Flying the flag of Meetei Mayek high in his own style
Source: Hueiyen News Service

Imphal, September 20 2012: FORGET ABOUT teaching Meetei Mayek by Meeteis to students of different caste and creed, here is one Maring teacher who has been teaching Meetei Mayek to his Maring students in his own inimitable style, much to the relief of his students.

In a tete-a-tete with Hueiyen Lanpao, KS Angdun Maring, retired Head Master of The Little Learning English School at Sandang Senba Maring Village shared his experiences on teaching Meetei Mayek to his students.

Angdun, who is also the Youth Chairman of Sandang Senba Maring Village, said that as a teacher, we have to innovate ways and means of teaching to make the students understand what are being taught in the classroom.

That is exactly what I have been doing in teaching Meetei Mayek to my students.

KS Angdun Maring teaching Meetei Mayek to his students in the village School

Angdun observed, "In fact, learning and understanding Meetei Mayek is quite easy and it does not take much time.

It is not like learning English or Bengali.

After a week's rigorous exercise of studying the script, one can, to some extent, teach the students.

This is at least true in my case" .

KS Angdun has neither done any training course on Meetei Mayek nor had studied the script at school.

But he strongly believed that young students have to be taught Meetei Mayek.

"The duty of a teacher is to make the students understand what the teacher is speaking in the classroom.

So while teaching Meetei Mayek to Maring students, I used Maring language and all sorts of techniques so that the students can feel easy to understand better" .

Angdun observed that in Manipur, there are a number of well educated persons who are 'Meetei Mayek Illiterate'.

These persons only understand Bengali and English.

However, there will be a time when the trend of using Bengali script in Manipuri society cease to exist altogether.

At that time, those persons who consider themselves as educated but still 'Meetei Mayek Illiterate' will find themselves in big problem.

They would consider themselves as blind.

"We cannot identify ourselves with the languages and scripts of other people.

The language and script we have is much more important.

This is going to identify us to the outside world.

So we need to understand our own existing script because understanding one's script is to understand oneself", Angdun said.

In his earnest appeal to the State Government, Angdun said that the time has come to send Meetei Mayek experts in the hills as well.

This will further help in the growth and promotion of the script.

He also pointed out the need to promote Maring language with its inclusion in the MIL category and school syllabus upto class X .