Indefatigable scientist

From a small recreation club offering table-tennis, chess and other activities, the Children’s Club Society (CCS) in Mylapore, Chennai, founded by Savitri Srinivasan and Pattu Balagopal in 1947, has metamorphosed into an intellectual centre alive with discussions and talks by senior scientists, professors and aeronautics experts. The credit for this transformation goes to 90-year-old M. Narayanaswamy, the honorary secretary of the Children’s Club Society whose mission is to kindle interest in science among school students. “In today’s exam-oriented education system children are encouraged to confine their interest to the science syllabus prescribed by schools. We want children to enjoy learning science without fear of examinations, therefore our programme goes beyond the prescribed syllabus,” says Narayanaswamy, an economics and political science graduate of Madras University who began his career at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, switched to the Economic and Scientific Research Foundation, Delhi and returned to Chennai in 1976. In 1987, Narayanaswamy was invited by patrons of the Children’s Club Society to take charge as honorary secretary and two decades on, the professionally run society is widely acclaimed for its outstanding programmes. Every Sunday, from June to December, the club hosts science lectures by eminent professors, senior scientists and Ph D students from reputed institutions such as the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Mathematical Institute, Matscience, Anna University and Vivekananda College. The lectures are especially popular with higher secondary students during the summer vacation. Discussions, debates and lectures apart, CCS also offers several extra-curricular activities. These include coaching in table tennis (seven-15 years), chess (five-15 years), drawing and painting (five-15 years) and cricket coaching for boys (eight-13 years). Qualified coaches instruct children within the 16,000 sq. ft premises of CCS, which has a lecture hall on the first floor. Moreover every January, the club hosts a state level open chess tournament for children under 16 years of age, co-sponsored by Madras Cements, and an annual inter-school competition in bhajans, carnatic music, violin and drama which attracts participants from across Tamil Nadu. Nor is Narayanaswamy done. “We plan to introduce two new activities — oil painting for adults and children and dramatics. Meanwhile we recently received an endowment of Rs.50,000 for the science programme from our founders and are confident of attracting more student participation in this major activity,” he says. Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai) Niche tutor India-based online e-tutoring companies, providing one-on-one cost-effective private tuition over the internet to American students, are making a big splash in the US. The market for this newly emergent outsourcing business is estimated at $17 billion globally, and India with its large pool of English-speaking, talented but underpaid teachers is poised to dominate this new transnational tutoring business. The latest entrant into this growing market for online private tuition services currently dominated by names such as TutorVista, Educomp and Learning Unbound, is the Bangalore-based Beastartutoring Pvt Ltd (www.beastar tutoring.com). Launching this month, the company’s first-of-its-kind website will offer one-on-one online science and maths tuition to American students preparing for the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test), success in…