Marathi Schools

Last week my school friends and I had met our primary school’s class teacher. We talked about the good old days. When Mam started telling us about current state of school, tt was sad to hear about the attrition in the students and deteriorating quality of students in Marathi Schools. At our time, we had 2 divisions with 60 students in each division whereas now in 4 standards of Primary school just 150 odd students are present. Due to current policy of “No Exam”, many students and even their parents are not serious about studies. Even in other Marathi schools in South Mumbai, the situation is more or less the same. In fact, Mam went on to say that in next 10 years, most Marathi schools in South Mumbai would be closed, except for Chikitsak, due to Semi English medium and the Sanskrit subject (In Gharat Sir’s own words – Chikitsak will be Girgav’s last “Titanic of Marathi Schools”)

I guess all this was inevitable, once we accepted that if one has to succeed, he has to learn English and not just English, we wanted everyone to learn everything in “English”. I am not discussing whether it was good or bad, what I meant was, it made sure that Marathi/ Vernacular schools would see high attrition in following years. Lack of infrastructure in many Marathi schools is also a one of the reasons for their downfall.

Can something be done? Or is it all downhill from here?