Times, They're a Stoopin'!

The Times of India allowed this article to feature in its daily on July 24, 2013. A one line summary of this article would be this:

It's preposterous, in this context, to say that everyone living in Bangalore is expected to know Kannada. This is one more example of not much thought going into the production of schoolbooks.

The context being alluded to here is the appearance of some Kannada poems printed in Roman script in textbooks of classes 1 and 2. Oh! What a shocker, isn't it? What is? That the author, while talking about textbooks, makes a big mistake in relating the school going children that are taught Kannada to all the people living in Bangalore!

(Source: TOI)

While it is preposterous by itself for a national daily to be carrying such a lopsided report that sarcastically ridicules the State's education system and its appointed bodies, it is sad that it is based on the author's poor understanding of the teaching ecosystem within a school, or even within a city. The author summarily ignores, not even discounts, the vital role of teacher-to-teacher interaction at the school level, and in some cases even at the school district level. For anyone accustomed to the project-work style of teaching in many contemporary schools this should appear like another interesting project for kids to come back with their comprehension of the poems; the author conveniently sidelines all such creativity that a good teacher will anyway possess.

As if it were a given, the author assumes that English teachers in these schools do not know Kannada, neither that they communicate or even share rooms with teachers who know Kannada. How dangerous an assumption, if it were true, this is that it hints at the poorest state of affairs in schools that some of our own children are being educated in. It shows what kind of isolated dins we're sending our children into everyday, where teachers do not talk to one another, do not share lessons they learnt, nor do the schools communicate among themselves, do not evolve the best methods of teaching out of such basic collaborative means. What kind of future citizens (of this city?) are we making out of our children by indirectly providing such isolated wells as schools where one is supposed to learn the fundamental lessons for one's life?

If such assumptions of this author are indeed true, there need not be any doubt that these schools are designed to drive our children down the rotten lane of life. If untrue, I wonder what a national daily like TOI is doing by printing such articles time and again!?

Its a NEET Diaspora Out There

A CBSE book cover (pic:koolskool.in)

In the sequence of National Policies on Development, Water, Labor and other items of national interest coming to light, another of the Center's programs to safeguard its brainchild national interest through establishing uniform standards has surfaced in the matter of education - something that could put a nation on track - the right one or an entirely wrong one.

Earlier this week some students in the pre-university grade from Karnataka approached the Supreme Court demanding to quash one of Medical Council of India's (MCI) notifications - one that forces these students to study subjects based on CBSE curriculum to clear the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET), different from their current State curriculum. This new qualifier test is not just an unnecessary replacement of the erstwhile Common Entrance Test (CET) in Karnataka, but also a tragic one for a majority of students in all non-Hindi States since the NEET is rendered only in Hindi and English! This is a dual blow because it is a blow by the Center to the State governments that are seen as subordinate here, and a blow of Hindi imperialism on non-Hindi speaking peoples of India.

The MCI was established in the pre-independence year of 1934. The basis for its establishment back then could be related to the bringing in of alien western methods of medication into colonial India by the British who obviously required to oversee its installation. But the 1956 version of a new Act with the same name empowers the Government of India (GoI), just a six year old republic having no semblance to the British power in terms of medical knowledge supremacy, with supreme powers with regards to establishing uniform standards in medical education in the entire of India and to oversee the registration of medical institutes, professionals and professional courses across the wide nation.

With no sign of medical know-how supremacy at the Center per-se, yet sheer authority in its hands, it is obvious that the MCI has created avenues for its abuse. Although Education is a concurrent subject today, the Center has been able to wield MCI as a weapon to bring education (at least in medical profession) under its sole control. Rolling out programs like NEET that are a combination of the CBSE curriculum menace and Hindi imperialism, it is also able to enable more students from the Hindi belt States to clear NEET because the test is administered in Hindi and no other Indian language. Given the current skew in number of professional institutions across India, NEET leads to a big undesirable diaspora paving way for further sliding of the BIMARU state definition. More importantly, programs such as NEET take away the rights of States to conduct their own qualifiers whereas establishments such as MCI limit the States rights to start new professional institutions based on their own needs.

As seen from this series, a suppression of legislative powers at the State level by the Center has been causing havoc in so many spheres of life that the Indian democracy is now really questionable from many an angle. If such a fundamental right as Education can be held in the concurrent list for so long and the Center being solely responsible for progress under this heading does little but use it to fuel its hidden agenda (of Hindi imposition and uncontrolled migration etc.) it is time that the States educate themselves and demand change.