DesiPundit

In a state where, there is no career other than Engineering and Medicine(at least in the minds of parents), Ashok suggests a way out.

Engineering was an overwhelming favourite. Law was on the radar — a few old boys had recently joined the National Law School. Only one said that he wanted to be an economist at the World Bank. I came away concluding that students were opting for occupations they knew little about. They desired the fast lane, or to emulate somebody who had been praised in family or society. It was more about things and others, not about work or themselves. [Hat tip: Karthik ]

PS: CET is College of Engineering, Trivandrum

We were always told to write essays in school, but no one told us anything about the structure or the fact that your writing has to be interesting to read. No one told us that your initial brain dump is not the final product and it has to go through many cycles of re-writing. Now we learn that Jhumpa Lahiri edits her short stories for two years and it took Suketu Mehta more than four years to edit Maximum City. Jiby laments that our schools have failed us in this regard.

What we all continue to lack, is a better understanding of the craft. Some learn the finer points without guidance because these are mostly common sense principles, noticeable if people have thought, compared and contrasted theirs and others writing. Others fumble along blissfully without that self-realization. I for one, hope that schools take a hard look at the absence of well-rounded writing classes in their curriculum and the very real fact that writing is not just a natural or inborn ability but one that can be cultivated in every young mind through proper guidance.

I was still able to identify most mammals in television documentaries. Clearly, this shows that documentary makers are only interested in a select set of species. Most documentaries are centred on the rockstars of wildlife: the large carnivores (usually Africa’s big cats), or the bigger species of the ungulates.

Disillusioned by the lack of coverage to a wide variety of animal species on most wildlife channels, Witnwisdumb sets out to inform us on the little-known species from the animal kingdom.

Indra writes that B Schools are causing inequality and in the pre-MBA crazy world, education was not this commercialized. Is an MBA required to be a good manager?

I consider the craze for MBA education as damaging. The best brains, if the success in the entrance examinations of these institutes were a criterion, trained through a costly coaching system, are vying to enter IIMs. Even IITians and other professionals including medical graduates after four years of rigorous purely technical education prefer to complete the MBA course before entering the job market. Those who fail to get in the IIMs or some of the better-known B-schools of the country go to US. As per one estimate, between 10 and 15% of US B-school graduates are of Indian origin (this is true of B-schooll faculty too). Many who went to US for MS in engineering subjects as getting financial assistance was easier for that, later switched over for a MBA course.

After spending twenty months at IIM Kozhikode, Rahul lists the tech college gear guide for B-schools. Some are obvious like a laptop but some oft-missed accessories can prove to be life-savers especially during crunch time.

The solution, according to opponents of private schools, is to empower parents, so that they will demand and get better government schools. This is a rather severe case of deceptive advertising. The problem is that the market process is long, messy and untested. If you are going to advertise an alternative, you shouldn’t conceal the fact that your alternative will take just as long if not longer, will be just as messy if not messier and has been tried with no sign of it working.

Responding to Abi’s post on Kendriya Vidyalayas [linked earlier on DesiPundit], Ravikiran addresses the myths associated with private schools and writes why private schools work better at providing quality education access to people who most need them.

How many such bogus “scientific” answers were there, and are still there, in school textbooks that I have forgotten about (or continue to believe credulously)? Richard Feynman reports regularly blowing up like a volcano when asked to review some California state school science books. I suspect my own temper may be hard to keep when my son starts learning science in school.

Rahul Siddharthan is frustrated by the bogus science in school textbooks.

Sunil talks about how to encourage women in the academia, especially the sciences.

Most major research universities now admit that there are difficulties women face in research that have nothing to do with their scientific abilities. Subsequently, most universities now say they are actively trying to rectify this, and look to hire more talented female faculty. Departments try to have career workshops for female graduate students and postdocs to encourage them to stay in academia, there are endless efforts to recruit more female students and so on.

He figures that in spite of the fact that universities have molded the rules to fit female candidates, the rules are not encouraging enough, especially when a woman has to go on maternity leave and can find better opportunities outside of the academia. As a graduate student, I have seen women trying to juggle too many balls - research, children, a job. It’s true that universities must make further education much more enticing for women to stay in universities.

Heartcrossings writes about the difficulty of explaining what it means to go to a school in India. Unfortunately, showing her daughter a documentary with a self-explanatory title was not good enough:

As someone who went to grew up in India, I would argue my school did not resemble any of the schools in the movie even by a long shot. To not show my school experience which is shared by millions of other kids is to take a huge chunk of India out while talking about India.

I certainly identify with her frustration, because the school I went to endorsed competitiveness and did not have much creativity as far as learning was concerned. I’m not sure what Heartcrossings means when she talks about “the other side of the coin,” but the recent Taare Zameen Par definitely throws light on the dark side of Indian schools.

Yet another op-ed in the Indian mainstream media on the ‘Brand IIT’ and now I almost always expect some sort of reaction from our bloggers. And they don’t disappoint.

Mridula is surprised that the columnist would pit undergraduates against post-graduates within IITs. Confused is well, confused about what exactly about IIT makes the graduates proud when asked for a dance. Mind you, this is not about IIT-bashing but rather media bashing.