Kerala - Kottayam   

Churches call for talks

KOTTAYAM: Kerala Council of Churches (KCC), an umbrella organisation of various Episcopal churches in Kerala, has called upon the State government, church, community leaders and service organisations representing the academic community to come together and initiate talks on the controversies of the revised content in school textbooks.

In a statement, KCC president Bishop Abraham Mar Paulos, secretary Philip N. Thomas and Bishop Geevarghese Mar Coorilos of the Jacobite Church asked the government to take the initiative in holding talks.

Taking a stance opposed to the one taken by Inter Church Council that the only way out was recalling of the texts, the KCC said such an approach did not represent a sense of accord or logic.

"The need of the hour is interactions and studies in a cordial and open atmosphere," KCC leaders said.

The KCC leaders made it clear that they were against dragging these issues to the streets. They said youth wing of the political parties, church and religious leaders were in the forefront of the move to take things to the street.

KCC welcomed the single-window system for higher education and said the new system was convenient to both the students and parents.

It was also financially less burdensome. They pointed out that the system gives special consideration for the school where the candidate had studied, thaluk and district and said restrictions were in place even earlier. The only difference was that these restrictions have been centralised.

The church body took a serious view of the fact that some of the Christian managements were keeping away from the government’s initiatives of finding a uniform policy, system and admission norms for the professional courses in the self-financing stream and said social justice, rights of students and managements and transparency should be ensured in the professional education system.

They also reiterated their stance that the civil society and the government had the responsibility to bear the expense of education.

The KCC leaders doubted whether the high percentage of pass in the SSLC was a clear pointer to the enhanced quality of education and wanted the authorities to constitute a commission to look into the various aspects of the issues involved and make suggestions.

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