IDUKKI:
Samagra Shiksha Kerala
(
SSK
) under the General Education Department of the state government has stopped the recording of online classes for students in the Mannan tribal community.
As a consequence, more than 300 students of the community in Idukki are likely to be without online education. Moreover, their only teacher, Rajimol Rajesh, is back in her village plucking cardamom.
“We stopped the tribal dialect classes for the Mannan tribal community as we failed to find a suitable teacher,” Bindumol D, SSK Idukki district programme officer told TOI.
"We feel that most of the students are aware of Malayalam,” said Bindumol alleging that Rajimol Rajesh had refused to continue with the project.
Meanwhile, Rajimol Rajesh has hit back at the SSK’s claims. “After the first class, I participated in another recording of the tribal dialect. After that, no one from SSK called me. "I am ready to join the project,” added Rajesh who has been earning Rs. 450 a day working in a cardamom plantation.
TOI had reported Rajimol Rajesh's unique approach to teaching in the
Mannan dialect
in July. Her class, wherein she held cutouts of kittens while narrating ‘Thanku Poocha, Meetu Poocha’, a tale popularised by Sai Swetha, an LP school teacher in Kozhikode, had gone viral.
The education department officials had said during the launch of the project that for children of the tribal communities in Kerala, especially those in the 1st standard, Malayalam was often a foreign language. “They usually communicate in their specific tribal languages in their homes and they don't understand Malayalam. We feel that the tribal dialect classes were helpful for tribal students,” the officials had said. As a result, 13 tribal dialects were chosen by SSK as part of its ‘Mazhavil Poovu’ project that offered virtual classes to tribal students.
But unfortunately for Rajimol Rajesh and the students in her community, Mannan is the only dialect that has been scrapped from the project.
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