Indian Education System

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 24 Mar 2009 03:19

Why has schooling become a burden?
By Jayalakshmi K
Just like mothers (and wives) of soldiers sending them off to the battleground with blessings, I was seeing mothers packing off their children to the board examinations. And till they returned it was a similar plight of anxiety.

It was a scene out of history. Just like mothers (and wives) of soldiers sending them off to the battleground with blessings, I was seeing mothers packing off their children to the board examinations. And till they returned it was a similar plight — of anxiety.

That is the state of our education brought about jointly by the authorities and parents. Under the enormous burden of the syllabus, children barely manage to stay afloat. Many crumble, many give up, few emerge ‘victors’ who are toasted to, like the brave soldiers who returned home victorious.

Perform, perform better, perform best. That is the cry from home and school.

And as though that was not enough, now we have a caste system in schools. Children (and parents) who opt for the state syllabus are ridiculed and called as the ‘weak students.’ The school joins in the branding and you can find principals and teachers party to this as they counsel parents not to opt for the state syllabus because the “centralised syllabus prepares children better for college”.

Two systems

Nobody bothers to understand that the two central systems are too strenuous for an average child in an average school with average teaching!

When I told my daughter that I wanted to shift her to the state syllabus in high school, she protested and would have gone on a fast too. She was scared she would lose her friends and she would be looked down upon as a ‘weak student’.

While the CBSE system is heavy, there is a lot of emphasis on contextual learning instead of mere rote learning. Project work is done in a way that mere downloading from the net is not possible. However, the way ICSE is taught in most schools in the city leaves much to be desired. One cannot blame the teachers as there simply is no time to deal with all chapters in a relaxed manner.

Clearly, with unbridled privatisation and no checks and controls at all, parents are weighed down under a financial burden when it comes to tuition fees.

In one reputed school from south Bangalore, the fee was hiked to double the amount from 22k to 45k annually! Parents were told to seek a TC within a week if they wanted to leave, failing which they would have to pay a quarter’s fees to procure the TC!

Power to act

There are lots of such real stories from the private education sector. What does a hapless parent or student do?

Go to the Lokayukta? The state government has sought powers from the Centre to take action against erring private institutions, but chances are that not much will be done.

This is one clear example of how privatisation is not the answer. Not when ethics and values have no place.

Regulations and monitoring is a must if exploitation of the helpless is to be avoided. Or, our government schools have to be brought on par with the likes of public schools in the US.

Every one knows that private tuitions are banned under the law. Yet everyone knows how well they are flourishing.

It is all about money. Why else is every person, with no degree to boast of, but ample money, so keen to get into the education sector?

Do these private institutions deliver any better education than a government school? A moot question. Finally, it is the student on whom it all depends. It is his effort to study that will take him through. And this depends on the pressure applied from both home and school.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 24 Mar 2009 05:49

vina wrote:The spoken language thing is beyond just mom and dad speaking it with the kid(s). I am actually surprised Hakim Saab's nieces speak any Bengali at all, given that BIL is not a Bengali speaker!. So what languages do the kid's parents speak in ?. AmirKhani Inglees !. That is how the kids get the accent from. That is the most "heard" language.

My hypothesis is this. In all cases where I observed a "community" of people speaking the language, the kids pick it up. In the US, the ABCD kids who were actually fluent in their native tongues (Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi etc ) were kids who had not just parents speaking it, but also grandparents who lived with the family and spoke with them on it, along with say neighbors who also spoke it.

Just a "nuclear" family of mom and dad , trying to get the kids to speak anything is a lost cause. Kid goes to day care, and right there, the mother tongue gets nuked! All other kids speak the other language.

Vina, as usual is on the dot. We tried teaching our kid to speak in Malayalam in massa and it has failed miserably, even though he does understand simple things said in malayalam. We had the same attitude and use to blame the parents

for kids not learning their mother-tongues, till we had to face up to our failure on the same count.

The kid did not say beyond a few words till he was almost four years old and started going to pre-school. He started talking in Inglees with strong amirkhani accent when he started school, almost 2-3 months into KG which had his teacher quite worried initially. But, now he speaks English at times with an Indian accent too surprisingly, when he is playful but not mockingly. We speak both Malayalam and English at home. I need to switch to English more often than SHQ who is more native than me. My experiments to teach him Hindi by early exposure to Indian cable channels (which is mostly Hindi) has also failed. Now we have put him in a weekend Hindi Class with little progress so far, but he likes it very much.

Myself did learn to speak correctly Bengali first as a child, before I could speak Malayalam with the proper accent. Now my Bengali sucks, but spoken Malayalam is much better. SHQ family was quite impressed that I spoke Malayalam so well with no bad accent, even though I grew up mostly outside Kerala. All my probashi cousins in Madras, Calcutta and Bombay still have bad accents when they speak their mother tongue. Even had to do high school Kannada which is mostly forgotten. Even worse than my Bengali. The only language that was beyond me was Tamil, despite my Madrassa years since it was too harsh for my ears.

The bottom line is, to not worry too much about this language issue. Kids will learn from the most spoken form around them, there is no way around it. I have finally resigned to it, though my mom cannot converse with her grand kid. Hope he learns some Hindi soon if not Malayalam, so she can talk with him.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 24 Mar 2009 09:24

Just a "nuclear" family of mom and dad , trying to get the kids to speak anything is a lost cause. Kid goes to day care, and right there, the mother tongue gets nuked! All other kids speak the other language.

dont think thats a general case. we speak assamese at home and thats the
language my son is fluent in. but with his playpals and school it is angrezi with
a nice south indian accent. maybe it depends on how much you talk to them
in mother tongue, makes them to respond in that language.

I **dislike** the idea common here among yuppie parents of speaking to their
kids in angrezi onree at home also. sure their kids speak angrezi far more fluently than my kid, but are they preparing for customer contact jobs to the anglosphere only? people will pick it up in due course at school and manage. I dont a junior "oxbridge don" running around in the house telling me how to
hold the spoon and fork properly.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 24 Mar 2009 09:39

Is it oxbridge or oxon?

negi · Post by **negi** » 24 Mar 2009 09:41

^ GD you are from Assam ? I thought you were from south of Tungabhadra .

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 24 Mar 2009 09:45

Singha-saar you had the luxury of growing in assam in your childhood days, what about us ******** Indians who did not have that luxury.

For someone like me with strains of Anglo-indian, bong, gujju, kannada strains on my mallu base we cannot be expected to be fully native all the time. We have only Ingleesh to fall back on, whether it is oxbridge accent or dilli staccato or sing song madrasi or rosogollish Bonglish...it is english which rescues my creed all the time.

Prasad · Post by **Prasad** » 24 Mar 2009 12:42

Agree with Singha saar on that account. Languages can be picked up far quicker than some people think. Just that you need exposure to it. There are tons of people out there who speak Tamil outside and their mother tongue at home and you'd never know that they speak another language at home without them telling you.

This does, of course, take years in some cases. But does happen. Same with Inglees. A school with a decent standard of english is good enough and the odd talks at home. Plus in cases of families with grandparents along, they can learn another language through them.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 24 Mar 2009 12:50

my kid is picking up hindi from friends/TV and can also sing in kannada from school activities . though they dont understand the 'grammar' they can
go entirely paki and use just sound patterns to pickup these things...like a passive sonar

or a well trained parrot

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 24 Mar 2009 20:22

Interesting observation on how kids pick up sounds/accent. Observing mine I did learn quite a bit. He is very good at pronouncing correctly all Indian names, even new ones the first time he sees them, unlike a true amirkhanian. Some massa born Indian kids have issues with accent. His Hindi teacher noticed that quite early about his ability to get the sounds right, even when he cannot speak a clear sentence in Hindi on his own.

Contrast this with average American, who at the sight of an Indian name makes a fool of himself. So what gives ? I have noticed that the average Oiropeans do not have issues with Indian names as much as Americans do.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 24 Mar 2009 21:43

its not known to me how this works, but I had purchased some books on "phonics" and failed to elicit any
interest in him except in me describing the images. now I find just before his annual evals that he knows
all the stuff in those books like "name something starting with Dee.." - so something must have been
taught in school. maybe the brats are more co-operative if they study in a pack.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 24 Mar 2009 21:45

Bade wrote:Interesting observation on how kids pick up sounds/accent. Observing mine I did learn quite a bit. He is very good at pronouncing correctly all Indian names, even new ones the first time he sees them, unlike a true amirkhanian. Some massa born Indian kids have issues with accent. His Hindi teacher noticed that quite early about his ability to get the sounds right, even when he cannot speak a clear sentence in Hindi on his own.

Start with sanskrit learning and all pronunciation - uchhara will fix itself

Contrast this with average American, who at the sight of an Indian name makes a fool of himself. So what gives ? I have noticed that the average Oiropeans do not have issues with Indian names as much as Americans do.

Once David Letterman said that they were discouraged to say Indian names.
I did not believe it but now I have slowly.

Prasad · Post by **Prasad** » 24 Mar 2009 23:52

Acharya wrote: Once David Letterman said that they were discouraged to say Indian names.
I did not believe it but now I have slowly.

Why weren't they Acharyaji?

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 25 Mar 2009 01:40

Start with sanskrit learning and all pronunciation - uchhara will fix itself

Guess that is right, reason why malayalam speakers seem to get the accent right

since it has borrowed heavily from sanskrit. In fact some of the massa weekend India schools now have Sanskrit classes too for kids.

Stan_Savljevic · Post by **Stan_Savljevic** » 25 Mar 2009 03:59

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holn ... 250333.htm

Venugopal Reddy joins University of Hyderabad as professor

Hyderabad (PTI): Y Venugopal Reddy, former RBI governor has joined the University of Hyderabad as an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Economics. After a formal meeting with Vice-Chancellor, Prof Seyed Hasnain, Mr. Reddy had an interaction with the faculty in the Department of Economics. Mr. Reddy apart from his rich academic association will deliver regular lectures on major economic topics/issues, a Hyderabad University release said adding that he has also agreed to mentor research scholars and faculty. Prior to being the Governor, Mr. Reddy was Executive Director for India, Sri lanka, Bangaldesh and Bhutan at the International Monetary Fund.

http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id= ... _medium=en

Indian Universities Will Finally Shift to Semester System and Choice-Based Credits

New Delhi — Acceding to longstanding demands by academics, India’s university regulator has decided that universities must offer semester-based courses with a system of course credits based on student choice, the Indian Express reported. Students will also be allowed to take courses at different institutions than their home university and receive credit for those classes. The regulator, the University Grants Commission, has told universities that the changes must be in place within two years, the newspaper said.

Until now, universities did not divide the year into semesters and held annual examinations at the end of each academic year but none in the middle of the year. That schedule meant there was no continual evaluation of students. In addition, undergraduate degrees had rigid curricula, with majors in one discipline barred from taking courses in an unrelated field or at a comparable institution. Students registered at one university were forbidden to take courses at another, and credits were not transferable.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 25 Mar 2009 06:04

tsriram wrote:
Acharya wrote: Once David Letterman said that they were discouraged to say Indian names.
I did not believe it but now I have slowly.
Why weren't they Acharyaji?

Dont know

Arya Sumantra · Post by **Arya Sumantra** » 26 Mar 2009 18:03

Singha wrote:Just a "nuclear" family of mom and dad , trying to get the kids to speak anything is a lost cause. Kid goes to day care, and right there, the mother tongue gets nuked! All other kids speak the other language.

dont think thats a general case. we speak assamese at home and thats the
language my son is fluent in. but with his playpals and school it is angrezi with
a nice south indian accent. maybe it depends on how much you talk to them
in mother tongue, makes them to respond in that language.

I **dislike** the idea common here among yuppie parents of speaking to their
kids in angrezi onree at home also. sure their kids speak angrezi far more fluently than my kid, but are they preparing for customer contact jobs to the anglosphere only? people will pick it up in due course at school and manage. I dont a junior "oxbridge don" running around in the house telling me how to
hold the spoon and fork properly.

Angrezi at work and mother tongue(MT) at home may be a good interim solution for being multi-lingual. However people do think in one language though and that question brings you back to the tough choice between angrezi and MT. Thinking directly in angrezi does give an edge in competitive environments at workplace or even in social spheres. Consider two persons A and B with same intellectual capacities. Person A thinks in Angrezi while Person B thinks in mother tongue (MT) When asked the same question in Angrezi in a commercial/educational environment by an observer, the response time for the two is as follows:

Response time for Person A: Time to understand the question + Time to think out the reply+ Time to verbally deliver the reply
Response time for Person B: Time to mentally translate question to MT+ Time to understand the question + Time to think out the reply in MT+ Time to mentally translate reply from MT to Angrezi+ Time to verbally deliver the reply

Due to the longer reaction time of person B, the observer is more likely to assume person B to be slow thinker/less smart/verbally challenged or plain boring to talk to or mingle with compared to person A. One often finds smart guys from vernacular mediums of instruction complain losing out in corporate settings or interviews for higher education to those from angrezi medium despite similar credentials.

ADDED LATER: IMHO, Even in college I noticed that the tendency to cram answers was much higher in person B types to cut down answering time in exams. The person A types could always reproduce answers in their own words if they understood concept at large because they primarily thought in the language in which they had to answer.

Am not trying to promote angrezi here but given that we all acknowledge role of angrezi as a business language and language of learning, the folks whose language of thoughts is in mother tongue do risk an unfair assessment of their intellect. So angrezi at work and mother tongue at home as practiced by our parents is not a completely problem free solution.

Bade wrote:Contrast this with average American, who at the sight of an Indian name makes a fool of himself. So what gives ? I have noticed that the average Oiropeans do not have issues with Indian names as much as Americans do.

My name is a slightly long though not by yindian standards. When north ameri khans display the struggle when pronouncing my name I always point them North Ameri khan names like Massachusetts, Appalachain, Chevrolet, Saskatchewan etc which they pronounce without fumbling. At least my name is phonetic with no redundant (silent) alphabets.

Stan_Savljevic · Post by **Stan_Savljevic** » 26 Mar 2009 18:23

Keywords: Super 30, JEE preparation, Bihar, incredible India
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q68QEkeN6bc
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJzKbGu42D4
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvPhvY1oKU

Saral · Post by **Saral** » 27 Mar 2009 08:52

Stan_Savljevic wrote:Keywords: Super 30, JEE preparation, Bihar, incredible India
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q68QEkeN6bc
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJzKbGu42D4
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvPhvY1oKU

This is a more convenient link

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes ... 61635.html

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 27 Mar 2009 11:26

Really good videos on the Super-30. Do any fizzyics guru-log remember if this Anant kumar is the same fellow who used to write solution manuals for the Irodov book one used in Class 11/12th?

Stan_Savljevic · Post by **Stan_Savljevic** » 28 Mar 2009 02:14

Lessons in apathy --- R. RAMAKUMAR (R. Ramakumar is Assistant Professor, School of Social Sciences, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.)

The neglect of the public school system and the encouragement of private schools characterise the UPA’s education policy.
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/2 ... 701800.htm

Campus cruelty --- V. VENKATESAN
Ragging continues to defy solution as educational institutions turn a blind eye to the need for compliance with the Supreme Court’s guidelines.
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/2 ... 710900.htm

‘Implementation is half-hearted’ --- Interview with R.K. Raghavan, Chairperson, Monitoring Committee for the Prevention of Ragging.
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/2 ... 711000.htm

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Mar 2009 05:29

Found this interesting survey on opinion of IIT students (UG and PG) on doing a Pee Yech Dee in India

Raakit Mouse target

Prasad · Post by **Prasad** » 28 Mar 2009 13:01

Arya Sumantra wrote:Angrezi at work and mother tongue(MT) at home may be a good interim solution for being multi-lingual. However people do think in one language though and that question brings you back to the tough choice between angrezi and MT. Thinking directly in angrezi does give an edge in competitive environments at workplace or even in social spheres. Consider two persons A and B with same intellectual capacities. Person A thinks in Angrezi while Person B thinks in mother tongue (MT) When asked the same question in Angrezi in a commercial/educational environment by an observer, the response time for the two is as follows:

Again, this depends on the exposure to either language. If during your early days, you have adequate exposure to both languages, you'd be able to seamlessly switch between them. The problem occurs when instruction in either language is faulty. That is when you have improper command over a particular language and are handicapped that you have to think in another language and translate it to communicate. If exposure to languages is over many years, this handicap never develops.

The real problem lies in the improper education in angrezi that person B has a poor command.

Vipul · Post by **Vipul** » 29 Mar 2009 02:59

IIT classes from Std VII, 6 years before test.

KOTA: So what if they haven't a clue about calculus or are still to learn about protons and electrons? Surely that can't stop a child from training to be an IITian.

This may seem unthinkable elsewhere, but in Kota, the coaching hub for IITians that routinely sends hundreds to the top institutes, students from Class VII can receive special training from this year itself to crack the IIT entrance test. Never mind that they can take a shot at it only six years down the line.

To make life easier for these students, who until now had only routine tuitions to worry about after school, faculty from the coaching centres will go to the different schools to hold special classes.

The special course—Pre-foundation Career Care Program (PCCP)—is apparently aimed at "better conceptual understanding". To enrol, one needs to have scored at least 70% in Class VI—not a tough task, especially for someone hoping to crack the IIT entrance exam later in life. Those who don't manage the 70% have the option of taking an admissions test.

Manoj Sharma, additional director (administration and management), Resonance, a coaching institute, said the objective was to develop qualities such as a scientific temperament, mathematical aptitude, problem-solving skills, reasoning and competitive psychology, among students at an early stage. It's another matter that the kids may not even be able to pronounce many of these phrases, leave alone comprehend them.

"These qualities help develop the competitive quotient (CQ) among students so that they perform better in school as well as in competitive exams," Sharma added.

Resonance has tied up with the Sawai Man Singh School in Jaipur and DPS in Chandigarh and efforts are on to cover other educational centres where the coaching staff will conduct classes after school. "It will save students time and will also come as a relief to parents who won't need to take their kids to different centres," he said.

Pramod Maheshwari, CEO of Career Point, another coaching institute, said early preparation for competitive examinations was always beneficial, especially now that the number of attempts for the IIT-JEE had been restricted to two. Career Point is conducting classes under its programme Synchro School Education at a few schools in Kota, Assam and Punjab, while efforts are on to rope in more schools in Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur and a few other places.

"We have also launched a website (free online test series) http://www.a2zexam.com on which students can test their skills by solving test papers and checking their performance, including the number of correct answers, the time taken and accuracy levels," he said.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 29 Mar 2009 04:42

Vipul wrote:IIT classes from Std VII, 6 years before test.

Seriously, Indian education is going to the dogs. In the end we will produce a batch of robots who have as much imagination as my musharraf. They will have no recollection of any childhood...no happy memories...will only have thick glasses made from bottoms of old Coca Cola bottles.

I do remember that my classmate who became AIR 1 during the year I took JEE, actually started IIT prep from class VIII (he claimed to have finished ML Khanna in class VIII itself!). But what good did the AIR 1 bring him in life till now is anybody's guess.

Arya Sumantra · Post by **Arya Sumantra** » 29 Mar 2009 05:40

tsriram wrote:
Arya Sumantra wrote:Angrezi at work and mother tongue(MT) at home may be a good interim solution for being multi-lingual. However people do think in one language though and that question brings you back to the tough choice between angrezi and MT. Thinking directly in angrezi does give an edge in competitive environments at workplace or even in social spheres. Consider two persons A and B with same intellectual capacities. Person A thinks in Angrezi while Person B thinks in mother tongue (MT) When asked the same question in Angrezi in a commercial/educational environment by an observer, the response time for the two is as follows:
Again, this depends on the exposure to either language. If during your early days, you have adequate exposure to both languages, you'd be able to seamlessly switch between them. The problem occurs when instruction in either language is faulty. That is when you have improper command over a particular language and are handicapped that you have to think in another language and translate it to communicate. If exposure to languages is over many years, this handicap never develops.

The real problem lies in the improper education in angrezi that person B has a poor command.

tsriramji, these are breakdown of real processes/steps that happen in your brain a) if you think in terms of language you answer b) if you don't. The good or bad training in a language is just an added complication. Regardless of how multi-lingual people are they do think in one language at a time. So what you call a "handicap" is observable in all. If you think in angrezi then it would happen with you while talking in mother tongue. The translation delay during conversation may not be too noticeable while talking trivia at home but try talking work related stuff in mother tongue and you will see yourself fumbling or mixing two languages(hinglish, tamlish, bonglish etc).

shaardula · Post by **shaardula** » 31 Mar 2009 14:44

Sheldon Pollock, the most eminent professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Columbia University, is consumed by one question these days: How does one revive interest and scholarship in pre-modern or classical texts in Indian languages?

"At the time of Independence, and for some two millennia before that, India was graced by the presence of scholars whose historical and philological expertise made them the peer of any in the world. They produced editions and literary and historical studies of texts in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu - and in Apabhramsha, Assamese, Bangla, Brajbhasha, Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya, Persian, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Urdu - that we still use today. In fact, in many cases their works have not been replaced. This is not because they are irreplaceable - it is in the nature of scholarship that later knowledge should supersede earlier. They have not been replaced because there is no one to replace them... Two generations of Indian students have been lost to the study of classical Indian languages and literatures, in part due to powerful economic forces no doubt, but in part due to sheer neglect."

source: sugata srinivasaraju's column in outlook.

Also read sheldon pollock editorial in The Hindu.

The real classical languages debate
Sheldon Pollock
A Sanskrit proverb tells us that it is far easier to tear down a house than it is to build it. The great edifice of Indian classical language study and literary scholarship has been nearly torn down. Is it possible, at this late hour, to build it up again?

shaardula · Post by **shaardula** » 31 Mar 2009 15:08

i dunno, but without indian languages creating more indian myths like the folks who wrote the mahabharatha is not possible.

despite what purists say, only saving grace is indian movies and the dialogues and songs in them. but just like the lyricist is celebrated, hopefully one day the script and dialogue writers are too. but hopefully more and more of these are made by people like cheran and less by people like murugadoss. more by kasarvalli's and nags and fewer by kavitha lankeshs.

the thing is, english is not simply taught as another language. it also comes as a part of a package... it is not taught as another language to express ourselves in, it is taught as a language that allows us to escape who we are. and this is reinforced by the package. in much sought after english schools, you cant wear jasmine, you cant wear marks of morning puja, you cant talk to your peers in local languages and so on.

i mean, none of these schools are geared to produce a rk narayan or even a naipaul, who was narayan's greatest critic. all these are geared at producing roys.

Stan_Savljevic · Post by **Stan_Savljevic** » 01 Apr 2009 07:21

India's University Regulator Pushes for U.S.-Style Grading System
http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id= ... _medium=en

India’s university regulator is suddenly paying heed to academics’ suggestions for reforms at universities. Its latest recommendation to all public universities is to begin evaluating students’ performance on the basis of a cumulative grade-point score, as is common in the United States, and to give equal importance to classroom participation in setting a grade, The Times of India reported. Neither of those practices occurs under the current evaluation system here. Last week the regulator ordered all universities to offer semester-based classes, with a system of course credits based on student choice, within two years.

I hope the scale for CGPA is not 4.0 and perhaps 10.0 like what the IITs use. Would help in finely graining performance than just doing an A, B, C, D.

negi · Post by **negi** » 01 Apr 2009 07:33

Stan Iirc NIT's and other Engg colleges of repute have been using the 10 point CGPA system akin to IIT's since 2004 .

Stan_Savljevic · Post by **Stan_Savljevic** » 10 Apr 2009 04:40

India Should Ensure That Foreign Universities Serve Its Needs, Members of Reform Panel Say
http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id= ... _medium=en

Stan_Savljevic · Post by **Stan_Savljevic** » 10 Apr 2009 20:12

Hands off academic matters: Court
“Courts no substitute for professional bodies”
Bridge course would be detrimental to academic standards
Legality of the policy is the subject of judicial review

New Delhi: If it is a question of educational policy or an issue involving an academic matter, the courts should keep their hands off, the Supreme Court has said. “Courts are neither equipped nor do they have the academic or technical background to substitute themselves in place of statutory professional technical bodies and take decisions in academic matters involving standards and quality of technical education,” said a Bench of Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice G.S. Singhvi in a recent order.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/04/09/stories ... 391800.htm

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 10 Apr 2009 21:00

Raja Bose wrote:Really good videos on the Super-30. Do any fizzyics guru-log remember if this Anant kumar is the same fellow who used to write solution manuals for the Irodov book one used in Class 11/12th?

yep, FWIW he also has a murder charge against him.

him and many others are considered academic progenies of MMR Akhtar of patna university(?) who was a mini phenomenon in the IIT coaching scenario there.

surprisingly, I've heard many quite intelligent people who have since studied at some of the top places in country swear that they had never seen a better physics teacher than MMR Akhtar though he had taught only at the +2 level.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Apr 2009 05:25

Rahul,

I thought Anant Kumar was the one who got a murder threat against him....now prey has turned predator?!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 13 Apr 2009 09:14

Centre asks IITs to give SCs/STs more shots at JEE

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Give ... 392664.cms

WTF is our beloved government trying to do?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 13 Apr 2009 09:42

well the real 'damage' is due to lower cut off marks in reserved category. more shots will not improve or
make things worse.

vsudhir · Post by **vsudhir** » 13 Apr 2009 10:17

x-post
Indian applications to US univs down by 9 percent

Mebbe desi netas can demand caste quotas in US univs too....

Stan_Savljevic · Post by **Stan_Savljevic** » 13 Apr 2009 10:22

To be honest, the SC/ST students at least work hard enough and push their limits..... The less said, the better about the JEE-nazis. Most of the SC/ST folks (who I know) that have entered IITs are the garden-variety folks next door, they are not representative of the SC/ST population by any means. There is a world out there that is truly deserving, and yet truly dis-enfranchised by all this bullcrap that gets done in their name. In any case, I wound nt bicker too much about the GoI directives, mis-directed venom. The GoI can do a lot better if they caught a good % of the SC/ST kids young and offered them a decent primary/secondary education so that they would nt need these crutches in the long run. But yea, when has GoI acted with a long-range vision, dreams unlimited Inc.

Singha-saar, the damage in the system seems complete. Not much can be done to infuse fresh blood. No point resuscitating the system IMHO.

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 13 Apr 2009 10:25

Raja Bose wrote:Rahul,

I thought Anant Kumar was the one who got a murder threat against him....now prey has turned predator?!

oh, everybody gets murder threats in bihar, that's a no-news really !

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 13 Apr 2009 12:31

in a way its tough to be a IIT UG and be a lower percentile/mid percentile. the clique of toppers looks down upon the lower levels and hang out among themselves. a constant
academic thrashing does serious damage to self-worth esp as all entrants are generally
toppers of their respective schools/mohallas.

but thats temporary and minor compared to the lifelong pressure, comparisons and feeling of failure if they dont 'make it big' because there are always people who made it
super big and sat in the same classes and studied under same teachers. why cant you
start your own co ? why cant you file 200 patents? why cant you have a villa in atherton?
and these "failures" go to the periodic pan-iit confs and return more depressed and confused. add to that tales of massive money made by their i-banking classmates.

I have seen two friends fall into a massive inferiority complex -> paranoia -> distintegration due to this phenomenon. one's marriage also broke up due to his rages and violence.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 13 Apr 2009 12:36

Singha wrote:well the real 'damage' is due to lower cut off marks in reserved category. more shots will not improve or
make things worse.

Actually you are right....the lower cutoff marks is the killer. Why dont our Arjun Singh types get it that after these SC/ST candidates get in on lower marks, these is no reservation criteria inside IIT in how the courses are taught and graded. So unless one expects the poorer students to magically become brilliant they will get thrashed academically once they get in to an IIT. Someone once told me that getting into IIT is easier than surviving it for 4 years

And then they will fall in depression like what you describe above and cause damage to themselves and their families all because of some stupid criteria with which we measure success.