Ravishankar comment draws ire

Mar 23, 2012 |

chennai

Tags:

Distance education

Several government school teachers and education experts on Thursday criticised Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravishankar for his remarks that government schools students were becoming Naxals and demanded an apology from the spiritual guru.

Several prominent persons who have studied in government schools and are currently in top positions in their respective fields also protested on social networking sites like Facebook.

Sri Sri Ravishankar was taking part in the 25th anniversary celebrations of a private school in Jaipur on Wednesday when he remarked that students of government schools took up Naxalism and led a life of violence.

Prince Gajendra Babu of Tamil Nadu platform for public schools said that Ravishankar’s comments were rubbish. “Many important bureaucrats and decisions-makers in the country are products of government schools. They take part in nation-building activities.

There is a sustained campaign to damage the image of government schools and Ravishankar is the mouth-piece of the campaign,” he said, adding that while many private schools were working as money-making machines, only government schools worked for the upliftment of society.

Stating that he was proud to be a government school product, well-known art critic Ms V.R. Devika, said, “I studied in a government school.

Ravishankar did not understand what he was talking about. Young people become Naxals because of inequalities and forceful evictions and unfriendly policies and not because of education. His statement was irresponsible,” she said.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/136342" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-1a3042355eb90529a1d20f3d03b5de45" value="form-1a3042355eb90529a1d20f3d03b5de45" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="88343510" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>