Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

1,500 delegates for international seminar

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As many as 1,500 delegates are scheduled to participate in a three-day international seminar on ‘Democratic and Secular Education – Kerala Experience’ scheduled to begin at the Kariavattom campus of the University of Kerala on December 4.

There would be six subject-specific seminars, two public discourses and 22 parallel sessions at the seminar in which over 150 scholars are expected to present papers, Education Minister M. A. Baby said at a press conference here on Monday.

There will be 25 experts from outside India. They include Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Movement; Tariq Ali, editor of the New Left Review; Micheal Apple, professor at the Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin; Rima D. Apple, professor of Consumer Science and Technology Studies, University of Wisconsin; J.P. Roos, educationalist at the University of Helsinki and Madeleine Arnot, professor of Sociology of Education, Cambridge University.

Others who will speak at the sessions include eminent jurist V.R. Krishna Iyer, Vice-Chancellor of the Indira Gandhi National Open University V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai, University Grants Commission Chairman S.K. Thorat, historian Romila Thapar and Vice-Chairman of the State Planning Board Prabhat Patnaik.

A special committee headed by the Director General of Police had been formed to oversee security at the seminar, Mr. Baby said. Sports Minister M. Vijayakumar and Vice-Chairman of the Kerala State Council for Higher Education M. Vijayakumar were among those present on the occasion. The seminar will examine how far the present education system of the country is relevant to the building up of a truly democratic and secular society, analyse the role of the state in education and probe whether public-private partnership will lead to improvement in quality of education.

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