Know Your India

Stan_Savljevic · Post by **Stan_Savljevic** » 19 Jan 2010 05:16

Ok folks, since this thread is about "Know your India" which has {as usual} gotten diverted in its agenda, let me post something courtesy Avram' bizinformation.org link on the paki thread. The Gen X, Y and Z club's favorite hangout spots... Top 10 websites that get accessed most from different countries. Make your own conclusions, no spoonfeeding.

India:
google.co.in Rs 2.27 Billion
orkut.co.in Rs 856.56 Million
rediff.com Rs 494.22 Million
indiatimes.com Rs 250.12 Million
in.com Rs 160.56 Million
komli.com Rs 124.96 Million
icicibank.com Rs 108.96 Million
travian.in Rs 108.57 Million
bharatstudent.com Rs 107.42 Million
naukri.com Rs 106.65 Million

US: google, yahoo, live, facebook, youtube, msn, wiki, blogger, twitter, bing
UK: google, bbc, ebay, dailymail, guardian amazon, telegraph, thesun, timesonline, daemon-search
Australia: google, news.com, ninemsn, ebay, theage, whirlpool, smh, lonelyplanet, abc..
China: baidu, qq, sina.com, google, 163.com, taobao, sohu.com, youku, soso, tudou
Canada: google, msn, plurk, gc.ca, 6rb.com, theweathernetwork, tdcanadatrust, td, gigasize, kijiji {yes, there is a 6rb there!}
Germany: google, ebay, amazon, spiegel, gmx, web.de, bild, studiverzeichnis, xing, zanox
Japan: yahoo, fc2, google, livedoor, rakuten, ameblo, goo, mixi, nifty, amazon {Do you really want me to comment about nifty?}
Korea: naver, daum, google, cyworld, nate, lge, joins, tistory, chosun
pakistan: google, geo, jang, express, rozee, hamariweb {others are versions of the above}
bangladesh: google, prothom olo, bdnews24, dsebd, grameenphone, bdjobs, ittefaq, somewhereinblog
Nepal: ntc, cybersansar, myrepublica, thehimalayantimes, mos, pictures, telegraphnepal, enasha, easyflashgames, crazyblogger
Sri lanka: google, elakiri, dailymirror, lankadeepa, lankanews, topjobs, wow, defence.lk
saudi arabia: google, stc.com.sa, sabq, alriyadh, alhilal, eqla3, abunawaf, okaz.com.sa, ksu.edu, adslgate
Iran: mihanblog, tabnak, farsnews, ghalamnews, persianblog, persiangig, tebyan, travian, blogsky
Israel: speedbit, google, walla, omgili, ynet, freetv-video, panet, tapuz

JwalaMukhi · Post by **JwalaMukhi** » 19 Jan 2010 05:28

SriKumar wrote: Couple of things- one thing you mention is that memorization is used as a crutch by students who dont know English well, and are severely handicapped as a result. But even in schools where students know English very well (top 20% of our population) the same approach is taken in teaching science, i.e. less focus on deduction and more on memorization. It is this category I had in mind. Conversely, I assume (since I have not studied in such a school) that in vernacular medium schools where the instruction is done in the local language, they would be going through the same grind. I dont really think the method of instruction (i.e. dependence on rote learning) is any different in schools with and without English (but please correct me if I am wrong).

About the NPR article and the other post you made suggests that a specific techniques of memorization improves brain function in terms of storage and retrieval. I can only agree. It definitely sounds reasonable. But this approach is used as a surrogate for learning and that is the issue, as you also point out. And funnily enough, even though there is so much stress on memorization, I know of no school (CBSE/ICSE/State Board etc) that has a class on memorization techniques as a part of its curriculum (quite a contradiction eh?).

SriKumar,
That is definitely a major issue. It is due to settling in lowest common denominator point, because of the system.
i) Kids have everything on stake on a single particular exam fixed on a particular day. It is the case of either make it or break it on a single sample.
ii) There is no continuous evaluation of the progress on both the sides, students as well as teachers. Everything is decided on a D-day.
iii) Top it with, the taught, the teacher, the examiner, the questioneer (exam conductor), the evaluator are all different entities. They all are supposed to draw from an uniform syllabus.
With all these, the kids do not want to leave anything to chance from their end, because already it is heavily loaded on a single chance event, with many uncontrollable parameters. Unfortunately, memorization comes in handy.
iv) Memorization is a laborious process with uncertain outcome for the kids, but it absolves them of the effort part, it gives them the comfort that atleast they have put in some effort- any effort, a desperate semblance of guilt riddance.
v) Even kids who have luxury of knowing English, it is matter of actually understanding the etymology (latin, greek) terms which is very helpful in deciphering the meanings associated with concepts. Usually, most words are well chosen to be self explanatory. Kids who know how to form sentences, make grammatically good constructs, more often than not lack the advantage of etymology and context in which the subject is taught. This gap is filled by the memorization.

Now even in many of the colleges there are - no to minimal electives associated with the course work. The core courses should be kept minimal. But that is a different problem. The instructors also like familiarity, if electives are limited then they have lesser competition and incentives to develop courses. Even in famed institutions at undergraduate level, the electives are almost non-existent. Job security for the instructors. Familiarity for the kids. All in one happy situation. Assembly line production and consumption of graduate course works and hence graduates too.

The major institutes indulge in extremely incestous relationships in India. People graduate from say top institute, but would be reluctant to venture out and disseminate the same in different settings. Hence, there will be reluctance to having more IITs. Bogey of dilution of the brand is peddled. The force multiplier factor for quality is sadly stifled by the very people who should be enablers of it.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 19 Jan 2010 07:09

Stan_Savljevic wrote: Should the CBSE take the blame for the people's fault of rote-learning?
<snip>
We are led by blind slavedrivers who are a reflection of the blind slavedrivers that WE are..

We are more or less in agreement

My intention is not to blame the CBSE board. Currently ONLY the CBSE board is showing a glimmer of awareness of what is going on but is by itself powerless to change things in India. I was using CBSE as an example.

The situation has developed in such a complex fashion that it requires the kind of awareness you have shown to figure out the problem. Solving it is a different matter. India has had a burgeoning of educational institutions to cater to a burgeoning young population and a feeling that engineering and medicine alone are worthy professions.

Every medical and engg college entrance test maintains a higher level than what is taught in school. Schools that don't reach that level do not get patronage and are dubbed by parents as "low standard/poor teaching". As school curriculum demands and "standards" are raised, the colleges in turn ramp up their entrance test requirements to select only the highest scorers. This exerts a feedback on the school system to ramp up the level of what is being taught. This "positive feedback loop" has gone out of hand. Hence children who do entrance tests for engg and medicine today have to know what the children of yesteryear were taught in first year engineering or medicine.

As usual in India we forget what childhood means and India is not doing some of its brightest children any favors. The problem of course is in the exam system which is a system of measuring errors over time. Must education curricula in the West have changed to a knowledge goal oriented system - i.e "At the end of this course the student will be able to do/will know X, Y and Z" In India all that the education system measures is a graph of errors versus time. The more vertical the graph the more "intelligent" the child is. Last time I checked - the only vocation that was as time critical as Indian exams in affecting someone's life was suicide bombing.

India is now seeing suicides of children as young as 11 years because of exam failure in a system that demands that a child must have extra tuitions all the way up from age 5. There is a a societal effect of our education system which carries a cost. The importance of that cost is going largely unrecognized - although there is some awareness. As far as I can see - some of the happiest and most creative children I meet are those who get out of the rat race and do courses in Fine Arts or something that gets them a career in media and advertising.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 19 Jan 2010 08:18

JwalaMukhi wrote: i) Kids have everything on stake on a single particular exam fixed on a particular day. It is the case of either make it or break it on a single sample.
ii) There is no continuous evaluation of the progress on both the sides, students as well as teachers. Everything is decided on a D-day.

Well said.

A child's entire career is decided by the slope of a single errors versus time graph.

Ironic when you consider that the selection is often for the sciences.

Stan_Savljevic · Post by **Stan_Savljevic** » 19 Jan 2010 09:04

you get a gem from somewhere,

Talking of introducing music to children, Zakir says, make use of the reverse psychology. As a kid Zakir used to do everything to gather his dad’s attention. “I would hit the tablas, make all sorts of sound in the tabla room to get his attention. He would turn the other way and get busy with his students. Finally one day he asked me, so you want to learn the tabla? I was delighted and said yes, not knowing what I was agreeing to. And since then at the age of six, I was getting up at 3 am for riyaaz and then going to school at 7 am. My father applied the reverse psychology he didn’t force me. He made the means of music available to me and I picked it up. So instead of forcing children to learn, music dance etc, make the information available. If kids, want to attend a music concert take them, buy them tapes and that’s how they will develop their passion,” suggests.

http://beta.thehindu.com/arts/article81 ... epage=true

negi · Post by **negi** » 19 Jan 2010 10:39

^ Yep a valuable experience indeed something to be noted for future use.

Shiv ji I guess we have discussed this topic before but anyways let me re iterate I do apprecaite and realise the points you raise about the drawbacks of the current system and I am sure like any other system this one too is not without any flaws but the issue with academic discussions of this nature is when it comes to 'IMPLEMENTATION' the practical/viable options are too limited in fact in most cases it is observed that one will have to work within the constraints of the current system itself.

The marking/grading system too is one such case imo i.e. for lakhs of students appearing for XIIth std exams every year how many engineering/medical/basic sciences/humanities seats do we have ? If this ratio of number of aspirants to number available seats is very high it is obvious that there is a need for a system to filter out the eligible candidates based on a set of common attributes . To me marks/grading system is just one way to quantify the students abilities it might not be a fool proof system but it definitely works and will work for a significant % of the population . People in STEM are evaluated based on their published papers,patents or contributions to the filed which have been acknowledged by a recognized body I am sure same is the case in medical science as well as humanities , my point is how does one quantify a student's performance at school level if it were not for some sort of a mark/grading system ?

And I guess there are talks about scrapping the 100 mark system followed by the CBSE and adoption of grade/point system to address some of the issues which you have raised.

animesharma · Post by **animesharma** » 19 Jan 2010 12:47

shaardula wrote:animesh,
at the level you are talking, i very vary of changing the syllabus according to the immediate needs of the industry. I hope you are not batting to reduce a full degree to professional training course. The two are different. Science/technology grows rapidly, but there are certain fundamentals will always be relevant and still form the bedrock of what is their out there. I'm admittedly talking from a very narrow view of my field, but i'm sure the same holds for other fields. At the level you are talking you are also expected to develop some skills in abstraction. Courses can always be reordered, and prioritized, but facility with theory is a must at the level you are talking about.

ayyo stan,
un-characteristic reply. somehow very cynical. are you turning a corner or something?

Sir, I do understand the weight of term "bachelor of Engineering", but what i ask for is what is being done is not enough.(Theory is not enough).My point is, what good will present system do when almost 60-70% graduates(electronics) don't even know the proper way of soldering. And why is that, because none of our faculty taught us that!
(I do not mean insult to some excellent gurus, but they are rare).

I very much appreciate the distinction between training course and Degree course, but even the industry acknowledges that 70-80% Eng. Graduates are out of sync with industry requirements.
From my point of view, If the course structure doesn't train you to work in industry.. then it is better to go for out-of campus opportunities.

Why do we have a parallel education system of private training institutes like NIIT,Jetking,etc, teaching same stuffs which we should have learnt in college itself. If these institute prospers, it is because they teach what is best for industry.

Sir, i will quote an interesting example..
We have a subject named "computer networks" in final year. I was fortunate enough to learn it by a one month residential course in IIM-C.
When we were taught the subject.. as i was amazed how fellow students had understood or mugged up concepts so well, but in lab, even the topper was struggling to connect LAN wire, when teacher came.. she had to refer color coding..and again she messed up. Later the practical was deferred to next week.

SriKumar · Post by **SriKumar** » 19 Jan 2010 13:28

Some random musings (maybe not worth the effort, but what the heck):

1. The quantity of information has certainly increased and will continue to do so (predictably). At some point, the subject matter will increase to a point that 24 hours will not be enough (if we are not already there). Then what do we do? If we add new material, we will have to delete some old material. It has to stop somewhere. My thought is that we should change the focus of education from a purely 'knowledge-acquisition' mode to a mode where the emphasis is on developing skills and (more importantly) attitudes that enable a student to strike out on his/her own and learn the stuff that interests him/her. (I am reading a book by Vivekananda on education, he too pleads against viewing education as a knowledge gathering exercise and sees it as a means to acquire tools that help one acquire knowledge in any area of interest, subsequently).

2. I've often wondered about the pressure to conform to a certain career path (injeenear, daktar etc). At one time, I thought that it might be because of of the very limited career opportunities available, say 2 decades ago. But even with tons of ITvity jobs available (=easy jobs, atleast until last year) there is still a pressure to go a certain route. I blame this on the parents and the society that places value on passing certain entrance exams and job earnings. To this extent, I think the 'fault' lies with the people for the expectations they have of their kids and how they define success. Really, it is not difficult to get a good job anymore but the viewpoint of parents and society has not changed.

Am rambling here but there seems to be a certain fascination among desi janta about passing exams that mark out people as brilliant/intelligent. An example that strikes me is the kid from Ballia, UP, (happened 4-5 years ago?) who claimed that he had stood first in a NASA exam. Turned out to be a scam, but it did capture the nation's (and President Kalam's) attention for a brief while. What greater stamp of scholarship and smarts can there be than to stand first in an exam administered by NASA. (Is this a civilizational thing, where we mark out our best based on performance in extremely tough exams rather than on what a person has done for the society e.g. build bridges, discover new drug molecules, create new businesses).

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 19 Jan 2010 14:13

SriKumar wrote: (Is this a civilizational thing, where we mark out our best based on performance in extremely tough exams rather than on what a person has done for the society e.g. build bridges, discover new drug molecules, create new businesses).

SriKumar - believe it or not this is pure Macaulayism. This exam system was given to us by the Brits. The system was designed to find employees for a rapidly industrializing Britain in the 19th century.

I had linked this TED talk elsewhere - I do so again

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_s ... ivity.html

SBajwa · Post by **SBajwa** » 20 Jan 2010 00:22

On the topic of Rote Learning.

Here in USA. there is a education business (Franchise) called Kumon Learning Center. These
are classic rote learning (repetition) facilities for maths and english reading. Most of
normal US schools are heavily into making the creative students.

These do work for children who wants to get ahead in their school. Their way is to force
children to do these worksheets.

A 6 year old learning maths will have to do addition 10 sheets daily (which is about
70 problems). After so much practice by the time the kid is in 6th grade (11 years old).,
he/she will be doing 8th grade maths (algebra/Trig)

so a parent takes his children to these center once a week where they give about
10 sheets each for each day till next week (stapled with dates written on each packet)
Thus parents needs to make sure that children do this Kumon homework along
with grading their work as well as timing it.

Their philosophy is that practice is what makes you learn., just like I use to get homework
for 30 days of summer vacations (in India) and daily 50 math problems.

I think a mix and match of both Rote learning (early years of education) and
creative learning (later) is required.

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 20 Jan 2010 00:45

^^^
Adding a trivia to the above, Kumon Method was developed by a Japanese mathematics teacher.

SBajwa · Post by **SBajwa** » 20 Jan 2010 02:17

Check this wiki article about this method

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumon

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 20 Jan 2010 06:47

SBajwa, There is a difference between practice and rote. Rote is mindless repetition without understanding, Practice is not.

History can be memorized and learnt by rote but science cannot - unless one is looking for churn out mindless drones very much like what Macaulay intended during the British Raj.

As a kid my grandfather (not the most understanding of men esp. given he had once singlehandedly sent a coupla dacoits in present Jharkhand to meet their 72) would teach me mathematics. From the very first lesson (in class 3 or so) he would emphasize that it was all about understanding concepts and not about rote learning. In fact he would pose the same question in so many twisting ways to ensure that I had understood the concept instead of learning the method. Despite all attempts by teachers to get me to memorize the multiplication tables, he refused to let me do it and instead spent days teaching me how multiplication works so that I could derive my own tables. As a side-effect of that I was able to figure out back then how an adder works in a computer though I didn't know it then.

----

I find this whole Kumon thing a bit too much pressure and frankly a hogwash. The life of a kid in 6th grade should NOT consist of doing 10 worksheets of algebra every day!

For God's sakes, there is only one childhood. The jehadi defenders of Kumon will usually come up with gems like "But look! so-and-so's daughter is doing graduate level Operator Theory in class 8th!" - My response is, "So what?! Does it matter? What will it get them in later life except a lost childhood?". These kids will grow up blaming their parents and in turn will themselves turn into pushy parents.

Being able to do book problems from higher grades teaches nothing. Knowledge is not about doing book problems from higher grades. Knowledge is about the ability to think and maturity - both these come with age and proper nurturing - overloading someone with books and word problems is NOT a solution! Just becoz someone can solve differential equations in 5th grade does not make them smart or more capable. It is amazing how many people fail to realize this.

That is also why I used to find amusing, the claims of so-and-so passed the 12th board exams at the age of 10 (these type of stories used to be quite popular in desi media during the 1990s) as if that is an achievement to be trumpeted about.

SBajwa · Post by **SBajwa** » 20 Jan 2010 19:18

Dr. Bose,

That was an excellent reply. My kids have so many things (distractions) around them (Wii, playstation, TV, sports outside, dog, etc) that they do not have time to sit at least an hour a day to do simple practice (math, reading, science, etc). They still are getting all A's in school.

I just started this kumon thing last week, which is more of a disciplinary action (reminder what is also important) rather than making them skip grades, etc. I will watch it for at least 6 months before deciding on what to do.

thanks

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 20 Jan 2010 22:31

Hmm, thanks for the heads up on Kumon... had a friend extolling the virtues of Kumon...

negi · Post by **negi** » 20 Jan 2010 23:10

Raja Bose wrote: That is also why I used to find amusing, the claims of so-and-so passed the 12th board exams at the age of 10 (these type of stories used to be quite popular in desi media during the 1990s) as if that is an achievement to be trumpeted about.

Bose main how does one define 'achievement ' ? And for a child of mere 10 years what is expected from him to be qualified as an 'achievement' ?

We all are products of the same system and I presume none of us were at an advantage/disadvantage (unless some one indulges in malpractices) when we progressed along each and every stage so if some people do well than others I think the due credit needs to be given for the sheer effort.

hnair · Post by **hnair** » 21 Jan 2010 06:25

Raja Bose wrote:SBajwa, There is a difference between practice and rote. Rote is mindless repetition without understanding, Practice is not.

History can be memorized and learnt by rote but science cannot - unless one is looking for churn out mindless drones very much like what Macaulay intended during the British Raj.

Formal education is a device to execute the process of learning. There are different ways to execute that. And one cannot use one method for all types of things.

A cliche: everything has its place and learning by rote too has an important one. It has a long (and highly successful) history around the world. It was a way of transmitting and retaining knowledge from generation to generation and much before wikipedia or search engines came up, that was the only mechanism we had to build up a repository with good retrieval mechanisms.

Now a bit about Creativity and Skill development. Forget sciences, let us take art. Art is all about creativity. or so I thought. Little did I know that west has made 99% of their art realm into a "skillful job", until I got back into painting. Not just modern day, even during the Rennaissance time, they had schools in Flanders and Florence, that do nothing but repetitive skill development. In the present era, the classes in US schools are so structured that I asked a NY based master painter (brilliant painter, conducts workshops) on when one can be free and develop their own style. His answer was "when you are rich and becoming famous". So students end up doing assignment after assignments on color theory, shapes, perspectives, composition, medium, brushwork etc etc. Some of the rebellious types drop out and rarely(I will come to that), make it big. Else it is a long grind of, yeah, learning by rote. And yes, this is for painting.

Finally, at graduation (or end of course) we will have a classful of students, who joined with differing skill levels, but is more or less at the same skill level a the end. So ultimately, "Creative Arts" is refined to "skillful execution of a piece". Now that the skills has been baselined, success in this field is defined by imagination. Yeah, the "Creative" part, which needs a Yindu detachment that many might not have. And skill in execution (that is learned by rote) complements that imagination ("one should be able to draw beautifully, what one imagines"). That is where most of the students hit a plateau (altitude of the plateau is their elevated skills after the course), after their classes and you will find all sorts of art majors in other fields.

The rebellious type who drop out, their life is not easy. eg: you do an exhibition. A famous curator of a museum or a collector comes along. Asks what is your color scheme and composition style. Rebellious artist who dropped out says "I am not constrained by any schemes" and lives a life of poverty after that. A keen student says "Double Complementary with an inverted triangular composition" or some such thing. Because the Professors has already warned that some curators are fizzled out artists who found a day job or just rich idiots who read a book or two on art. So the keen student learn some things by rote, including how to speak. So much for the vaunted image of a rebel artist doing whatever they want and being hyper-successful.

Same for Eastern martial arts. In gora run schools, they teach you so many techniques in the first year that you dont know what to do when crunch time comes. You might be good at something, but is disjointed and unseemly in action. The accent is more on experiences rather than skill development, as there is a commercial interest in keeping the student entertained with doing non-repetitive excersizes. Whereas in Eastern schools, they teach you only one or two basic things. And it is incredibly boring, except you really want to learn it. Eg: a traditional Kendo school teaches only one motion for a long time. You repeat it so many thousand of times that finally you learn to use every last muscle of your body (point: this was important in the olden days, when war went on for hours and every muscle needs to be used or arms gets tired and injured) for that one downward stroke. Then it becomes a journey into combination and rythm.

BTW, the equivalent western system of rote exists in boxing. Gleason's at New York or any boxing gym in London is a good place to observe this. OR if you can go to Havana and watch the incredible Cuban coaches (we could watch them train in India too, since we hired some of them). Once you get your body to skillfully execute a move as a near reflex, you can move on to strategy etc. But till then it is all rote.

My point is this: learning by Rote elevates a skill level (if done properly) and makes execution nearly reflexive. You can use that elevated perch to focus **ALL** your energy on to the next level. The worst that will happen is that the system produces a bunch of skillfull people. Not exactly a bad thing for any country.

(Ok, I am sticking to theoretical aspects and not getting into

about specific issues facing Indian school system. For addressing that, one has to stand elections or join a party to influence policy.)

I find this whole Kumon thing a bit too much pressure and frankly a hogwash. The life of a kid in 6th grade should NOT consist of doing 10 worksheets of algebra every day! For God's sakes, there is only one childhood. The jehadi defenders of Kumon will usually come up with gems like "But look! so-and-so's daughter is doing graduate level Operator Theory in class 8th!" - My response is, "So what?! Does it matter? What will it get them in later life except a lost childhood?". These kids will grow up blaming their parents and in turn will themselves turn into pushy parents.

I had studied Kumon system a bit and got my kid to try this. It has the outward appearance of a sweat shop and I was super reluctant, but.... it did its work. Eg: my kid has decent math skills, but her timing was horrible and focus was even bigger issue. Tried a lot of stuff, including, teaching creatively etc. Unfortunately she was hyper-imaginative

and started running off with my creative interpretations of math. So I got her into Kumon and she is fine about their 15 minutes excersizes daily. The thing I liked about Kumon is that it is self-paced and she learned to time herself. No pressure from us and it became a mundane task for her. But then this is just my personal view, based on my kid's inputs too.

Kids dont have to lose out on other things, if you plan well or if you yourself set an example by being outdoorsy/sporty etc. That is where Kumon will fail: if the parents are lazy and use it as a guilt-ridding device for not paying attention to their kid's world. If one uses Kumon's system of skill development as a platform for further creative stuff, things can get happy and less stresful, IMO.

So use Kumon, not let Kumon use you, And Bose-saaar stop and think before you term anything (including Steve Job's creations, JK Rowlings' literature etc) as "hogwash". Some people you know might get attached and becomes paki to all sorts of things, but that doesnt mean that the things are crap. That sort of subculture tendency should not persuade us away from a balanced view.

(My SHQ got an Android device from her office. I was

when SHQ almost threw that thing against the wall, after failing to put it on snooze for a morning wakeup call during the weekend. My chunky '97 Siemens handset was much more intuitive than this. "Skillfull" Yumbeeyas and their inability to "imagine" beyond their skills has finally crept up on Google too)

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 21 Jan 2010 09:15

negi wrote: Bose main how does one define 'achievement ' ? And for a child of mere 10 years what is expected from him to be qualified as an 'achievement' ?

That is precisely my point. Passing 12th grade at the age of 10 should not be viewed as an achievement or non-achievement - it just should not be done period. For a child of 10 years keeping his room clean is an achievement, playing with kids and being able to handle oneself in their company is an achievement but passing 12th grade is as much as an achievement at the age of 10 as growing a beard!

@hnair, In all the examples you are giving - they are valid as examples of practice NOT rote. That includes the physical exercises - even in physical exercises if you repeatedly do an exercise without understanding how it works and the concepts behind it then you do not become skilled at it (and at worst will injure yourself).

hnair wrote: Finally, at graduation (or end of course) we will have a classful of students, who joined with differing skill levels, but is more or less at the same skill level a the end. So ultimately, "Creative Arts" is refined to "skillful execution of a piece". Now that the skills has been baselined, success in this field is defined by imagination. And skill in execution (that is learned by rote) complements that imagination ("one should be able to draw beautifully, what one imagines"). That is where most of the students hit a plateau (altitude of the plateau is their elevated skills after the course), after their classes and you will find all sorts of art majors in other fields.

Asks what is your color scheme and composition style. Rebellious artist who dropped out says "I am not constrained by any schemes" and lives a life of poverty after that. A keen student says "Double Complementary with an inverted triangular composition" or some such thing.

Here you are mistaking lack of understanding of concepts and basic theory as being creative/self-development. Lack of understanding of concepts is ignorance - it has nothing to do with being creative or rebelling against learning by rote. If anything it is almost as bad as learning by rote since learning by rote is also characterized by a lack of understanding of what one is trying to learn by repetition. The phrase is "Practice makes perfect", I have never heard "Rote makes perfect"

Skilled execution requires practice and solid understanding of the basics - this is not something accomplished by blind rote.

By the way the bolded part is also a common technique where someone will buzz off some high-flying jargon without knowing its in-depth meaning - something I watch out for while interviewing.

@SBajwa, I am sure Kumon if used wisely can be a good tool to ensure study discipline. Unfortunately, its misuse seems to be more prevalent amongst the population I have observed. It is natural for parents to feel as if the world is overtaking their kids and they need to catch up but such paranoia must be kept in check so that it doesnt escalate to ridiculous proportions and rob their kids of a happy childhood. I never was a consistently good student in the classical sense hence, it was interesting for me to look back and pin-point those points in my life where it made a real difference to focus on academics. Also for comparison purposes, I traced the paths that were taken by the kids in my classes who would study like mad, try to ace every test and agonize over ever 1/2 mark and get upset if they got 90% aggregate instead of 95%. As it turns out, it makes no difference. As long as one learns reasonably well, it doesn't matter. Agonizing over every test and exam is not worth it. Neither is bunking all classes and mixing with the wrong crowd. Middle path is always better for us SDREs onlee.

BTW moi is phata pyjama abdul onlee. Only ppl. worthy of being called daaktirs are those who save people's lives not the ones who spend 2-3 hours defending some chunk of paper in front of a bored audience of 5-6 senile old fogies.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 21 Jan 2010 09:24

(My SHQ got an Android device from her office. I was when SHQ almost threw that thing against the wall, after failing to put it on snooze for a morning wakeup call during the weekend. My chunky '97 Siemens handset was much more intuitive than this. "Skillfull" Yumbeeyas and their inability to "imagine" beyond their skills has finally crept up on Google too)

Its a catch-22 really. In HCI you can never have a full-featured customizable geegaw which is also 400% intuitive to use. That is why the iPhone is what it is. Same thing for your Siemens handset - its 1997 features were constrained enough to make it seem more intuitive. Its a trade-off between features, performance and intuitiveness. Anyways GOOG has never been great on UI and HCI till now.

hnair wrote:(Ok, I am sticking to theoretical aspects and not getting into about specific issues facing Indian school system. For addressing that, one has to stand elections or join a party to influence policy.)

As I was telling Mehta ji the other day (before he got sent to sasuraal), it is not the education policy which needs changing. First peoples' mindset has to change. For that one doesn't need to stand in elections or join a party - one needs to participate in teaching whether at home or in a school/univ.

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 21 Jan 2010 09:36

Is the Kumon thing getting very OT? To get back the thread on track......here is a graph: What is Poverty, Really? The Case of India
Arjun Sengupta's number 903 millions below poverty is

. Aren't we supposed to be 1.2 billion people, ie. 1200 million?

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 21 Jan 2010 21:43

negi wrote: if some people do well than others I think the due credit needs to be given for the sheer effort.

Negiji - on the face of it no one can question this statement, but please pardon me for saying that this statement is sugar coated poison for India.

In my day, and I presume in your day "due credit" was given for "sheer effort". I am an example of "due credit for sheer effort" in comparison with others who could be compared with me unfavorably as "losers".

That is the problem. In India "Due credit" is given to freaks and the others (losers) are compared with them and told that they are losers unless they can emulate what the "due credit" getters are doing. No consideration is given to the fact that the "loser" may not be a loser but a very intelligent person with different interests and a different rate of doing things. In India unless you can score more than X marks in Y time you are called a failure. This system served us "due credit" winners well and e can say it is great.

But it has reached ridiculous proportions now and is getting worse. The competition is ever more intense, the numbers of children are ever higher, classes in schools are getting ever bigger with more and more sections per class, and ever more schools and not enough teachers to teach the ever increasing portions. But still there are freak winners who keep getting "due credit" and getting their photos in papers and then coming and respectfully touching my feet as a shining example of a winner "due credit" getter of yesteryear, who was always quoted as an example to follow by the momma of the due credit winner of last year.

The real problem is that in my days, and perhaps yours - for every "winner" such as me - there were 10,000 losers. Today for every winner there are 100,000 "losers" many of whose parents are torturing their children to be a winner like me ("doctor uncle"). And as expected some are committing suicide and many others are going through the rigmarole only to please their parents- and not thriving or doing well. Pegs of all sorts of shapes are being forced into the same round holes in India.

There are many types of intelligence that must be nurtured, but in India we are nurturing only the mug and vomit type of intelligence. Our education system is geared to recruit thousands of kids to become engineers and doctors via this route and India and Indian parents show very little awareness of anything else that can be done in a country where the possibilities are getting vast. Nobody with any intelligence other than a capacity to mug and vomit in a given time period is given "due credit" in India. A few kids are able to do this well and are given "due credit", but the rest of our children are being wasted, as is their childhood.

It is my firm belief that India's poor performance in innovation and narrow skill base is a direct result of our blinkered education policies.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 21 Jan 2010 21:54

SwamyG wrote:Is the Kumon thing getting very OT? To get back the thread on track......here is a graph: What is Poverty, Really? The Case of India
Arjun Sengupta's number 903 millions below poverty is . Aren't we supposed to be 1.2 billion people, ie. 1200 million?

Swamiji - using the logic that I used in the Paki thread - "car ownership"= wealthy, and "motorbike/TV ownership"= middle class we get the following figures for India:

Wealthy: 60 million
Middle class: 300 million
Therefore Poor = (1100 million - 360 million) = 740 million

Of these 250 million are below poverty line and 500 million are just poor.

There is, IMO no shying away from these statistics in the way the Pakis tend to do.

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 21 Jan 2010 22:24

Shiv:
I thought this heading was part of the image:
Various Estimates of the Number Living Below Poverty in India, 2009

So I don't know if you missed it.

I am not shying away from these stats, else I would not have even posted that. My point is out of 1200 million, 903 million are supposed to be BPL. That is what I was shocked about. Your numbers are 250 million which is far lower than Ashok's numbers - because that means 77.5% of Indians are BPL. You are talking about poor and Ashok's numbers are talking about BPL - two different things in my opinion.

hnair · Post by **hnair** » 22 Jan 2010 03:15

Ok, my last post, as I think I am cramping up SwamyG's bowl of sorrow

And all are IMHO etc:

"Innovation" of the type we see in the West needs supreme avarice as its backbone. 99% of the time it is about how "so and so made so much money out of this innovation". It would require a level of cut-throatiness and lack of respect for all living things, that I sincerely hope India will not get into. It is about making billions (not millions anymore) and it produces intense pressure amongst the brilliant minds in the west. A pressure that is ten-fold that of what is experienced by Indian students, who are struggling to make a good life, not own a holiday home in the hills. Ask any MIT (or other TFTA) graduate and the pressure they face to become successful is much much higher. They have to be news worthy, or they feel like a bit of a loser at their reunion. I had seen brilliant folks snort stuff so they are "more awake for exams/pitches etc" (a revelation for a small town Indian like me). Phew!

About this selective promotion of innovation, Gandhi and his ideas about local development and micro-economy was pooh-poohed by west (and by some Indians who latched on to a good thing at a personal level), when Walmart wanted to expand itself around the world. But I see all sorts of "farmer's markets" and artisan groups being promoted around US and "buying produce not shipped 1000s of miles" being touted as a great new revolution spearheaded by "aging and lovable hippies". So I am personally done with this innovation sales pitch. Used to believe in this crap 10 years back with a near-EJ fervor. But nowadays, I innovate if I feel there is a need and I spend money on new innovations if I really need it, not because "I can afford" to.

Two people whom I blame for making life unhappy for me, an Indian - Lord Kelvin and Alfred Sloan. Kelvin inadvertently killed the magic in this world by insisting everything has to be represented in numbers ("when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be:). Though he was talking about modern Physics and he is right, his statements' impact was tremendous, as he was the first true technocrat(a scientist and policy maker) after he became the first scientist nominated to House of Lords and held as a role model. It percolated all over the place and now artists of all fields (including scientists and engineers) lost their freedom to think radically and was made to conform.

And Alfred P Sloan sealed the coffin with his "planned obsolescence" scheme of supreme avarice. After that thing caught on, innovation apparently flourished

Innovation, WTF is that?

Raja Bose wrote: @hnair, In all the examples you are giving - they are valid as examples of practice NOT rote. That includes the physical exercises - even in physical exercises if you repeatedly do an exercise without understanding how it works and the concepts behind it then you do not become skilled at it (and at worst will injure yourself).

Bose-saar, please read my first line: Formal education is a device to execute the process of learning. There are different ways to execute that

We are all arguing about implementation techniques, when IMO, learning is the key. If you want to learn a skill to survive that is fine.

Some skills can be obtained by repetitive practice, without knowing the basics or concepts. Modern world and a lot of its complex systems that are operated by people who might not know why they are doing things in a certain way. eg: the chap who balances wheels for our cars. Or the dental hygienist who flosses a vegetarian's teeth as hard as a steak-junkie's. And of course the fighter pilot who skillfully reads the displays in front of him.

My key point was, even in a so called "creativity, not skill" art realm, the graphic artist who uses Photoshop to make that poster for you might not know why a color is complementary and who decided it (it certainly was not old Masters like Titian nor new masters like David Leffel or even an iconic rebel like Andy Warhol who came up with these "concepts"). But the graphic artist can skillfully get you a kickass poster on your requirements, based on some very narrow parameters learned as part of skill development. so on and so forth.

hnair wrote: Finally, at graduation (or end of course) we will have a classful of students, who joined with differing skill levels, but is more or less at the same skill level a the end. So ultimately, "Creative Arts" is refined to "skillful execution of a piece". Now that the skills has been baselined, success in this field is defined by imagination. And skill in execution (that is learned by rote) complements that imagination ("one should be able to draw beautifully, what one imagines"). That is where most of the students hit a plateau (altitude of the plateau is their elevated skills after the course), after their classes and you will find all sorts of art majors in other fields.

Asks what is your color scheme and composition style. Rebellious artist who dropped out says "I am not constrained by any schemes" and lives a life of poverty after that. A keen student says "Double Complementary with an inverted triangular composition" or some such thing.
Here you are mistaking lack of understanding of concepts and basic theory as being creative/self-development. Lack of understanding of concepts is ignorance - it has nothing to do with being creative or rebelling against learning by rote. If anything it is almost as bad as learning by rote since learning by rote is also characterized by a lack of understanding of what one is trying to learn by repetition. The phrase is "Practice makes perfect", I have never heard "Rote makes perfect" Skilled execution requires practice and solid understanding of the basics - this is not something accomplished by blind rote.

Now, now. I did not say being creative is being dumb. did I?

And why are you assuming that learning by rote wont have that "aha!" moments, when you realize "oh, so that is what I am repeating like a broken record *actually* means?". Eg: when I calculate the total at the counter in my mind, while a Khan educated checkout girl needs the machine to tell her what it would be.

Rote is a way of implementing practice. It is "a way", not *the way* and I always acknowledged that. It is upto the wielder on how to use that particular way..... So your characterization is broadbrushing a vast field

Rebelling in art world is increasingly difficult. What if someone dont understand concepts and yet draw kickass. Eg: Picasso's Guernica is a painting that is awesome and yet breaks every "concept" that was prevalent at that time. One guy who did not give a damn till recently was Banksy. Though loves Che a bit too much (IMO), Banksy comes across as an yindoo ascetic type artist who dont seek money. Well, atleast till the recent auctions of his work fetched moolah (still watching that space). But the rest has to conform and absorb "concepts", or they starve.

India might not have the best infra nor can everyone afford a million calorie cheeseburger, but it is still a naive and soulful country. I personally like that a lot. If it can make more people happy (distinct from rich), that would be incredibly awesome. My objection is to using filters of soulless Western standards on India. Failure in predicting election results in India should make us pause about such standards. Again purely a personal view

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 22 Jan 2010 04:14

Ok, my last post, as I think I am cramping up SwamyG's bowl of sorrow

While I don't post much in this thread; I still like to ask you the question: Do you think BRF should have only "Nation on the march" type of threads? I think we have plenty of feel good threads in BRF ( I totally like them and contribute news or bowl of happiness to those). Having few threads that look inwards and bring the problems out will help us keep the balance. Our culture encourages introspection, no? Why can't we accommodate few drops of sorrow in the ocean of joy?

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 22 Jan 2010 06:21

hnair wrote: India might not have the best infra nor can everyone afford a million calorie cheeseburger, but it is still a naive and soulful country. I personally like that a lot. If it can make more people happy (distinct from rich), that would be incredibly awesome. My objection is to using filters of soulless Western standards on India. Failure in predicting election results in India should make us pause about such standards. Again purely a personal view

No harm in this goal but I see the lack of appropriate insight/education of the wealthier people add to the woes of the poor.

The following article has been linked in the Indian interetsts thread
http://www.dailypioneer.com/230725/Suga ... d-lie.html

I will cross post it here because it gives an insight into modern India and I will post comments later

Sugar-coated lie

Shailaja Chandra

The so-called ‘demographic dividend’ is so much bunkum and no more. Limited access to education and healthcare among young men and women has left them with no awareness about family planning and HIV/AIDS. A demographic disaster is in the making

An excellent report by the International Institute of Population Sciences, Mumbai, has demolished the ‘demographic dividend’ theory; one which has been urban India’s euphoric rejoinder to stave off any concerns about the questionable social health of Indian youth. The report points in no uncertain terms to a demographic disaster taking place, having “squandered” the potential that could have given that dividend.

Titled A Profile of Youth in India the report is a State-wide study and systematically captures the urban-rural split, as well as the male-female disparities in education and reproductive health among adolescents and the youth — a huge segment of India’s population. The report has to be taken seriously because it was published by a Government organisation under the aegis of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The image of an exuberant youth, educated and resilient, has been shattered through this report. Here are some of the highlights:

A significant proportion of the youth were found to have received little education. Many were illiterate and several were burdened with onerous familial responsibilities. The enormous lack of education that prevailed among the female and rural youth left no opportunity for them to contribute to development or the tremendous challenge of nation building. A third of the females and only two out of every five men were found to have completed 10 years of schooling. Only two out of five adolescents were found actually attending school, leaving the rest of them destined to join the ranks of the uneducated and unemployable. One out of five teenage girls possessed no education, with one in three Muslim girls falling into this category.

The report found every third adolescent girl to be married. The element of gauna was found to be fractional, so negating the theory that child marriages were only symbolic. Early marriages consummated well before the legal minimum age of marriage had negated efforts to reach the goals of the national youth policy.

Limited use of contraception for spacing, and an over-reliance on traditional methods persisted after decades of chasing the family planning programme. Among the youth the unmet need for family planning soared. What did these young, married women know? Not even a fifth of the 20 to 24year-olds knew about the fertile days within the menstrual cycle; adolescent girls knew far less. Knowledge among boys was virtually non-existent. Yet the rhythm method continued to be the most preferred form of family planning despite knowledge about the menstrual cycle being so poor. For all the work that the State AIDS Societies claimed to have done, and all the money that they had exhausted, only 20 per cent of the female youth had comprehensive knowledge about the routes of transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS infection. In several States only half such women had even heard
about AIDS.

Undernutrition and anaemia continued to be very high among adolescents and the youth, doubling health risks for pregnant and breast-feeding women, as well as their infants. Large-scale use of tobacco and alcohol prevailed among very young adolescents with negative health fallouts over a lifetime. A high prevalence of domestic violence existed and the social norms inherited by the youth still justified wife beating.

Obviously, several Government programmes despite incremental improvements are haemorrhaging badly at places. The claims made by the National Literacy Mission, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the ICDS programmes are clearly either coloured or false. Unfortunately, the report has no silver lining. The report has not spared either the outcomes of the family planning programme or the national AIDS control programme. At one level it is highly satisfactory that the present dispensation believes in transparency and has not pushed these facts under the carpet. On the other, it is disheartening to find that there are no outcries from the State Governments that ought to have either felt ashamed of their failure or combative if they did not subscribe to the findings. Instead a climate of ‘business as usual’ prevails and one can wager that none of the people in charge of youth affairs, woman and child development, education, literacy, or the prevention of AIDS and premature marriages have looked at the report.

Clearly, all the hard work is not reaching the most vulnerable people of this country. There is absolutely no case for more Government; we need smarter Government. While that exploration should take priority, for starters, the demographic dividend theory should be dumped publicly, because it is just a sugar-coated lie.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 22 Jan 2010 06:57

The above report mentions the following key factors

education,
undernutrition,
AIDS,
early marriage
lack of knowledge of contraception

I have put education in italics because education is the key to reducing the impact of these issues. One basic fact that is forgotten by the most highly educated people is that woman are about half the population.

Undernutrition is not lack of food, but often poor practices like too many children born to a woman one after another rapidly, making her anaemic, and children get fed too long on breast milk or diluted cows milk leading to childhood undernutrition. As you can see each of these issues is interlinked and are not "separate issues"

The impact of education is mentioned in the following quote:

A third of the females and only two out of every five men were found to have completed 10 years of schooling. Only two out of five adolescents were found actually attending school, leaving the rest of them destined to join the ranks of the uneducated and unemployable. One out of five teenage girls possessed no education, with one in three Muslim girls falling into this category.

Why is the rhythm method of contraception so important? It is important because it does not involve the use of pills, condoms or loops. The rhythm method revolves around unprotected sex at times of the month when it is safe. In a menstrual period the lining of the womb (necessary for implantation of a fertilised egg and growth of a foetus) is literally washed out. So for a few days in a month the womb is unreceptive to any fertilised eggs and pregnancy cannot occur. Furthermore there is a short time gap period before a menstrual period when sex is unlikely to result in pregnancy.

The husband may demand sex at any time of day or night and the only protection the wife has (in the absence of pills/loop etc) is the wife's "headache". Educating the girl to do a simple calculation to time when she is most likely to get pregnant will allow her to time her "headache" for the most fertile period of the month and consent to sex during safe periods. Other less known facts and myths are that sex during a period is harmful. This is rubbish - sex during a period is probably the best time - but only education can pass on such information.

When a woman is pregnant the developing baby sucks out all the nutrients from the mother's body and unless a pregnant woman gets extra nutrition she will become weak and anaemic. If a girl has two or three babies in a row in 2-3 years she becomes anaemic and poverty may cause her to continue to breast feed a child past 6 months of age. That means that the baby too is undernourished.

As you can see a lot of these "special problems" of lack of education, overpopulation and undernourishment are directly linked to the condition of women and girls who form 50% of the population. Even on this forum in the past a reference to these facts has been pooh poohed as unimportant while global geopolitics is discussed. That is a typical "rich and underinformed but nevertheless arrogant male" attitude. That too can only be corrected by appropriate education. But not calculus or Mughal history.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 22 Jan 2010 07:43

SwamyG wrote:Shiv:
I thought this heading was part of the image:
Various Estimates of the Number Living Below Poverty in India, 2009

So I don't know if you missed it.

I am not shying away from these stats,.

My apologies. It was not my intention to accuse you. Sorry if the sentence construct turned out that way.

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 22 Jan 2010 09:10

Shiv saar: No apologies needed. You are just embarrassing me

. I did not double check my post to ensure the correct heading was present.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 22 Jan 2010 09:24

hnair wrote: "Innovation" of the type we see in the West needs supreme avarice as its backbone. 99% of the time it is about how "so and so made so much money out of this innovation". It would require a level of cut-throatiness and lack of respect for all living things, that I sincerely hope India will not get into.

Unfortunately things in India can be way more cut-throat. When you have a smaller set of resources distributed amongst a larger population that is to be expected. I know as desis we like to feel our culture sets us apart from the West in terms of morality - and it does in some ways! But lets not fool ourselves thinking that we are somehow of a higher moral stature than other cultures - we too have our faults and so do others. After all everybody is human onlee. Morality is hardly the preserve of any particular culture or race.

hnair wrote: We are all arguing about implementation techniques, when IMO, learning is the key. If you want to learn a skill to survive that is fine.

Exactly, learning is the key. Understanding+Practice == Learning. Simply having one or the other doesn't cut it.

hnair wrote: Some skills can be obtained by repetitive practice, without knowing the basics or concepts. Modern world and a lot of its complex systems that are operated by people who might not know why they are doing things in a certain way. eg: the chap who balances wheels for our cars. Or the dental hygienist who flosses a vegetarian's teeth as hard as a steak-junkie's. And of course the fighter pilot who skillfully reads the displays in front of him.

Knowing the concepts or basics does not mean one should not do things in a certain way or always do things in unconventional fashion. It means they know why they are doing what they are doing. Yes, the chap who balances your tires needs to know the basics of what he is doing. That is what will separate a good tire mechanic from a bad one.

hnair wrote: My key point was, even in a so called "creativity, not skill" art realm, the graphic artist who uses Photoshop to make that poster for you might not know why a color is complementary and who decided it (it certainly was not old Masters like Titian nor new masters like David Leffel or even an iconic rebel like Andy Warhol who came up with these "concepts"). But the graphic artist can skillfully get you a kickass poster on your requirements, based on some very narrow parameters learned as part of skill development. so on and so forth.

Creativity or innovation is not always a euphemism for unconventional thinking or methods - The graphics artists may follow well known conventions but he will also have the instinct on what colours to use and how to use them. Rote does not teach you instinct. Understanding concepts and practice does. Quite simply - if some skill can be purely achieved by rote, you can teach a machine to do it since you will have a finite rule set to determine every outcome. A machine has no capability to learn in the human sense simply because it lacks a capability to understand. OTOH a machine does have the capability to mindlessly repeat an action (rote) based on well-defined rules. So the question is, do we want our kids to be machines who can follow well-defined rules or do we want them to grow up with the capability of having independent thought and reasoning?

To give you a simple example. Say we have 2 students Ayesha and Babur. Ayesha practices a specific type of mathematics problem but also knows the concepts behind the problems she solves. Babur on the other hand, repeatedly practices that specific type of mathematics problem by rote without understanding how it works. Now in the exam, if the paper contains a problem which belongs to the same family of problems that both practiced but is not the exact same type of problem that they practiced - who do you think is going to find it harder to solve the exam?

I have seen this plenty of times in the class room in massa. For example, lecturers in massa universities encourage students to learn even basic mathematics like multiplying 2 sets of parenthesized expressions (of the form (x+y)*(a+b)) using rote. If anybody has taught 1st year level mathematics classes to undergrads in massa, they might recognize this so-called "FOIL method". The students are told to memorize this FOIL method and do 100s of practice problems where this method is applied. So the students are all 400% capable of multiplying 2 sets of parenthesized expressions each with exactly 2 terms but, as soon as they get a problem which asks them to multiple (x+y+z)*(a+b), they have no clue on how to do the multiplication! This is what happens when one learns by rote without understanding the concepts. If they were taught the concepts of multiplication from the very beginning they would have no trouble whatsoever in tackling this problem which is different from what they repeatedly practiced yet follows the same concepts.

The trouble with rote in learning is that it tries to create a bunch of fixed rules for each situation - unfortunately it doesn't work well outside the textbook since the number of possible situations in the real world are rarely finite (even for simple tasks).

Now, now. I did not say being creative is being dumb. did I? And why are you assuming that learning by rote wont have that "aha!" moments, when you realize "oh, so that is what I am repeating like a broken record *actually* means?". Eg: when I calculate the total at the counter in my mind, while a Khan educated checkout girl needs the machine to tell her what it would be.

The problem is rote-based learning does not encourage that "aha" moment - hence, except a few, most wont have it. Repeating some exercise monotonously neither encourages interest in the subject (again barring exceptions) nor does it provide encouragement to the average mind to investigate.

Rote is a way of implementing practice. It is "a way", not *the way* and I always acknowledged that. It is upto the wielder on how to use that particular way..... So your characterization is broadbrushing a vast field

Like I said learning == understanding+practice. Unfortunately rote means practice without understanding it 1st. Hence, there lies the problem as I mentioned in an example above.

Rebelling in art world is increasingly difficult. What if someone dont understand concepts and yet draw kickass. Eg: Picasso's Guernica is a painting that is awesome and yet breaks every "concept" that was prevalent at that time. One guy who did not give a damn till recently was Banksy. Though loves Che a bit too much (IMO), Banksy comes across as an yindoo ascetic type artist who dont seek money. Well, atleast till the recent auctions of his work fetched moolah (still watching that space). But the rest has to conform and absorb "concepts", or they starve.

Again being creative or innovative doesn't mean one has to rebel. Creativity also involves evolutionary contributions (in fact most contributions in math fall in this category). And like you said, artists need to "absorb" concepts i.e. understand them. Otherwise you would have a finite set of rules on how to paint great pictures and the Japanese would have long ago created a robot which could paint original works of art!

India might not have the best infra nor can everyone afford a million calorie cheeseburger, but it is still a naive and soulful country. I personally like that a lot. If it can make more people happy (distinct from rich), that would be incredibly awesome. My objection is to using filters of soulless Western standards on India. Failure in predicting election results in India should make us pause about such standards. Again purely a personal view

One should never use Western standards to gauge Indian requirements. India is too old and large for that. It predates the west so you are mistaken if you think it is some grandfatherly naive land. It is not - if anything Indians are some of the most pragmatic individuals (in personal lives). Anyhow being innovative or creative is nothing to do with the west (and nothing to do with being rebellious) - it is a human trait and basically stands for ability to think for oneself. Moreover, it is interesting to see how the relatively uneducated are more innovative in India as compared to the better educated - we see examples of that all the time in our villages (one of them being the famous Jugaad)

. Perhaps the education system and the mindset behind it dulls the innovative mind and tames it into monotonous submission.

Avinash R · Post by **Avinash R** » 23 Jan 2010 10:05

shiv wrote:report by the International Institute of Population Sciences...

Titled A Profile of Youth in India the report is a State-wide study and systematically captures ...the male-female disparities in education and reproductive health among adolescents and the youth — a huge segment of India’s population.

India's gender disparity rate falling
Friday, January 22, 2010 23:16 IST
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_in ... ng_1338124

Some good news for the fairer sex: A report released by the women and child development ministry claimed that gender disparity has declined in a number of key areas from 1996 till 2006, and many states have progressed in translating their growth into a better quality of life for women.

The report — Gendering Human Development Indices: Recasting the Gender Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure for Index — said there was an overall improvement in performance on gender empowerment measures (GEM) over the decade, both in the all-India score and in the scores achieved by all the states and Union territories.

In fact, there are some states that have gone a step further and progressed fast in GEM and providing access to the resources.

Delhi ranked on top among them with the highest GEM score, 0.564, in 2006. The state was third last time.Nagaland, on the other hand, which was in the lowest rank in 1996 continued to remain down this time too along with Bihar and other northeastern states.

About 14 states and Union territories achieved GEM scores above 0.485 in 2006, while in 1996, only two states — Goa and Kerela — were above the cut.

GEM was calculated on political participation and decision-making power, economic participation and power over economic resources of women. The GEM score for all of India was 0.416 in 1996, which improved to 0.497 in 2006.

Talking about economic participation and decision-making power, it was found that Madhya Pradesh had highest number of women IAS, IPS and IFS officers in 2006. There were 272 women officers in the bureaucracy from the state, followed byMaharashtra (171), Karnataka (161), Uttar Pradesh (157) and Andhra Pradesh (141).

There is one-third reservation for women in urban bodies and Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). It was found that representation of women in PRIs has increased well beyond the 1/3rd limited in several states and reached an all-India average of 36.75% in 2006.

In comparison, representation of women in the 15th Lok Sabha was only 10.7%. It was only 9.52% in Rajya Sabha.

“This clearly shows that affirmative action has resulted in increased representation and participation of women in decision-making at the grass-root level,” the report said.

So which report is true?

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 26 Jan 2010 02:19

New York hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal awarded Padma Bhushan for 2010.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 26 Jan 2010 06:42

The Indian Way of Patriotism

http://www.slate.com/id/2242555/

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 26 Jan 2010 20:53

abhishek_sharma wrote:The Indian Way of Patriotism

http://www.slate.com/id/2242555/

Wow, look at those comments swashing at India. Man the article touched raw nerves in many people.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 28 Jan 2010 09:00

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/ma ... es/226899/
Maruti overtakes parent Suzuki Motor in April-September sales

Suzuki Motor Corp, Japan’s second- largest minicar maker, sold more vehicles in India than its home market for the first time, twenty-five years after it entered the country.
Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, 54% owned by Suzuki, sold 3,36,758 cars, vans and sport-utility vehicles in the domestic market between April and September, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers said on Wednesday. That exceeded the preliminary 3,15,000 vehicles Suzuki sold in Japan in the same period, according to spokesman Takuma Mizuyoshi.
<snip>
Only seven in 1,000 people own a car in India, compared with 10 per 1,000 in China, 500 in Western Europe and 450 in the US record economic expansion has boosted car sales in eight of the past 10 years in India, prompting Hyundai, Renault SA and General Motors Corp to expand Indian facilities. This year, India’s 1.1 billion people will snap up vans, small trucks and cars more quickly than anyone except the Chinese, according to research firm Global Insight Inc. From 2006 through 2011, India will be the fastest-growing auto manufacturer among the world's top 20 car-making countries, New York-based accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP says.

animesharma · Post by **animesharma** » 01 Feb 2010 03:08

The politics of Economics:A NDTV panel discussion @ LSE ,london

As our nation turns 60, many of our conventional notions have been challenged. And the biggest question that stares us in the face is - do we need to change the way we conduct our politics?

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 01 Feb 2010 19:48

Does anyone know how many Muzrai temples are there in Karnataka?

Are there Muzrai temples in other states? Or the equivalent?

Avinash R · Post by **Avinash R** » 01 Feb 2010 20:38

^This India Today article from 1999 estimates that there are over 43,000 temples in Kar controlled by muzrai dept while TN has 26,000 and AP 13,000 temples.
http://www.india-today.com/itoday/12041 ... ataka.html

Sachin · Post by **Sachin** » 02 Feb 2010 09:00

shiv wrote:Are there Muzrai temples in other states? Or the equivalent?

In Kerala, there are lots of temples which come under the the "Temple and Devaswom Board". Temples in the erst-while Travancore area come under the Travancore Devaswom Board (Sabarimala is an example). There is also one for the erst-while Cochin princely state (Cochin Devaswom Board). Positions in these two boards are for "spent bullets" like ex-movie stars, politicians who could not make it big etc. etc.

There are also privately managed temples (A trust, or with an elected body of members) where the hukkummat of the Devaswom Boards dont apply.

animesharma · Post by **animesharma** » 06 Feb 2010 02:54

Four-year medical course unveiled to bridge urban-rural gap

>aim to bridge the urban-rural gap in medical services.
>The four-year course, Bachelor of Rural Medicine and Surgery (BRMS), is aimed at meeting the public health challenges in rural areas.
>“BRMS will supplement and strengthen the existing 5-year MBBS medical programme,“
>MCI also plans to set up medical colleges in 300 districts in the country where there are currently no medical colleges.