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Showing posts with label Education System. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education System. Show all posts

Juliet Wurr, PRO of US Consulate office in Hyderabad seems to be a romantic lady.
'It's funny people getting upset about this. I don't know about your servants...but my servant has big heavy silver anklets...that look a heck of a lot more uncomfortable and binding,' she quoted on small screen.
What a dialogue! For India!
Do they find servants in US?
Romanticism, derived perhaps from the era of Nizam, of wearing and displaying gold. No gold? Silver will do! After all the lady stays in Hyderabad and her name goes back to 400 years. But it is not the Victorian time.
The modern lady of mod American Raj Darbar deputed to stately Hyderabad forgot, this is an ebonite age in her country and let them ankle-cuff their celebrity culprits as she said, not here in Hyderabad where we too have our own H(y)ollywood.
This is a fusion with Californian effect; Tri Valley University and Celebrities,
There are some wrist watches looking like a mini copy of the radio-tag in fashion in India. One can’t tie a wrist watch of the kind and sleep comfortably. But our students’ ankles are locked with them, their batteries being recharged intermittently and enforced to continue for more than a month now.
Or does she think if an American university with a picturesque name Tri Valley is duping, migrant students from India are necessarily culprits?
In the meanwhile, the Consulate office, that too of a mighty American country has to apologize. An apparent victory!
What’s so big to make a hue and cry about such a petty mafi-nama when the democratic country invades and burns another country?
On the flip side our own buffoonery doesn’t seem to see the end. The effect being carried over since 3000 years, well past Victorian times of Juliet.
The overseas affairs minister said he was gathering information and in a way buying time.
The foreign Affairs minister isn’t serious at all, (when was he? Check his muster as a Governor of Maharashtra earlier) as it has happened to a very few students and it is necessary to think about a hundred thousand students and appeal media to stop disseminating the news.
What a perspective! And the man is incubating over international affairs.
Next day he had to eat back his words.
Times Now defied him point blank saying that they are not going to give up the issue.
Earlier when a biggest American retail chain of consumer goods decided to put the electronic-tags on their ready-mades, consumer movements there had opposed the action.
One of the most outspoken critics of the Auto-ID Center has been privacy activist Katherine Albrecht, the head of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering. She called for worldwide boycotts of clothing retailers to put RFID chips or "tags" on their products. Albrecht also criticized the Auto-ID Center for trying to downplay the privacy concerns over the technology after finding documents on the group's Web site that contained public relations advice on how to "neutralize opposition" to RFID systems.
In their stores hanging jeans are made to wear the e-tags over them and the attempts are challenged by the activists. However, when our students, our future is forced to wear them under the jean by the country boasting to have eradicated slavery forces, our own rulers are holding back as if suffering with fatigue of conscience.
American laws for obtaining visa are stringent and the university is sham, as such though the students enter through an agent, how can they be treated as culprits?
The fact is that we have lost our sense of self honour.
Rajputs fought to death to preserve that.
Marathas (of Shivaji) staked their lives to block millions of mogul soldiers because their self respect was alive.
In this 21st century we (the rulers of the country) have lost it in totality. The political rulers injected with sycophancy have been so anaemic, they are left with no energy to even protest.
They feel America; every time would come of her own and save us.
If you are an oil begging country why America would come to you?
But when America is butchering you, insulting you as if pre-decidedly; I mean the lowest rank officer here in India spitting an insult upon you, how can you expect America to save your honour? Formerly USSR was at least a solace.
The days to command respect met an end with Indira Gandhi.
The days to demand respect don’t seem to be anywhere near in sight. The days to beg are here matravalla.
But, do the beggars survive?
In the meanwhile, advent of universities is visible on the Indian horizon. How many of them, yes, I mean universities, would have to be radio-tagged, time only will tell.
About a month has passed. Some half a dozen radio-tags have been unfastened in instalments.
The scams here are overshadowing this international insult of Indian students. Tell me, when public memory was not short in our country. It’s a nauseating cliché.
When all the radio-tags would be removed after a few days some of the hollow show-makers will celebrate. Those suffering silently would burn candles over such blackballed souls in their minds.
- Divakar Kambli

I was waiting for my cab. I was standing under a tree shade next to a small shop which was at the entry of a lane that led to my residential complex. It was a scorching afternoon with passing by vehicles puffing out black smoke. I dwell in a area that still has a tinge of rural setting. Old men manoeuvring their cattle across the road is a usual sight. Schools children were flocking across the roads, some with their mothers, some with their maids, and few with their school gangs. I was rejoicing this landscape.

A collision between a truck and a four wheeler interrupted my wallow. The drivers got into a brawl. Soon, people from neighbourhood joined the chaos. Later the truck driver fled and things were coming to a stand still when a gang of school children surrounded the truck, started the typical “maa-bhen” abuse and pelted stones at the truck, few of them even tried to run in search of the truck driver with stones in their hand. I was left awestruck.

Moments later my cab arrived and I was on my way to a venue where I had to deliver a speech on “Stress Management & Relaxation Techniques”.

All through the way, the act of those school children reflected upon me, the collision episode was slowly diminishing from my memory. I was still surprised at the way those children, still in their nascent age, reacted to the incident. They probably had no clue about what went wrong, whose mistake it was, or what the entire situation was about.

From where did this temperament of violence and abuse creep in? Weren’t they at an age to run bare feet into the sprawling fields or play cricket or do things that children of that age did?

My further pondering made a swarm of thoughts swirl in my mind. Foremost, the patience level has gone down generically across the entire generation, including the parents. With the kind of separations taking place increasingly it is inevitable that tolerance level of young couples has gone down. With the parents not able to manage their time and stress effectively, the frustration is passed on to the children. And in few cases children witness their parent’s agitation which gets engraved on their innocent minds, which is later practiced in the world outside, seldom noticed by their parents.

Other factor could possibly be technology; with arcade games gaining so much popularity, children today have forgotten playing strategy board games or outdoor games. These games actually help in channelizing mental thoughts and building up endurance which effectively aid individual’s physiological, physical, and psychological well-being/development. The computer games nowadays where killings, robberies, bomb blasts are primary themes teach children similar motives and have an adverse effect on children’s minds, and this is practised in the outer world again. Their minds become to prone to violent behaviour and their mindset takes a shape of thought – “eradication is the only solution”. In some parts of the country, access to weapons is easy, thus facilitating irrational killings or bloodshed where satisfaction of the ego is the only objective and impatience (inability to rationalise) the root cause.
Children are so much soaked in violence that it won’t be surprising to hear them talk about it or go ahead and do it.

It is the time to ask “WHY” such kind of behaviour has become so ubiquitous in our society and there is a strong need to devise techniques to alienate violence among children. While stringent rules and law regulations will not be the only solution to this problem, I am sure you will second me about the requisite veracity that mental well-being is a crucial facet of children’s young years.

   
Psychologists all over who have been practicing in schools and counselling about children’s mental health have stressed that it is just not necessary to impart academic and learning skills but it is also important to teach them thinking ability, coping up and communicating skills, and also few methods on behavioural aspects.

Every school, ideally, should have psychologists or behavioural therapists on their panels so counsel the children on timely basis and interface with the parents regularly to teach and seek feedback about mental wellness techniques.

Mental health services and counselling practices must be implemented in schools and our children rightly deserve it. Resources are available in plenty, they need to be tapped and there needs to be a change in our mentality too – “every individual referred to a psychologist does not necessarily equate to one being mad”. There needs to be strong measures for involvement and prevention at the earliest.

P.S. - Unfortunately, psychologists are projected as helpers, who are brought in only after the crisis has taken place, which regrettably is demeaning and certainly fruitless.

- Pragyan Jha
(Pragyan Jha is a qualified psychologist & practicing counsellor in Pune)

Kapil Sibal recently announced about the non compulsion to send children to school. Parents can, if they wish so, refrain from sending their children to school and can instead opt to teach them at home. He won’t interfere with the parents’ choice, even if it means going against the “Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009”. The compulsion is not on the parents but on the state, he clarified.

There are many who will fret about this move, and crib about Americanisation of our youth who will spoil their future etc. However, there are equal numbers of parents who have greeted Sibal’s opinion with a smile. In fact, there are many parents who have been practicing home schooling; and their children have done well.

While there is a flip side that children may not learn to socialize or be compassionate, or may become egoistic or over dependent on their parents, there are many brighter aspects to homeschooling.

Most importantly, the child can learn and pursue something that is of his/her interest, while gathering sufficient but not mandatory knowledge about other things. Parents can opt to teach more about the life-skills than teaching them about the dead ones; what is important today is to learn how to preserve our independence and not be redolent about Babu Genu, Savarkar, Gokhale etc. It would be a good idea to teach them about reformers and thinkers than the freedom fighters. Look up any school book today; none talks anything about Swami Vivekanda except the famous religious conference of 1883. It would, rather be worthwhile to teach about his philosophies and thoughts than just “My dear brothers and sisters” to the children. It is a great opportunity to teach the children about the thoughts in the Bhagvad Gita, Upanishads, and Vedas than teaching them about the Boston Tea Part or French Revolution or Hitlers and Mussolinis. Rather than tutoring them about in which latitude and longitude the Tunga lies, it will be more commendable to teach our children about more of moral science and environmental & personal hygiene.

All this will give ample amount of time for the children and the parents to judge what they are best at and evolve as a better and successful person than just competing with other children in schools and building up unnecessary pressure. Wouldn’t it be nice to see our children smiling with no strain in brain and no loads on their back? I would love to teach my children what they want to learn and not what the education boards want them to learn; I am sure they will evolve as better people full of empathy, focused on aspirations, and content with basic needs. A practical approach to education would be much better than a formal setting.

Fathom this – after all the run for marks and shining at the brightest spot on the merit list, is a job of our desire still guaranteed? Also, it means a lot of saving on the school fees that are galloping northwards today. Homeschooling though requires lot of patience and acceptance today, will certainly see a horizon of success very soon.

Just for reference, a homeschooler has graduated from Fergusson College, one of the best in the country, and is off to Oxford, one of the best in the world.

- P. K. Dastoor