Deskhmukh urges educational institutions to remove gender biases

Pune, June 19 (UNI) Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh today asked educational institutions to remove all gender biases and make efforts to spread awareness against female foeticide to counter social imbalance in society.

The Chief Minister was speaking at the inauguration of the new building of the 123-year-old Huzur Bagh Girls School here for which he announced a donation of Rs 25 lakh.

Mr Deshmukh said that gender balance in society is changing with female foeticides and educational institutions had a role to play in countering it.

He came down heavily on education barons who had made 'education a saleable commodity'. He said these institutions were only 'donation-oriented'. The Chief Minister did not spare the Zilla Parishad Schools and the Municipal Schools. ''The government is spending crores on these schools but the teachers themselves have 'inadequate training', he said.

The standards are low in the Marathi and English medium schools and the management needs to change the education pattern to suit the needs of the times, he observed.

Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil who was also present on the occasion echoed the Chief Minister's views and went further to say that the educational institutions these days were marketing knowledge. ''This is the only area where there are social obligations but the educational institutions are only commercially oriented,'' he said.

Patil said that the NCP-Congress combine felt that educational was the only field that deserved special favours.

UNI