BENGAL

SFI Calls For Continuous Improvement Of The Education System

B Prasant

THE 31st conference of the Bengal unit of the SFI has called for further improvement of education in the country. It has also stressed the need to consolidate and develop the strong students’ movement that has emerged in Bengal under the leadership of the SFI.  The conference sessions (referred to in the conference report as an endeavour of consolidation) held at Burdwan (renamed Comrade Hiren Mukherjee Nagar) were organised over October 1- 4, 2005.

The conference was inaugurated by the eminent historian and pro-vice-chancellor (academic) of Kolkata University, Dr Suranjan Das, who was critical of the education policy of successive union governments and who pointed to the importance of research in developing the education system. Following the inauguration, state secretary of the SFI, Apurba Chatterjee placed the secretary report.

The report dwelled at length on a series of proposals that the organisation would like to highlight as a way of developing education and making it more pro-people.  The report mentioned at the outset that in order to ensure that students of particular areas and regions received the full benefit of institutional education, school clusters should be set up.

The report also mentions that just as the higher secondary examination was being planned for being held on the basis of class XII curricula and syllabi, so should the secondary examination be organised on the basis of the level of only class X.  The report also notes the need for the pattern of questions set in both these examinations to be changed and modernised.  The report highlights the importance of continuous evaluation of students throughout the academic year.

The SFI would like to see ‘subject baskets’ developed to enable science stream students to go in for arts subject and vice versa.  At the level of the post-graduate examinations, the system of showing corrected answer papers to the examinees was also pointed out in the secretary report of the conference as a means of making the examination system more transparent than it presently was. The report underlines the importance of technical education and calls for a separate ministry to orchestrate all the branches of this form of education for producing better results.

Organisationally, the report speaks about enriching, enhancing, and strengthening the SFI at educational institutions under the banner ‘study and struggle.’ In building up the SFI, the other principle slogans would be: education and jobs for all; struggle against the commercialisation of education; and 10 per cent of the union budget must be spent on education. The conference report calls for making the units in schools and colleges lively, free of mechanised thinking, and alive to the needs of the students.  It also calls for making the student union platforms for the dissemination of a democratic and progressive ideology.

The report exhorted the students to deepen and widen the movement against separatism and divisiveness while building up a struggle based on the problems affecting students belonging to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.  In general, the scope of education should be widened rapidly.  Political education and training is emphasised upon in the secretary report which also calls for the further increase in the penetration among students of the SFI state organ, Chhatra Sangram that completes its fourth decade of existence.

The report raises the following slogans as tasks of the day:

1. Resist imperialist aggression

2. Organise resistance to the commercialisation of education

3. Take the demand for education and jobs to a higher plane in the new situation

4. Struggle to ensure implementation of the Common Minimum Programme

5. Continue and strengthen the struggle to root out communalism

6. Resist separatism and individual terrorism

The report analyses the national situation and speaks about the depth of possibilities in the international situation. 

At the level of the state, the SFI conference calls for the building up of ideological training and self-education and stressed the need to bring in further improvements in the education scene in Bengal.  The SFI would like to see campuses of educational institutions take a more politically active role in ongoing struggles and movements and in the ongoing anti-imperialist struggle.  Finally, the SFI would like to ensure that the organisation is able to leave an imprint of importance in the campaign to re-elect the Left Front government with greater strength.

Among the CPI(M) leadership who addressed the conference were: Biman Basu, the founder-secretary of the SFI, and Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee who addressed the massive open session of the conference.  Also addressing the conference were all-India SFI leaders: Kallol Roy, general secretary and K K Ragesh, president.

The secretary report put up the following important figures about the growth of the Bengal SFI. 

Membership

Students’ Unions 2004-05 

 Apurba Chatterjee and Sudip Sengupta were re-elected secretary and president of the Bengal SFI while Debshankar Roy Chaudhuri continues as the editor of Chhatra Sangram.  The new 93-member state committee includes 13 girl students. The new secretariat has 26 members.  201 delegates were elected by the state conference for the all-India conference of the SFI to be held in Hyderabad during November 17-21, 2005.