Archive for the 'Education' Category

In light of Nalanda

Published
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on March 4, 2010
in Culture, Education and Heritage
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Modern-day Nalanda / Photo: Namit Arora

The ruins of one of Asia’s great centres of learning still inspire travellers. Namit Arora in Himal Southasian:

Nalanda University arose in the early fifth century, during the reign of Kumara Gupta, though references to precursor sites associated with teaching and learning go back another thousand years, to the time of the Buddha and Mahavira. Between Xuanzang and Yi Jing, we have a compelling portrait of the university’s curriculum, the life of the monks, the buildings and the general features of the community.

Nalanda was more like a school of higher learning than an undergraduate college. Prospective students had to be at least 20 years old, and submit to an oral exam for university entrance. They had to demonstrate deep familiarity with a host of subjects, and with old and new works in many fields. Only around a quarter of prospective students were admitted, and even they were promptly humbled by the calibre of their teachers and co-students. When Xuanzang visited Nalanda, there were 8500 students and 1500 teachers in 108 residential monasteries, which often had two or more floors. Excavations have revealed exquisitely carved temples and a row of ten monasteries of oblong red bricks directly across from a row of stupas in brick and plaster. Rooms typically had chairs, wood blocks, small mats and utensils stored in wall niches. Yi Jing approvingly wrote that each year before the monsoon, the best rooms were awarded to the eldest members in the community.

Some of the best teachers not only taught but also composed treatises and commentaries, much as Xuanzang himself did later in life. Many acquired great fame, and a Nalanda education held serious cachet among the public. Teachers lived among the students in the monasteries, common features of which included a podium for lectures, a communal brick oven, bathrooms and a water well (often in octagonal cross-section, supposedly inspired by the Eightfold Path, one of the Buddha’s central teachings). Water clocks guided daily routines, and gongs were used to signal the start and end of events, services and ceremonies. “There are more than ten great pools near the Nalanda monastery,” wrote Yi Jing. “Every morning a ghanti is sounded to remind the monks of the bathing-hour.” For their daily exercise, the monks went for walks in mid-mornings or late afternoons. Their dinner typically included bean soup with butter, rice and vegetables, perhaps also ghee, honey, sugar or a seasonal fruit such as mango. More:

3 Idiots and the real IITs

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on January 15, 2010
in Education, Entertainment, India and Movies
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3 Idiots’ portrayal of the IIT education system is both grossly unfair and untrue. Sandipan Deb in Open:

I cannot help but have my views on 3 Idiots coloured by the fact that I am an IITian. Call it Imperial College of Engineering, call it whatever, but what is obvious is that the film is a comment on the IIT system. And it is a grossly unfair comment.

I went to do engineering because at that time, if you were a middle-class boy and you were good in studies, it was either engineering or medicine that was fore-ordained. There was no other option you even entertained. A native dislike for Biology pushed me towards IIT, and there I went, quite happily. Within days, I discovered that engineering did not interest me in the least, and I spent the next years putting in just enough effort to survive. Professors either reviled me or despaired of me. But I have never had so much fun as I had on that campus.

Yes, our boys and girls are still rammed into the IITs by their parents, whether or not they have any interest or innate talent. Coaching classes turn aspirants into rote-monsters, and often, they end up without any life skills. In the IITs, you encounter characters like Chatur Ramalingam, the desperately competitive mugpot in 3 Idiots, but the truth is that such people rarely ever top their classes. More:

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a physicist, a biologist and a Chemistry Nobel Laureate

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on January 4, 2010
in Education, Leaders, Science and Technology
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In an interview with Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24×7’s Walk the Talk. From The Indian Express:

Tell us about your journey in science — you started off as a physicist.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan: I originally thought I might go to medical school. And I got admitted to the Baroda Medical College , but I also appeared for the National Science Talent exam. That was at the encouragement of my mother. I made a deal with my father — that if I got the scholarship, then you shouldn’t force me to do anything. He wanted me to be a doctor. I got the scholarship, and while he was away, I transferred my admission from medical college to study physics. The clerk thought I’d made a mistake, and I actually meant the other way round.

For our generation, the first choice was medicine. Next was engineering. If you failed in both, you went for the IAS.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan: One thing that motivated me was that a group of professors, some of whom had come back from the US, had completely modernised the curriculum. 30 years later, my son studied basically the same curriculum at Harvard. So that was a motivation for me to go into physics. Somewhere along the line I realised that I was not going to be a good physicist. I would just be doing some boring calculations and not have any real insight. I believe physics is on a difficult plane, because to make truly fundamental breakthroughs in physics is very hard now. At the same time, molecular biology was blossoming. It seemed every week there was an important discovery being made.  More:

Enid Blyton and the post-colonial world

Published
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on December 22, 2009
in Education, India and Society
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Amy Rosenberg in The National:

Ram Advani Booksellers sits in the heart of Hazratganj, an upscale shopping district in Lucknow, India. The store opened in 1947, just a few months before Partition, when Ram Advani fled Lahore, in the newly forming Pakistan, and set up shop in his new (old) country. In a city known at the time for its devotion to highbrow culture, aristocratic pleasures, and courtly manners, the place quickly became a destination and meeting point for the intellectual crowd, and Advani, now 88 and still running the business, acquired a reputation as an erudite host, known particularly for hand-picking recommendations for his customers based on long discussions with them.

Advani’s son, Rukun, who spent much of his childhood in the store, remembers the refinement and polish of the place, the neat rows of books, and the near-constant flow of learned patrons seeking to converse with his father. What he recalls most, however, is the single shelf in the children’s section that prominently displayed the work of the British children’s author Enid Blyton.

“I was all of eight and a half years old in 1964, when I took The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage off the shelf,” says Rukun, who now runs Permanent Black, a well-known publishing house in Delhi. “I hadn’t read anything as good as that book before, ever, so I was hooked and read everything else by Blyton that I could lay my hands on for the next three or so years.”

At the time, Blyton’s books were just starting to become widely available in India, though Ram Advani recalls having seen stray copies in the 1940s and 1950s. (“I stocked these books,” Advani says, “because there was a demand, and it was taken for granted that a store like mine, which kept only books in the English language, would have the whole lot of the Enid Blyton series on hand. I confess I never read them.”) More:

One Pakistani institution places his faith in another

Published
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on December 22, 2009
in Business, Economy, Education, Leaders, Pakistan and Society
. 1 Comment

Syed Babar Ali, 83, a veteran businessman who helped create the Lahore University of Management and Science, wants to restore merit to Pakistani society. Sabrina Tavernise in the New York Times:

Mr. Ali is an institution in Pakistan. He has started some of the country’s most successful companies. But perhaps his most important contribution has been his role in creating the Lahore University of Management and Science, or L.U.M.S., begun as a business school but now evolved into the approximate equivalent of Harvard University in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s biggest problem, he believes, is one of leadership. A corrosive system of privilege and patronage has eaten away at merit, degrading the fabric of society and making it more difficult for poor people to rise. The growing tendency to see government positions as chances to profit, together with the explosion in the country’s population, has led to a sharp decline in the services that Pakistan’s government offers its people.

“Nobody is bothered about the masses,” Mr. Ali said. More:

Indian Institute Of Idiots

Published
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on December 19, 2009
in Books, Education and India
. 1 Comment

Chetan Bhagat, author of One Night @ the Call Center, in the Times of India:

chetan_bhagatI avoid writing columns on the Indian education system as it is not good for my health. For days, my blood continues to boil, i have insomnia and i feel like hurting someone real bad. The Indian education system is a problem that can be fixed. It affects the country’s future, impacts almost every family, everyone knows about it and it is commercially viable to fix it. Still, nothing happens because of our great Indian culture of avoiding change at all costs. And because change means sticking out your neck and that, ironically, is something we are not taught to do.

Still, with a movie coming on the education system, which came about because of a book i wrote nearly six years ago, it is important to revisit the issues. Soon, all the media will talk about is the anatomy, diet and romantic chemistry of the main actors. While that makes insightful breakfast reading, it is also important to understand the main problems with our education system that need to be fixed or, rather, should have been fixed 10 years ago.

There are two main problems: one, the supply of good college seats and, two, the actual course content and intent behind education. More:

Catholic India running out of would-be priests

Published
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on December 10, 2009
in Education, Faith, India and Religion
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From the National:

Christian leaders in India agree that young and educated Catholic men are showing less interest in becoming priests.

“Until some years ago, brighter young men willing to join the priesthood were plenty in India. But now, for various reasons, as their preference is changing, it threatens to pose many crises for the community in the future,” said Father Udumala Bala, the deputy secretary general of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI), based in Bangalore.

“The number of students in many seminaries has been falling recently and it points to a future crisis. But the number of brighter, intelligent and educated [in general studies] students in seminaries has seen a sharper fall, which is more worrisome,” he said. “We need to set up proper infrastructure at the grass-root level and campaign for the promotion of the vocation across the country … and we have already taken steps in this direction.” More:

Outsourcing homework to India

Published
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on November 23, 2009
in Education and Technology
. 0 Comments

Saritha Rai from Bangalore in GlobalPost:

Six days a week in the wee hours of the morning, Saswati Patnaik logs into her home computer.

The homemaker — and tutor for a Bangalore company called TutorVista — rises early to help American high school students write English term papers, prepare S.A.T. essays or finish homework assignments.

Outsourcing, of course, started as a way for American companies to lower costs by shifting work to cheaper locations. After nearly two decades, that practice has become so mainstream that hundreds of U.S. businesses — from Wall Street banks to law firms, architects and others — routinely outsource to India.

But now a growing number of individual Americans are following in the footsteps of businesses — and outsourcing homework.

For $99 a month, American customers of TutorVista get unlimited coaching in English, math or science from Patnaik or one of her 1,500 fellow tutors. Similar personalized services in the United States charge about $40 an hour. More:

A schoolgirl’s odyssey

Published
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on October 20, 2009
in Afghanistan, Education, Pakistan and Terrorism
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A brilliant, moving documentary by the New York Times that follows a Pakistani girl through a perilous six months as she loses her education, is forced into exile and faces an uncertain return back home in Swat, Pakistan. [via 3quarksdaily]

Bollywood bound

Published
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on September 23, 2009
in Education, Entertainment and Movies
. 1 Comment

A new acting school in Canada teaches the art of lip-syncing, fake fighting and gyrating. S. Mitra Kalita in the Wall Street Journal:

That millions of people have Bollywood dreams in India comes as little surprise. But Canada?

This month, the Canadian Institute of Management and Technology in Mississauga, outside Toronto, launched the Bollywood Acting Diploma, a four-month course costing $9,000 and targeting students who want to break into the business.

They are people like Dubai-born Maya Noel, 18 years old, who graduated high school in June and was all ready to study drama in college. When she heard about the academy, she reassessed her goals and thought, “I grew up with Bollywood not Hollywood.”

And she signed up.

Her interest is a fitting tribute to the Indian institution that went “global” before that became a buzzword. Indeed, before Benetton and Big Bazaar, there was Bollywood, stealthily offering Indian audiences tastes of the West and nostalgic expatriates glimpses of the homes they left behind. Today, Bollywood has become the ultimate bridge for nonresident Indians, global Indians and everyone in between. While the rest of the world debates protectionism and outsourcing, Bollwood makes room for a new formula: take actors raised and trained in the West and welcome them back home. More:

The Pakistani Eton in the age of terror

Published
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on August 20, 2009
in Education and Pakistan
. 0 Comments

John Lancaster at the Smart Set:

aitchison_college_lahoreOne morning earlier this year, students gathered for the weekly assembly at Aitchison College, an elite school for boys between the ages of five and 18 in the Pakistani city of Lahore. It was, as always, a dignified affair. Shuffling to their places in an outdoor amphitheater, the boys wore school ties, blazers stitched with the Aitchison crest (“Perseverance Commands Success”) and puglis – starched indigo turbans once favored by native royalty. “Aitchison College, atten-shun!” shouted the head boy, a senior, stamping his foot like a drill sergeant. The principal stepped to the microphone. A tall white-haired man in a black academic gown, he surveyed the crowd with a benevolent but short-lived smile. He glared at one of the boys. “Take your hands out of your pockets,” he snapped in clipped, lightly accented English. “It’s rude.” The youth sheepishly complied.

Aitchison is just a few minutes by car from the busy traffic circle where Islamic militants recently ambushed a bus full of Sri Lankan cricket players, wounding seven and killing six policemen and the driver of another bus. But it feels as if it’s another world. Surrounded by high walls, the 186-acre campus is a lush oasis of cricket fields, flower gardens, riding facilities, and turreted brick buildings that recall Mughal palaces. Some of the buildings date to the late 19th century, when Aitchison was established by the British to educate the future nawabs and maharajahs who would one day run the subcontinent on their behalf. Boys came with their own horses as well as groomsmen, valets, and even cooks (the subcontinent was rife with intrigue and poisoning was a genuine fear). One well-born student lived in his own private “bungalow,” an airy single-story structure with a porticoed entrance and windows in the shape of Moorish arches.

The bungalow has not been used in years, and the princes are long gone. But the musty air of privilege lives on. Today’s “Aitchisonians” are the sons of Pakistan’s contemporary ruling class – generals, politicians, landholders, industrialists, professionals – and about a third of them typically continue their education abroad, most in the United States and Britain. Not for nothing is Aitchison known as “the Pakistani Eton.” More:

Study abroad

Published
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on June 27, 2009
in Education and Pakistan
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From The Smart Set, John Lancaster on the Pakistani Eton in the age of terror

jo_lanca_pakis_ap_001One morning earlier this year, students gathered for the weekly assembly at Aitchison College, an elite school for boys between the ages of five and 18 in the Pakistani city of Lahore. It was, as always, a dignified affair. Shuffling to their places in an outdoor amphitheater, the boys wore school ties, blazers stitched with the Aitchison crest (“Perseverance Commands Success”) and puglis — starched indigo turbans once favored by native royalty. “Aitchison College, atten-shun!” shouted the head boy, a senior, stamping his foot like a drill sergeant. The principal stepped to the microphone. A tall white-haired man in a black academic gown, he surveyed the crowd with a benevolent but short-lived smile. He glared at one of the boys. “Take your hands out of your pockets,” he snapped in clipped, lightly accented English. “It’s rude.” The youth sheepishly complied.

more

India seeks to admit foreign universities

Published
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on June 11, 2009
in Education and India
. 0 Comments

From the Wall Street Journal:

India’s new minister in charge of higher education said he will push legislation to let foreign universities establish independent institutions in the country, potentially opening a huge market that schools from the U.S. and elsewhere have been clamoring to enter for years.

“I would hope that come 2010, universities around the world will be sprinting to come to India,” Kapil Sibal, minister of human resources development, which includes higher education, said in an interview Wednesday. He said he wants to open the market because India, despite its 1.1 billion-plus population, has an acute shortage of educated workers that threatens to inhibit economic expansion. More:

Amazing kids

Published
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on May 29, 2009
in Education
. 0 Comments

Kavya Shivashankar

Kavya Shivashankar

Kavya Shivashankar from Olathe, Kansas is the eighth Indian kid to win the Spelling Bee.

She’s 13 years old, in 8th grade, enjoys practicing her violin, bicycling, swimming, and learning Indian classical dance. She looks forward to becoming a neurosurgeon.

Kavya spelt the word “laodicean” — which means indifferent or lukewarm especially in matters of religion — to claim the title after her only remaining American opponent Tim Ruiter flubbed “Maecenas,” which means a generous benefactor.

According to a report in the Times of India, some eleven million American schoolkids participated in the US  National Spelling Bee championships this year, and when the final 293 made the cut, there were 32 kids of Indian origin. Read the full story here:

And the words she got right:

1 Round One Test
4 ergasia
5 kurta
6 escritoire
7 hydrargyrum
8 blancmange
9 baignoire
10 huisache
11 ecossaise
12 diacoele
13 bouquiniste
14 isagoge
15 phoresy
16 Laodicean

Here’s the link if you want to know more about the other contestants:

P-R-E-S-S-U-R-E

Published
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on May 28, 2009
in Education
. 0 Comments

[Updated on May 29]

It took just nine correct letters for Kavya Shivashankar, 13, to be crowned the new US spelling champion.

Stefan Fatsis on the National Spelling Bee contest. From the Daily Beast:

[Akshay Buddiga faints at the 2004 Bee]

Kids stammer, tug at their hair, and display preadolescent tics that are hard enough to manage in front of malicious middle-school classmates let alone a nation of living-room critics, sportswriters, and live bloggers. In 2004, a 13-year-old named Akshay Buddiga famously fainted during a turn. The YouTube video is shocking-not because Akshay gets up and spells “alopecoid” correctly but because not a single person rushes to his side. “Stop the clock,” one judge says in an unalarmed, schoolmarmy voice. When Akshay rises, the judge says-without any way of possibly knowing- “He’s all right.” As if.

If you’ve seen the documentary Spellbound, you know the lengths to which some kids-and, more to the point, some parents-go to prepare for the Bee. The finalists will have spent hundreds of hours-possibly thousands in the case of veteran spellers-memorizing arcane words. They will have been tested via printed word lists and interactive software. They will have been drilled ceaselessly by demanding moms, dads, teachers and coaches. For the top competitors, the pressure is profound. (As the Bee has evolved, it’s grown more difficult. The winning word in 1981 was “sarcophagus.” Not to brag, but my first-grade daughter can spell that.) More:

Also: Fourteen Indian American kids have made it to the semi finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee contest. At Sify News.

A tale of two school systems

Published
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on May 27, 2009
in Education and India
. 0 Comments

S. Mitra Kalita in the Wall Street Journal:

Last year, as a New Delhi mom desperate to get my daughter into an elite private school, I chose my interview outfits carefully: Boots and blazers for the schools known among the business class. Colorful salwar kameezes for the more cultural and political set. Taking no chances, we brought her artwork, copies of my first book, reviews of my husband’s art shows. We were shameless, stopping only short of outright bribery and jockeying connections–both traits as entrenched in Delhi as sequins and seekh kebabs.

Last week, we completed a whirlwind tour of some of New York City’s best public schools. We gave no thought to our appearance before each of the six tours. Who we were didn’t matter at all, and not so much our daughter either. What got us in the door was her performance on a Saturday morning earlier this year, shortly after we returned to the U.S. In what any parent will recognize as a fluke (what if she had been moody, hated the proctor, wanted eggs for breakfast instead of pancakes?), she scored high enough to qualify for a magnet school. More:

The threat of Pakistan’s revisionist texts

Published
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on May 21, 2009
in Education and Pakistan
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Historical revisionism is erasing minorities from Pakistan’s school textbooks and fostering religious extremism. Afnan Khan in the Guardian:

Since 2006 I have been following the issues of historical revisionism and religious exclusivism in Pakistan’s state school system, which is responsible for educating about 50% of school-going children (who in turn represent half of all school-age children). What I found was a pattern of cultural and religious homogenisation instilled in children from the time they learn to read, right through young adulthood.

While the authorities seem in no hurry to fix errors and upgrade the syllabus to international standards, they seem very keen to use the textbooks for propaganda purposes.

Some of the mistakes are elementary. A physics textbook for 14-year-olds asks students to calculate the time it would take for a brick falling from the top of a 45ft-high building to hit someone standing below. Since it doesn’t say how tall the person is, the result cannot be calculated accurately. An English textbook for the same age group also has trouble with its punctuation. For example, it asks: “How did Hina fall ill” – without a question mark. More

Pakistan’s Islamic schools fill void, but fuel militancy

Published
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on May 4, 2009
in Education and Pakistan
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From the New York Times:

MOHRI PUR, Pakistan – The elementary school in this poor village is easy to mistake for a barn. It has a dirt floor and no lights, and crows swoop through its glassless windows. Class size recently hit 140, spilling students into the courtyard.

But if the state has forgotten the children here, the mullahs have not. With public education in a shambles, Pakistan’s poorest families have turned to madrasas, or Islamic schools, that feed and house the children while pushing a more militant brand of Islam than was traditional here.

The concentration of madrasas here in southern Punjab has become an urgent concern in the face of Pakistan’s expanding insurgency. The schools offer almost no instruction beyond the memorizing of the Koran, creating a widening pool of young minds that are sympathetic to militancy.

In an analysis of the profiles of suicide bombers who have struck in Punjab, the Punjab police said more than two-thirds had attended madrasas.

More:

Bollywood’s ‘karaoke for the poor’ teaches Indians to read

Published
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on February 14, 2009
in Education, India and Innovation
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India’s national pastime of singing along to Bollywood film songs has been turned into a powerful tool to help millions of the country’s barely literate poor to learn to read. Amrit Dhillon from New Delhi in The Telegraph, UK:

The slushy love stories and tales of derring-do depicted by Mumbai’s film industry are lapped up in villages and slums as millions seek to escape their plight for a few hours through the singing, dancing and glamour of their favourite stars.

But now an initiative that has been dubbed “karaoke for the poor” is transforming the lives of those who struggle to read or write.

The idea is the brainchild of Brij Kothari, a 44-year-old fellow of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, who realised that with the simple addition of subtitles to Bollywood’s prolific output, notionally literate Indians would instinctively read the lyrics of the songs they watched on television.

More:

The woman who could change the world

Published
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on February 10, 2009
in Education, India, Leaders and Politics
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The New Statesman has compiled a list of “ten people who could change the world.”

“We offer a strongly political list of leaders of varying ethnicity and continent, people who will or who already are making changes in the United States, Britain, South Africa and Iran, whether it be bringing the prospect of hope for genuine multiparty democracy to a new nation, vitality to a moribund political movement or the chance for better dialogue in the Middle East, or forcing governments to keep their promises on the environment.”

Among the ten is Dr Regina Papa, Educationalist and social activist “who set up India’s first department of women’s studies at Alagappa University, in southern India, in 1989.”

papaHere’s what the magazine says about Dr Regina Papa:

The small village in Tamil Nadu, India, where she was born in 1943 had no access to electricity, running water, or medical and transport facilities. “I have witnessed the sufferings of uneducated women,” she says. “Many of my childhood friends didn’t go past fifth grade and are helpless victims of dependency in their later lives. My own life bears testimony to the fundamental AUW principle that quality of education brings unbelievable changes.”

AUW is the latest in a long list of projects in which Papa has been involved. One scheme trained uneducated girls from remote villages in non-traditional trades (as electricians, or radio and TV technicians).

More:

The list includes Bobby Jindal, Republican Governor of Louisiana. Click here to read about Jindal,”Saviour of the Republicans”

India’s $10 laptop a load of…

Published
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on February 4, 2009
in Design, Education, India, Innovation and Technology
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A few days ago a top Indian official proudly announced that the government would unveil a $10 educational laptop that will have 2GB of RAM, Wi-Fi, expandable hardware, and operate on just two watts of power. This, they added. would be India’s answer to Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop. The promised “laptop” was to be unveiled in the temple town of Tirupathi on Tuesday, February 3. [Read that story here]

This photo of the "laptop" was projected on a screen. (Courtesy The Hindu)

This photo of the "laptop" was projected on a screen. (Courtesy The Hindu)

Now read the rest of the story:

The Times of India has called it a damp squib:

The much-touted laptop for the masses said to have been built by students of Vellore Institute of Technology that would cost a mere Rs 500 actually turned out to be only a computing device.

Fox News said it’s “as nearly useless brick“:

When is a laptop not a laptop? When it’s introduced by Indian education officials, apparently. The buzz and hype surrounding the Indian Education Ministry’s breathless announcement last week that it would be unveiling a $10 laptop aimed at the poor fizzled out like a wet firecracker Tuesday evening when officials finally debuted the device.

PC World said “it sounds like a bad joke“:

The rest of the laptop remains a mystery, however. Key tech specs such screen size, processor, storage, and battery life weren’t released, and we’ve yet to see an official photo of the vaporous hardware.

And Fast Company has reasons why “it is a load of hype“:

And by touting it as “the world’s cheapest laptop,” the Indian media stirred up a megaton of fuss. Is it even possible that “laptop” was an inappropriately misleading piece of translation?

The Hindu story was headlined “Ultra-low-cost access device introduced”:

The Ministry of Human Resource Development unveiled here on Tuesday what has been tagged as an “ultra low-cost” computing-cum-access device that can “make wonders” in the dissemination of education to the remotest corners of India.

Asian Window wonders who caused the hype, and why.

India’s $10 Laptop

Published
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on January 31, 2009
in Education, India, Innovation, Science and Technology
. 1 Comment

On February 3, the Indian government will unveil a $10 educational laptop. It will have 2GB of RAM, Wi-Fi and expandable hardware, and operate on just two watts of power.

From The Times of India:

The $10 laptop has come out of the drawing board stage due to work put in by students of Vellore Institute of Technology, scientists in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT-Madras and involvement of PSUs like Semiconductor Complex. “At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down,” R P Agarwal, secretary, higher education said. More:

From Fast Company:

The $10 laptop is a direct response to the MIT-developed nonprofit One Laptop Per Child program, that was viewed as grossly expensive in India. The OLPC devices cost about $100 each, but “hidden costs” bring that price up to around $200. OLPC has also been a victim of its own poor strategy, evidenced by recent layoffs and a failure to secure donations and orders in 2008. More:

Teaching math to Americans, Indian-style

Published
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on November 7, 2008
in Education
. 0 Comments

Indian Math Online teaches math to Americans. But two-thirds of the students using it are children of Indian and Chinese immigrants. From the New York Times:

mathThe New York Times recently reported on a study that found, once again, that the United States is failing to develop the math skills of its students, particularly girls, especially compared to other countries where math education is more highly valued.

Indian Math Online is a start-up that aims to take on that disparity by teaching math to American kids using techniques from Indian schools.

Bob Compton, an Indianapolis-based venture capitalist and entrepreneur who co-founded Indian Math Online, hatched the idea when he was producing “Two Million Minutes”, a documentary comparing high school education in India, China and the United States. He realized that Indian teenagers who were the same age as his daughters were three years ahead of them in math.

More:

A US city looks to India to fill teaching gaps

Published
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on September 24, 2008
in Education
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From The New York Times:

Brindavani Tallur in her class

Brindavani Tallur in her class

Brindavani Tallur, a 39-year-old science teacher from India, stands outside her classroom at Warren Harding High School here, and greets each of her ninth-grade students by name. “Welcome to Physical Science,” she says. “How was your weekend?” A few students return her greeting, but most look past her and enter the room noisily.

In India, Ms. Tallur was revered. When she entered her classroom, 70 students would rise, stand by their desks, and greet her in unison. “In India a teacher is next to God,” she explained, noting the contrast in behavior.

Now after a year of teaching at Harding in an international program, Ms. Tallur has become used to less respect. She is no longer surprised by profanity in the hallways and students talking out of turn in the classroom.

Ms. Tallur, who holds a master’s degree in chemistry and education, is one of 14 teachers from India, 10 men and 4 women, hired by the Bridgeport Board of Education to fill a shortage of math and science teachers in the district.

More:

A hole in the wall

Published
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on September 4, 2008
in Education and Innovation
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From TED:

In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.

In the following years they replicated the experiment in other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The “Hole in the Wall” project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who’s now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it “minimally invasive education.”

Click here for Hole in the Wall, and here for more on the project.

At a retreat in India, lessons on yoga and life

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on August 21, 2008
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In the International Herald Tribune, Kyle Jarrard visits Puducherry (earlier known as Pondicherry) in India:

In the old French quarter of Puducherry.
In the old French quarter of Puducherry.

The first sound in the morning is crows, right at 5. Then we hear waves off the Bay of Bengal slapping the shore. In the garden, a man meditates while walking quickly over the lawn of the ashram guest house in the dark. Along the shore, other men pace the beach in the silver jetty light. Fishing boat lanterns like stars ride the black sea south to north.

My wife and I have come to this old French comptoir (formerly Pondichéry) in southeast India mostly for the yoga. The classes used to be held in one of the many parcels of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram scattered across the colonial city. But for this retreat, there’s a new venue and to get there you have to be on Ajit Sarkar’s bus by 5:45. There are 20 or so of us, nearly all from France.

[googlemaps http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=India&mrt=all&ie=UTF8&s=AARTsJqveHHE4QxarzrzRfBueiuB2RxgHg&ll=12.538478,80.205688&spn=1.608596,1.647949&z=8&output=embed&w=300&h=300]

Ajit, in his 70s now, grew up in this famous ashram with his parents, who went into the retreat founded and inspired by the yogi and guru Sri Aurobindo and his vision of universal consciousness and peace. In this idyllic world, Ajit learned everything from ballet to track to gymnastics, but especially yoga, a skill he has taught with acclaim for decades both in India and in France.

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‘One laptop per child’ lands in India

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on August 4, 2008
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The Indian government wasn’t interested, so OLPC partners with Reliance ADA Group to bring computers to India’s primary school kids. Nandini Lakshman in BusinessWeek:

Nicholas Negroponte has found it tough going in India. For years as the head of MIT’s Media Lab, the famed computer scientist promoted radical ways to use technology to transform society. His best-known idea is the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, a plan to make a simple, $100 laptop that would create a digitally literate generation in the hardscrabble classrooms of emerging-market nations. The laptop, now dubbed the XO, is finally being mass-produced in China.

In 2001, the computer scientist came to India to promote the Media Lab, but failed to impress New Delhi. Negroponte clearly fell off the India map, when then-Information Technology Minister Arun Shourie dismissed his efforts as “pedagogically suspect” and wanted more accountability. When Negroponte’s nonprofit One Laptop per Child foundation approached the Indian government in 2006, his project was again rebuffed by India’s then-Education Secretary, Sudeep Banerjee.

Two years later, Negroponte is back to open a new office in New Delhi and launch the OLPC program in India on Aug. 4.

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Not enough students for new IIT’s quota seats

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on July 24, 2008
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Of the 54 seats reserved for students in the scheduled tribes category in the six new IITs, only seven (that’s 12 per cent) have been filled, writes Pallavi Singh in Mint

With barely a month to go before they begin their new academic session, the six new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), launched by the government this year, are struggling to fill their incoming classes.

Against the backdrop of the government wanting to implement 27% quota for other backward classes (OBCs) in higher educational institutions, the new IITs have been unable to fill seats reserved for tribal students, who, along with scheduled castes (SCs) and OBCs, now add up to more than 50% of caste-based reservations of all available seats.

Dogs days ahead at Delhi’s top university

Published
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on July 22, 2008
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Man's best friend?

Man's best friend?

One of Delhi’s most prestigious universities, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is caught up in a storm over the killing of a female dog by one of its students.

Yarsonso, a 30-year-old fifth year PhD student from Nagaland is enrolled in the School of Social Sciences. According to news reports (see here, here and here), Yaronso bludgeoned a dog to death in his hostel room on the night of July 8. The incident came to light when fellow hostel residents heard yelping sounds coming out of his room and knocked to enquire. When the door opened, they saw the dog lying in a pool of blood. Yaronso (and two guests, also present in the room) had apparently beaten it to death with an iron rod; though Yaronso later claimed it was in self-defence.

Hostel authorities weren’t buying that arguement. The university’s joint registrar declared Yaronso was ’unfit to live in the hostel’ and he was asked to quit and pay a Rs 2,000 fine.

Not good enough, shouted animal rights activists. Citizens for the Welfare and Protection of Animals filed a police report while Citizens for Animals, led by lawyer Anjali Sharma asked, “What is JNU? A centre of learning or a depraved, lawless, slaughterhouse?”

But the debate has also taken another turn: that of the culinary habits of the North-East. Writing for the July 14 edition of the Deccan Chronicle, animal rights activist Ambika Shukla in an article headlined ‘Murder Most Foul’ claimed, “Apparently North-Eastern students at JNU regularly lynch and barbecue dogs.”

Now, it’s a well-known fact that some Naga tribes do eat dog meat but eating dog meat is not illegal in India. Others, mainly from the North-East, are offended by the stereotyping. Writing to the editor of the Deccan Chronicle in response to Ambika Shukla’s article, Utpal Borajpuri, a journalist saw the article as “yet another example of the superiority complex of some people of ‘mainland’ India vis-a-vis North-East.” Pranab Bora, editor of the Assamese edition of the Sunday Indian joined ranks with Borajpuri and questioned the culinary habits of people in the plains (lovers of tandoori chicken and other delicacies) and the hypocrisy of ‘do-gooders’ in selectively seeking out the culinary traditions of some people in some parts of the North-East.

Meanwhile, on Monday, as the Indian Parliament got into a heated debate to make or break the government, animal rights activists, professors and students came together at Delhi’s official protest spot: Jantar Mantar to hold what is now every protestor’s favourite rally: the candlelight march. Their demand? Yaronso be banned from submitting his PhD thesis anywhere in India or abroad. They also want a comprehensive animal protection movement. And for good measure, they want Yaronso arrested. Social activist Swami Agnivesh gave Mahatma Gandhi’s famous quote about nations and women a new twist by saying: “The health of a nation can be judged by the way it treats its animals.”

Safe to say, you haven’t heard the last word on this one.

De-stressing India’s frazzled students

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on June 24, 2008
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With the world’s highest youth suicide rate, India’s authorities try to cut the pressure in school. Neeta Lal in Asia Sentinel:

india-studentIn the heart of New Delhi, students at the Mirambika School start their day by first helping their teachers tidy up and beautify their classrooms. They then head for a meditation session to help them “connect their outer selves with the inner,” according to the school. Only once these activities are out of the way, do the studies begin.

Similarly, students at Gurgaon’s Heritage School in north India begin their day with meditation sessions, sports and a glass of fresh juice. The school has a yoga and meditation centre that buzzes with activity throughout the day. Three yogic instructors help students master breath control and stress.

Indian health authorities are deeply concerned about stress, particularly revolving around studies. India was reported in 2004 to have the world’s highest youth suicide rate, with suicides accounting for 50to 75 percent of all deaths in adolescent girls and about a quarter of all deaths in boys between the ages of 10 to 19, most commonly by hanging, followed by poisoning, usually with insecticide.

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