Exhorting teachers to wage a war against illiteracy, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that improving education standard was a big challenge for the state government and teachers were the cornerstone of this campaign.
“It is a priority of the government to improve quality of education in the state. We have taken several measures which have started showing results in the last five months. We are confident that we will be able to make a turnaround in the years to come,” Yogi said while addressing a function `Rajya Adhyapak Puraskar Samaroh’ on Teacher’s Day in lucknow on Tuesday.
Without naming the district, the CM spoke about a teacher who transformed school under `School Chalo Abhiyaan’ by changing the style of teaching and keeping the environment around the school clean. “The enrolment of students increased in no time by bringing about these changes,” he said.
Yogi inister said, “Dedicated teachers should be honoured but the present trend is that those teachers who pull strings win awards. This should change. I am of the view that cash reward for teachers should be Rs 25,000 not Rs 10,000 as they get now. I believe that the retirement age of teachers who win state recognition should be 65 years,” he said.
The CM said that a big question haunts the civilized society whether Uttar Pradesh was ready to produce a `genuine’ teacher. “Around 2 decades back teachers from UP were found all over the country, but this ios not so anymore. This is a fact that UP does not produce quality teachers anymore and this trend should change,” he said.
“We are facing a piquant situation like lord Budha passed his whole life in UP and Bihar but research on his life is done in Mayanmar, Japan, Korea and China. We do not want to do anything. We resist from talking about ‘Sanatan dharma’ and ‘Veda’ fearing that people will start branding us ‘communal’. This is our philosophy but we find its reflection in international airports and not on Indian airports,” he said.
Deputy Chief Minister Dr Dinesh Sharma said that the first teacher of any child was his `parents’ and his first school was his family. “Schools and colleges only add sheen to this knowledge,” he said.
Chief Minister gave ‘Rajya Adhyapak Puraskar’ to eight teachers, ‘Saraswati Award’ to five teachers and ‘Shiksha Sree Award’ to 10 teachers.