Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference Party President and Member of Parliament from Srinagar, Dr. Farooq Abdullah, in his message on Teachers Day, said that societies all around the world are indebted to teachers, who not only impart academic knowledge but also share ethical values, and imbibes morality that shapes a student’s future and through him a nation’s.
“Teachers deserve our utmost gratitude and respect, the students in particular and society, in general, should be deferential towards teachers every time,” said Dr. Farooq while expressing gratitude to all the teachers for their efforts towards nation-building. “The day is marked by the birth anniversary of an iconic teacher and erudite personality, Shri Sarvapali Rada Krishnan. My father Sher-e-Kashmir also started his career as a teacher, at the outset his teaching was confined to the classroom, but eventually, he took it upon himself to change the fate of the entire wretched, poor, illiterate populace of J&K. Education remained on the top of his priority list.”
“One of the foremost decisions that he took soon after the dismantling of the autocratic rule was to set up a university. It was his passion for education that enabled the setting up of the J&K University, which was later bifurcated into Jammu and Kashmir universities with their campuses in Jammu and Kashmir respectively. He also took other drastic measures to increase the literacy rate in J&K. Free and Gender-neutral education; Adult schools were few among the sleuth of measures taken by him that went a long way in furthering the cause of education in J&K,” he said.
He also lauded the teachers for their efforts to impart education to students through online mode during the prevailing pandemic situation. He, however, expressed concern over the plight of teachers in the private education sector, saying that the teachers working in the private sector have been at the receiving end due to the unbroken clampdown and subsequent prevailing lockdown. Most of the teachers in the private sector, he said, continue to remain underpaid.
“There is a great need to do away with the discrimination and end the festering pay anomalies faced by the teachers working in the private sector,” he said.
