EducationWorld November 07

Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, his People and an Empire by Rajmohan Gandhi; Viking, Penguin Books India; Price: Rs.650; 600 pp

Perhaps, no other individual of the 19th and 20th centuries has been the subject matter of as many biographies as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) aka Mahatma Gandhi. Among the monumental and greatly acclaimed biographies written […]

India’s new coaching schools boomFast emerging as a parallel education system, the country‚s multiplying supplementary education institutes aka coaching schools have become one-stop shops catering to every need of students from diverse backgrounds. Hemalatha Raghupathi reportsIt‚s a needs-based entrepreneurial phenomenon which has emerged as a parallel education system. For hundreds of thousands of students across […]

Languid charms of MyanmarCut off from the rest of the world by its isolationist military junta for several decades, Myanmar has attracted much attention in recent times as an exotic tourism destination whose glittering pagodas have earned it the sobriquet of the Golden LandAlthough it‚s in the news for all the wrong reasons, the neighbouring […]

Launched with massive budgets ranging from Rs.10-50 crore, the commercial capital’s latter-day five-star schools which offer fully wired campuses, expat headmasters and affiliation with offshore examination boards, are beginning to eclipse the city’s vintage secondaries. Indra Gidwani reports from Mumbai

Although globally famous as resurgent India’s commercial capital, synonymous with Bollywood, the stock exchange, premier corporates and fashion […]

Lessons in permacultureApart from this column for EducationWorld, I don‚t get around to writing much because the older I become, the more I realise how little I know. That‚s to say, the more I learn, the more I become aware of the vastness of the universe, and its infinite body of knowledge.Therefore I recently took […]

Letter from LondonRe-engineering schoolsWhen the‚ UK government announced a few years ago that it was committing over ‚£40 billion (Rs.328,000 crore) to rebuild all its secondary schools under the Building Schools for the Future programme, it had already ‚ perhaps inadvertently ‚ exposed the short-comings of the programme. Building Schools is not the future, especially not […]

Metamorphosis of school education by Amrita ShahI live in a western suburb of Mumbai. It is an affluent neighbourhood with a predominance of young, upwardly mobile couples. It is also an area that was once well-known for its schools. I went to one of them, an elegant whitewashed building with high ceilings and polished floors. […]

Common-sense curriculums”You are afraid of what you don‚t know”‚ J. KrishnamurthyCourage is perhaps the most underestimated by-product of real education. It is the outcome of failing, often repeatedly; figuring things out for oneself; and learning to address problems with the belief that persistence will yield solutions. For this to happen, students must learn by doing, […]

A story I re-read recently reminded me of how smart kids are and how un-smart adults can sometimes be when it comes to sports education and learning.A dad was coaching a group of young girls in baseball and hard as he tried, he couldn‚t get the girls to execute a proper over-hand throw. They just […]

Teaching geography has become a non-starter, with parents around the world indicating a marked preference for the sciences and applied sciences. They work over-time to coach their children in math and science and leave ‚Ëœlesser‚ subjects like geography, history and languages to the last week before exams. But contrary to popular belief, geography is not […]

Rapid growth in consumer spending and marketplace competition have ensured that industrial design is taken seriously by companies chasing sales and market share”With rising incomes and rapid lifestyle changes, fashion and design is no longer restricted to clothes, jewellery and accessories. Today sleek new models of cars, mobile phones, music systems, laptops, and airconditioners roll […]

Dark side of resurgent India by A.K. Shiva KumarThere has been considerable discussion in recent years about India‚s demographic advantage which accrues from the fact that the country has a very young population. Strategies to capitalise on this advantage have tended to concentrate on improving education and skills. Much less importance is being accorded to […]

All of a sudden, education of the country’s 450 million children below age 18 – the largest national child population worldwide – has become a high priority, hot- button subject. Dilip Thakore reports

On the eve of release of this eighth anniversary issue of EducationWorld – India’s pioneer and as yet sole education news and analysis print publication – there is a discernible sentiment […]

Despite being ranked 126 (out of 175 countries) on the Human Development Index compiled by the United Nations Development Programme, and hosting perhaps the world‚s largest pool of illiterate citizens, somewhat paradoxically, India boasts 350 universities and 18,000 colleges. Moreover, over 2,000 companies are listed on the country‚s stock exchanges. The Central government-supported Council for […]

Sonia Gandhi’s winning strategy by Rajiv Desai”Freedom‚s just another word for nothing left to lose,” sang Janis Joplin in the 1960s. Faced with party factionalism in 1969, Indira Gandhi bought into that sentiment: she split the Congress Party and jettisoned the syndicate of regional satraps and sold the Indian electorate a radical Left ideology. She […]

Ryan International‚s seventh INMUNSix hundred young leaders from 110 schools around the world convened in New Delhi between October 4-6 to deliberate solutions for world peace at the 7th INMUN (Indian Model United Nations) organised by the Ryan International Group of Institutions.Speaking on the occasion Grace Pinto, managing director of the Ryan Group of 107 […]

They said it in October”Higher education was always the sick child of education, either by design or default.” — Union HRD minister Arjun Singh at a UGC conference in Delhi (October 10)”Examine the balance sheets of the top 100 companies, save for the Tatas, and you will be flabbergasted at how little corporate India gives. […]

Delhi

Belated awakening

A round of vice-chancellors’ conferences held this year in Mumbai, Kolkata and Hyderabad to celebrate 150 years of the establishment of India’s first modern universities in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras (aka Chennai) in 1857, culminated in a harsh indictment of higher education in India. In an extraordinary outburst on October 10, the usually […]

I was thrilled to read your cover story ‘Time to welcome foreign universities’ (EW October). The article captures the mood of the time perfectly. Dilip Thakore has made a strong case for government to unshackle the education sector, and allow foreign universities into the country.

This will give a dual benefit. First and foremost, Indian students […]

Contemptibly dismissed for several decades as a nation perpetually at the take-off stage, according to all available indicators 21st century India seems to have belatedly fulfilled its early promise. Currently after averaging 8.5 percent plus GDP growth for the past three years, the Indian economy is widely acknowledged as the world‚s second (after China) fastest […]

Your Counsellor RepliesI‚m a final year BA student keen on becoming a flight steward. Which institutes offer training and what are their eligibility requirements? Sandip Agarwal, New Delhi Most airlines recruit graduates of any discipline, though a diploma or degree in hotel or tourism management is preferable. To qualify as a flight purser or steward, […]

A private Catholic university founded in 1855 by the Society of Jesus (aka Jesuits), usf has acquired an excellent reputation for rigorous scholarship
Sited in one of America’s most famous cities, the University of San Francisco (USF) has built itself a good reputation for delivering education characterised by rigorous scholarship and integration of real-life issues with classroom learning. […]