‘Sparing you as you’re a woman’: Minister insults teacher, insists his wrong answer is right

A video captured from the class that has gone viral on social media shows Pandey asking the teacher some ‘basic’ questions.
‘Sparing you as you’re a woman’: Minister insults teacher, insists his wrong answer is right
‘Sparing you as you’re a woman’: Minister insults teacher, insists his wrong answer is right
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Uttarakhand Education Minister Arvind Pandey was out for inspection on Monday when he found a class 8 teacher at a government school using a guide book to teach. While he started out hoping to pull up the teacher for not using the prescribed books and attempted to humiliate her, the experience turned out to be a fiasco for the Minister himself.

A video captured from the class that has gone viral on social media shows Pandey asking the teacher some ‘basic’ questions.

He asks her what would happen when two negative signs are added. He questions, what equals ‘minus plus minus’ (- + - = ?) in chemistry. The teacher asks to confirm, “There are two minus and one plus?” But the minister, thinking it to be her answer, mocks her and absurdly enough, asks her what would be a answer to the same equation in mathematics.

It should be noted here that the woman seems to be a chemistry teacher, not a teacher of maths. Pandey then demands the chalk and proceeds to write on the board:

- + - =

“Tell me what the answer will be. This is a chemistry formula, I am not even asking for maths,” he tells the teacher condescendingly.

The teacher correctly answers that the answer should be in negative.

Pandey again asks her, “Now tell me what would the answer be in maths?”

We’re as confused at this point as you are.

He then confidently tells the bewildered teacher that the answer would be positive, when actually the addition of two negative integers results in another negative integer.

Oblivious to the fact that his answer is incorrect, he then pulls her up for teaching from the guide book. When she claims not be using the book, he asks her to name the fourth chapter.

Finally, he tells the teacher, “I am sparing you because you’re a woman. You are not worthy of teaching these students.”

Watch the video here.

As the video was circulated on social media, the 45-year-old Minister came under heavy criticism for behaving badly with the teacher and also having inadequate understanding of basic mathematics.

On Thursday, government school teachers from various towns in Uttarakhand protested on the streets demanding that Pandey apologise for his behavior. “The way he spoke... it was an insult to the entire teaching community," a teacher at a protest in Dehradun told NDTV.

Pandey defended himself however, saying that he did not mean to “disrespect” any teacher. “Neither the teacher nor the students were carrying any book. The teacher was teaching with the help of a ‘key’, a book with questions and their solutions,” he said.

He also responded to the protests on Thursday. Promising to introspect, Pandey said that his intentions were good even if people found his style of functioning disagreeable.

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