Chennai: School education minister K.A. Sengottaiyan has assured the linguistic minorities in Tamil Nadu that the government would take appropriate steps to appoint language teachers on ad hoc basis.
The minister who had attended a programme in Hosur recently, promised that the state government would protect Telugu and other languages of the linguistic minorities in TN and make necessary arrangements to appoint temporary teachers in those languages in all government schools across TN, according to Dr. C. M. K. Reddy, chairman, Linguistic Minorities Forum of Tamil Nadu.
He welcomed the inclusion of languages of linguistic minorities in school syllabus in TN and appealed to the government to include all the minority languages such as Telugu, Urdu, Malayalam, Kannada, Rajasthani, Sourashtra, Sanskrit etc in school syllabus and prescribe minimum marks for passing classes 10 and 12.
"We welcome the GO making Tamil as a compulsory subject in school but we are anxious not to forego our mother tongue to our students at any cost. We request the government to honor Article 30 of Indian Constitution and provide adequate safeguards to the linguistic minorities living in TN," he said. The linguistic minorities account for a staggering 35 % of the population.
He also thanked the government for appointing Tamil teachers in all the government aided Primary and Secondary Schools in TN since 2014, but urged the government to ensure students sufficient time - up to 2024 as stipulated in the Act, to write compulsory Tamil paper in 10th std, in view of the inordinate delay in starting Tamil teaching to the minority students.
