After a watching the sizzling performance of Indian badminton player PV Sindhu in the Rio Olympics, the Delhi University teachers are raising voice to revive Physical Education.
Alleging that lack of sports facilities in universities are responsible for the poor performance of the country in global events like Olympics, Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) are demanding for the improvement of the infrastructure.
“The spectacular performance of a few at Olympics can be credited to individual’s initiative rather than system and societal support. To cater to about 1.8 lakh students, DU has less than 100 qualified Physical Education teachers in over 75 colleges,” said the DUTA President Nandita Narain on Friday.
“The university does not consider Physical Education as an academic subject during admissions and this proves that there is no seamless integration between schools and colleges,” she added.
The DUTA has demanded that the university chalks out a sports policy for the university so the students can be provided with an action plan and infrastructure to pursue their career in sports besides academics.
The teachers also said in a bid to professionalise physical education, to attract talent and to recognise the importance of the discipline of Physical Education, Delhi University through its Academic and Executive Council, took the initiative to grant recognition to Directors of Physical Education (as the teachers were earlier known as) as teachers and designated them as lecturers in Physical Education way back in 1981 which they said was the period of empowerment till 2010.
She said from 2010, with the introduction of the Semester System, sports began to face a “decline” because of the “limited time available to students for participating in sports, training coaching camps and for sports administration to organise inter-college sporting events within the constraints of the new academic calendar with University exams being held twice a year”.
The teachers alleged that the DU sports ground
was closed.
They blamed frozen recruitment and promotions of ad hoc teachers who are working as Physical Education teachers in huge numbers.
They also condemned the recently wiithdrawn Physical Education course in Bhagini Nivedita College (Kair) calling it “illegal”.
The DUTA in its appeal to the university demanded taking back the actions which left the Physical Education careers in lurch.