EducationWorld March 09

A chilling deluge poured from black clouds above the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia in mid January. The college is Americas second-oldest university, chartered in 1693 by King William III and Queen Mary II.The mood indoors matched the weather. State appropriations for higher education, which depends on tax revenue, have plummeted — […]

The Talibanisation of India and of the over-hyped Silicon Valley-state-of-India (Karnataka) in particular, which began with the infamous attack on five college girls lunching in a pub in the coastal city of Mangalore on the eve of Republic Day (January 26), is proceeding apace according to the not-so-secret plan of quasi-political outfits such as the […]

With the term of the 14th Lok Sabha having expired on February 26, the decks are being cleared in right earnest for the next general election this summer, with poll dates due to be announced any day now. Fortunately and unexpectedly, the last day of the final session of the Lok Sabha ended peacefully without […]

In the over-regulated education sector, politicians with clout, connections and insider knowledge, can cut through red tape and quickly expand capacity. But political wheeling and dealing habits die hard with scandals and allegations of corruption surfacing with tedious regularity. Vidya Pandit reports from Lucknow • August, 2005. Mulayam Singh Yadav, the then chief minister of […]

During exam time, terrorists walked into a school in Baghdad, picked a pupil at random and decapitated him. They left his head on display outside the school building. This was one of a succession of similar incidents during the recent insurgency in Iraq: it was not uncommon for teachers to be murdered in front of […]

Private school teachers will be subject to the same strict code of conduct as their state colleagues under plans put forward by the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE). The council is pressing the case for all those in the independent sector, who are exempt from registration, to sign up with the organisation. Currently, just […]

Almost 70 percent of children in Bangladesh who complete primary education are unable to read, write or count properly, according to an internal report by the department of primary education (DPE). Sixty-nine percent of students who had completed five years of primary school were unable to read news headlines in Bangla newspapers properly, while 87 […]

The great majority of middle class India, I suspect, owes a deep debt of gratitude to Christian missionary educationists who run perhaps one-fifth of Indias 75,000 private aided and unaided schools across the subcontinent. The great majority of them provide all-important English medium school education which — although the countrys cynical politicians elbow-deep in sub-standard […]

Every month shelter Don Bosco, sited in Wadala, Mumbai stages a two-day mela (festival) for the ever growing number of street children in Indias commercial capital. It is the brainchild of Dr. (Fr.) Barnabe DSouza, an alumnus of University College, Worcester (UK) and Nirmala Niketan, Mumbai. Shelter Don Bosco is a Mumbai-based NGO which has […]

Im a second year B.Com student. Please brief me about entrepreneurship study programmes. Vikram Swamy, Chennai
The Entrepreneurship Development Institute, Ahmedabad (www.edi india.org) offers a two-year full-time residential postgrad diploma programme. The institute also provides the option of distance education. Alternatively, theres the one-year postgrad progra-mme in family owned business and entrepreneurship offered by IIM-Indore […]

Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to conduct 11 parent-training workshops, working with parents who have a strong desire to do the right thing when it comes to guiding their children through the world of sport.While interacting with them, the issue that has strongly impacted me is the huge frustration and helplessness […]

California-based NComputing Inc, a global provider of low-cost personal computers and virtual desktop software, has enabled shared-computing in 5,000 government schools in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh to improve the learning outcomes of 1.8 million students. Under the state governments PPP (public-private partnership) build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) model, several ICT companies including […]

In partnership with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Hewlett Packard India announced the launch of Hewlett Packard-TERI Schools Future Programme — an initiative to upgrade environment projects in schools, on February 17. To fund the project, HP India has conferred a grant of $250,000 (Rs.1.25 crore) comprising cash and technology resources to TERI.Learning about […]

The Delhi-based Educomp Solutions Ltd –– Indias largest ICT (instructional communication technologies) education company –– proposes to promote budget schools in small towns countrywide. To be known as Vidya Prabhat Schools, they will offer world class, affordable schooling which will blend latest innovations in education technology with traditional Indian knowledge and values.There is a shortage […]

“This (moral policing) is ridiculous. Todays youngsters have a better value system than us.”
Infosys chairman and mentor N.R. Narayana Murthy in DNA (February 18)

“Courts should be clean, run on the basis of a straight, transparent and accountable code of conduct with the aid of a performance commission with punitive powers. If even one corrupt […]

Under fire from the media and the middle class for tacitly supporting moral policing in the state, the BJP government in Karnataka (pop. 57 million) is making a desperate bid to focus public attention on its development initiatives, particularly in education. On February 25, the state governments education department repackaged an eight-year-old school adoption scheme […]

During the 31 years it has been in power in West Bengal (pop. 80 million), the CPM (aka Communist Party of India-Marxist) dominated Left Front government has taken every care to run the states education system, from primary school to university postgraduation, to suit its ideological predilections. Therefore, the criterion for appointment of teachers and […]

The imperial experience and link of the English language prompts Indian intellectuals and scholars to automatically look West for national development nostrums and inspiration. But the current crisis of capitalism in the US and the imminent bankruptcy of Britain and other erstwhile European imperial powers, suggests its time to look East for more meaningful socio-economic […]