Chennai: Expressing serious concern over the emergence of a narrative debasing education and the cropping up of impediments to its pursuit, Chief Minister M K Stalin told the present student community to clearly enunciate the importance of education to every future generation of learners.Speaking at a function marking the inauguration of the Loyola College’s centenary celebrations on Thursday, Stalin regretted that he missed an opportunity to study in the esteemed institution though his son, State Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, was an alumni.Talking about the new trend to denigrate education, he told the students to focus on their intellectual pursuits without worrying about the naysayers, who would appropriately be countered in the political arena.He urged the students to make full use of the opportunity to study in such an eminent educational institution like Loyola College, which had justly earned a reputation for itself due to the hard work it had put in and priceless service rendered to society.The college, for which the foundation stone was laid in the year former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi was born in 1924, was started by the Jesuits at a time when education was not open for all but kept as a prerogative of a select few, he said.With 75 students in its rolls, Loyola College opened up the gates of education for the marginalized people and was today one of the top ten colleges in the country, something that brought pride to the entire State, he said.If the State would come on top of any type of classification in education today it was because of the seeds sown by the Justice Party that understood the importance of education and took it to everybody, a tradition that the present DMK government too followed by launching a plethora of welfare schemes aimed at enhancing the opportunities of students.The era of K Kamaraj was the golden period for school education and the rule of Karunanidhi saw the booming of colleges, while the present Dravidian Model government had made the State a destination of research oriented higher studies, he said.Listing the various schemes that were aimed at helping the next generation of students, he mentioned a few like Pudhumai Penn, Naan Mudhalvan and Tamil Pudhalvan to elucidate on the importance given to education by his government in the past, present and future.
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