Kerala Refrains From Adopting Gender Neutral Titles For Teachers In School – News18

The Department of General Education, Kerala has opted to refrain from adopting gender neutral titles for teachers in the school premises. Earlier the Kerala Child Rights Commission’s asked the administration to follow universal terms ‘teacher’ irrespective of the gender of the staff. The General Education Director, who presided over the meeting, made the decision to uphold the teachers’ union-supported practice of addressing instructors.

The administration will update the Commission on its position on the topic in the interim. In an extraordinary decision earlier, the Commission decided to continue advancing gender equality in public schools and to stop addressing teachers as sir and madam. The Commission also directed the General Education Department to take action to adopt ‘teacher’ as the general term for address in school premises.

Earlier, the Senior Basic School in Olassery, Palakkad district of Kerala, has asked its students not to address their teachers as sir or madam anymore. Instead, the students have been directed to address the teaching faculty as just ‘teacher’ since December 1, 2021. The Olassery-based school has around 300 students, along with nine female and eight male teaching staff. According to the school principal, H. Venugopalan, the idea to address the faculty as teachers, instead of sir and madam was put forth by one of the staff members, Sanjeev Kumar. And later it also got approval from the staff council.

Venugopalan informed an English Daily that the teacher was inspired by social activist Boban Mattumantha’s campaign who advocates for gender-neutral titles for government officials. He has been voicing out his opinion that people should do away with the practice of calling them, sir and madam. Following in the footsteps of the activist, Sanjeev proposed the idea and got support from his fellow teachers as well as the staff council.