Hi all, am passing thru Bangalore (en route to Pondicherry). The morning paper here (Times of India, I would have preferred my old employer Deccan Herald, but the roadside vendor didn't offer a choice) has this small comment.
It referred, and contested, the local Archbishop's view that Catholic children should go to Catholic schools. What do you feel? Of course, after getting caught in the Konkaniwadis-PDF-Shashikala "regional languages only" primary schools policy, the Church-run schools are caught in a bind in Goa. The middle classes are deserting the. The positive unintended consequence is that poorer Hindu or migrant kids are, in turn, deserting the government primaries and flocking to the Church-run schools. My kids attend a "Church-run" school, but not for religious motives. (Personally, I think some amount of brainwashing as a kid is good... it pushes them to think for themselves as to what their stands should be, later on in life.) The school is conveniently close. It was my school a generation ago. And I think the secession-of-the-middle-classes in a time-serving manner is going to badly damage institutions that have taken so long to build. There are reports of some church-linked schools starting English-medium primary schools, without government subsidies. In a migration-oriented place (both out-migration and in) I think this is a less hypocritical stance, than that of all the Konkaniwadis who prefer to send their children to English medium schools or find employment in the better-paying Marathi papers themselves. FN Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel :: This message was sent from the road :: http://fn.goa-india.org
