children to government schools so that government schools could improve.
G. Chandrashekhar, principal of the college, told The Hindu, “We are all impressed by Mr. Ali’s achievements. At a young age, he started his own school and has been teaching poor students for free. For students, it is a rare experience to meet such a great person.”
