EducationWorld April 2018

THE DISCIPLINED 180-KM LONG TREK between March 6-12 of an estimated 25,000 farmers of the western seaboard state of Maharashtra — India’s most industrialised state (pop.115 million) — from Nasik to Mumbai to protest the “anti-farmer policies” of the state government, has once again stirred — or should have stirred — the collective conscience of […]

ALTHOUGH IN PUBLIC PROCLAMATIONS and speeches, leaders of the BJP government at the Centre project the party as the first champion of the country’s defence forces, and the 1.17-million strong Indian Army, there’s rising discontent within the top brass of the armed forces. Against the backdrop of reports in the international media of India’s superpower […]

There are many — too many — people, especially in politics and the academy, who believe the country’s 250 million cheerful and innocent children — especially in government schools — are lab rats on whom over-the-top education theories can be tested and crazy experiments conducted with impunity. These people know precious little about education except […]

The Education News report filed from Tamil Nadu (EW, March) on the increasing incidence of disruptive classroom behaviour across the state, is disturbing. It echoes the spurt of violence among adolescents in schools across the country. 

Therefore, it’s high time schools give due importance to moral science classes. As these subjects aren’t counted in the final […]

AS THE RIGHT OF CHILDREN TO Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which became law on April 1, 2010, nears its eighth anniversary, heated debates about its efficacy are breaking out all over the country. In the academic year 2018-19, the first batch of children from socio-economically backward households enrolled in neighbourhood private independent (non-minority) […]

PROOF THAT INDIA’S — AND especially Maharashtra’s — politicians live in fantasy world in which the wave of a magic wand can work wonders, is provided by a new year initiative of the BJP-Shiv Sena government of Maharashtra — India’s most industrialised state (pop.115 million). Under this initiative, 100 zilla parishad (rural) state government schools […]

THE MAMATA BANERJEE-LED Trinamool Congress (TMC) government of West Bengal, which was voted back for a second consecutive term in 2016, has yet to fulfil its electoral promise of bringing “positive change” in the state’s languishing education system ruined by continuous government interference and infiltration during 34 years of uninterrupted rule (1977-2011) of the Communist Party […]

FINDINGS OF THE NATIONAL Achievement Survey (NAS) 2017, commissioned by the Delhi-based National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) last November which assessed learning attainments of 2.5 million classes III, V and VIII children in 110,000 government and government-aided schools in 700 districts of the Indian Union, have come as a shock to educationists […]

IN A SIGNIFICANT STEP TOWARDS liberalisation of india’s strictly controlled higher education sector, the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) has granted unprecedented autonomy to 60 higher education institutions across the country, including 52 Central, state, deemed and private universities plus eight autonomous colleges. Although these select institutions, which are highly rated by the Bangalore-based National […]

“Most universities in the state have functioned as self-contained little republics of profane politics, bureaucratisation, corruption, lacking quality research and teaching even as they conscientiously distributed graduation certificates to students to whom they imparted redundant knowledge and skills. The increased governmentalisation process through political interference which the KSU Bill, 2017, has written into law will […]

BHUBANESWAR, MARCH 20. Police baton-charged a group of agitating teachers who prevented teachers from entering an examination evaluation centre. The teachers representing the Odisha School College Teachers’ and Employees’ United Forum were protesting a notification withdrawing a compulsory affidavit clause for availing grants-in-aid. Some protestors were detained. 

State education minister Badri Narayan Patra said alternative arrangements […]

BANGALORE, MARCH 14. The Bangalore-based IFIM Business School (estb.1995) became the sixth B-school in India to receive the prestigious Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation. The other five: IIM-Calcutta, Indian School of Business (Hyderabad), Institute of Management Technology (Ghaziabad), T.A. Pai Management Institute (Manipal) and XLRI (Jamshedpur).

“IFIM Business School’s commitment to ensuring […]

I’m a class XII student and would like to pursue photography (which has hitherto been a hobby) as a career. Please advise about prospects. — Ashish Rane, Pune

If you are talented, innovative, imaginative and original, career prospects in professional photography are excellent. You should have the inclination and ability to work solo and possess good […]

CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, SMALL-TOWN INDIA is a reservoir of talent and skills. The scale, size and challenges for reviving K-12 education in small-town India can be gauged with the help of some alarming statistics. Over 80 percent of India’s total population resides in non metros and the hinterland, and yet they have no access […]

Traitor, Krishan Chander; Translated from the original Urdu by Rakhshanda Jalil; Tranquebar press/westland, Rs.250; Pages 138

IN THE SUMMER OF 1947, the flames of Partition seared the souls of Indians and branded them with the torturous brutality of communal violence and horrific images that would keep them in shock for generations. 

The numbers vary but it is estimated that […]

THAT CHIDAMBARAM PERE ET FILS are in hot water because of misuse and manipulation of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), constituted by the Congress government at the Centre in 1991, is hardly a surprise. In 2005, a chance meeting with American philanthropist-educationist Lowell Milken resulted in the latter expressing interest in investing in this […]

IT’S NOT OFTEN THAT BY READING ASSORTED run-of-the mill reports in a newspaper on a single day, one can acquire a penetrating insight into the pathetic condition of the nation. Your editor had this surreal experience last month while perusing the Bangalore edition of the New Sunday Express (NSE, March 11). 

On the first page the […]

IN THE MARCH ISSUE OF EW, 40 SCHOOL principals, vice chancellors and education leaders almost unanimously identified teacher training and development as the best solution for mending the country’s broken education system. While neglect of teacher education is indeed a major cause of the rock-bottom productivity of Indian industry, agriculture, government, judiciary etc, the poverty […]

WHEN LAURIE SANTOS DESIGNED A NEW University course that would aim to show students how to be happy, she thought it might generate some interest. But she never expected it would become the most popular class in Yale University’s 316-year history. About 1,150 students — almost a quarter of undergraduates — at the Ivy League […]

CELEBRATING ITS 150TH ANNIVERSARY, the Technical University of Munich has received a spectacular birthday gift — a new campus. Funded by a donation from the German supermarket tycoon Dieter Schwarz thought to be worth more than €100 million (Rs.800 crore), TUM’s new campus marks several firsts in German higher education, and illustrates how the university […]

IT WAS BY IMPERIAL DECREE THAT Napoleon founded the French baccalaureat, the country’s school-leaving exam, in 1808. To this day, some 700,000 pupils still take the bac, the great majority of the age cohort. It has become the badge of excellence for a French lycee system that offers a model of globally standardised education, including over […]

ONE IN THREE STUDENTS GLOBALLY IS enrolled in private higher education institutions, according to research that reveals the huge growth and wide reach of private providers. The analysis, the first study based on comprehensive data on the size and shape of private higher education internationally, finds private institutions have 56.7 million students on their books, […]

A SURE SIGN OF A HIGHER EDUCATION sector that is still in its developmental stage is a brain drain of young researchers to Western universities. For many years, this has been China’s experience, even as it spends huge amounts of money on its goal of becoming a “powerhouse of higher education” by 2050. But now, […]

A NEW LAW IN POLAND THAT THREATENS those who say that Poles played any part in the Holocaust with up to three years in prison, will create an atmosphere of “inner censorship” for the country’s historians, reminiscent of its communist past, critics have warned. Poland has been internationally condemned over the law, which some historians say […]

CANADA’S GOVERNMENT HAS PLEDGED TO increase research and science funding by nearly C$4 billion (Rs.19,867 crore) over the next five years, winning plaudits from academics and universities. Finance minister Bill Morneau says the additional funding announced in the Liberal government’s budget would include an extra C$925 million over five years for the country’s three research […]