Chennai: Amid widespread outrage over a guest speaker publicly humiliating a visually impaired teacher, who had confronted him for his unscientific discourse to Government school students, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Friday announced that fresh guidelines would be drafted to streamline events in schools across the State.
A few days ago, the Government Higher Secondary School, Saidapet, in Chennai had invited a guest speaker by name Mahavishnu to deliver a motivational address for its students. During the course of the talk, the self-styled spiritualist, began claiming that in the present life if someone was bad or was suffering it was due to sins of the past life. A visually impaired teacher objected to this saying the speaker was spreading irrational beliefs.
Immediately, the speaker took on the teacher and humiliated him in front of everyone and even egged on students to jeer at him. As the video of this incident went viral on Thursday, it drew widespread criticism from several political parties and also supporters of the DMK Government, who questioned how a ‘Dravidian Model’ Government could encourage such irrational preaching in educational institutions.
As a damage control, on Friday the principal of the school as well as the principal of a Government School in Ashok Nagar, which had invited the same speaker, were transferred.
School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi felicitated the visually impaired teacher and declared that action will be taken against the speaker who had insulted the teacher.
Separately, the Chief Minister, who is in the US on a long visit to attract investments, in a social media post said, “I have instructed that fresh guidelines be formulated to streamline various events in schools across the State, to impart progressive ideas to students and encourage scientific temper among them.”
