STORY IN SLUG: PRUDENT EXCLUSIVE
DSE defends meet with minority legislators
THE GOAN NETWORK
PANAJI
Diocesan Society of Education (DSE) on Monday justified its move to invite legislators of the minority community to discuss issues related to its schools.
“When regular means fail to achieve the desired results, we need to move towards extraordinary measures,” stated DSE secretary Fr Zeferino D’souza.
“What wrong did we do? All these MLAs belong to our community. We called them and explained to them about the proposals that were stuck in the Education Department. What is wrong in that? I don’t see any problem in that,” he pointed out.
He rubbished justifications given by the Education Department denying permission to a number of their proposals regarding higher secondaries, high schools and primary schools.
“I would not agree with the reasons given by the education department. In some cases they said there are enough schools to cater to the number of students in the area, while in some others cases they pointed at objections raised by other schools. We have even raised objections in the past when a school was proposed in our vicinity. But I don’t think those objections were sustained,” he argued.
He even defended DSE's move to demand a English primary school at Morjim.
“The government’s medium of instruction policy allows minority institutions to open English medium schools. Yet, the Education Department replied to us saying our demand is in contravention to the MoI policy. Later, we asked for permission for opening the same school in Konkani medium. We are still awaiting a response from the department,” he added.
“Who determines our mother tongue? Who says Konkani is the only mother tongue? Why is English subdued when it is widely used in our society today,” he said while raising a point on the principle of 'primary education in mother tongue'.
However, he evaded a question on whether MLAs from other communities will be invited if DSE faces a similar situation in future, stating “let the situation arise.”
