MP teacher couldn’t spell 1, 2; expelled

A Madhya Pradesh teacher’s spelling skills have cost her job.

A lady teacher of a government primary school in industrial town of Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh on Friday left the local district collector Anurag Choudhury shellshocked when she gave a demo of her command over English language by spelling numerical, 1 as “ONA” and 2 as “TOT”.

Her spelling skills have literally driven the district collector mad, provoking him to order her suspension. “You will ruin lives of children”, he told the teacher before handing her the suspension letter. The “Jan Darshan” programme of the district collector held in the district headquarters town of Singrauli on Friday was witness to the bizarre and shocking scene of the middleaged woman teacher performing disastrously in the demo test of her spelling skills before Mr Choudhury. According to a senior district officer, a wrongly drafted application requesting her transfer to a new place by the teacher has drawn the district collector’s attention at his public grievance resolution programme.

Mr Choudhury first asked her to scribble “Adhyapak”, Hindi acronym of which is lecturer, in English, in the back of her application.

When she spelled the word incorrectly, he then gave her another chance to prove her spelling skills by asking her to write “Madhya Pradesh” in Hindi. Shockingly, she could not even spell the word correctly. Later, Mr Choudhury asked her to write in English the numbers, 1 and 2. She spelled the numerical, as “ONA” and “TOT”.

Annoyed over her lack of basic knowledge in English as well as in Hindi, the district collector ordered her suspension. Distraught over turn of the event, the woman teacher later told the reporters she got nervous when she was asked to spell the words by the district collector and got them wrong.

◗ In her defence, the teacher said that she got nervous while her test during collector’s Jan Darshan tour