Alpana, Alpana, Alpana! When will you ever learn :-)?
Just because these folks --you or I or whoever
came to the USA or went to Bilaat or what have
you, does not necessarily mean we were EDUCATED.
Does it? Education is a bit more than collecting
information or being able to do good math. Or did
you miss the highlighted points ,made by the
writer in that Outlook article?
I thought they say that the standard
of secondary school (not college) education in
India is higher than >that of many western
countries, no?
*** Let us assume for a moment, just to make you
feel good, that it is indeed so. Now then if it
IS so,
why is India in the shape it is? Or why do
Indians in these forums like our own, ask the
kind of questions they do or make the comments
they do? And finally how many from a class of
fifty or even a hundred ( with one teacher
riding herd as they have to in many Indian
schools; as you are oblivious of ) come out to be
the 'brilliant' products they get to be known as?
What percentage of an Indian school or college
get that minimum of what could be considered a
reasonably rounded "EDUCATION" , never mind
well-rounded?
We don't expect you to speak for what you have
never seen or experienced that goes on outside
your sphere of awareness. But can you enlighten
us from your own experiences ? I realize it was
from a distant past as our modern day friends
would readily counter. But how much has it
changed, do you have any idea?
At 12:39 AM -0600 11/23/07, Alpana B. Sarangapani wrote:
Didn't these NRAs get their education in that
Indian system itself to begin with? Or, did they
just grow wings to fly to the US right after
they were born in Assam/India?
I thought they say that the standard
of secondary school (not college) education in
India is higher than that of many western
countries, no?
"In order to make spiritual progress you must be
patient like a tree and humble like a blade of
grass"
- Lakshmana
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [email protected]
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 00:16:32 -0600
Subject: Re: [Assam] From Outlook India: An
Indictment of In dianHigher Education
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>So at Thanksgiving 2007 after Turkey and
Cranberry pudding they should pledge to work out
a very well thought out plan to enable Direction
to Purposeful Education for all in Oxom now
and for the Future.
Time and tide waits for no man.
Mukulda:
Nice! . And if we have been asked to work out a
plan for Purposeful Education for Oxom, then
what do you think in your mind it will be. I
have a plan what I call, Get On Demand Plan. You
get whatever you demand. I call it the GOD plan
imagining that money is not the problem (which
probably is a fact for Oxom), that is what we
would ask GOD to give for Oxom.
Let us discuss what such a Purposeful Education
System would be for Oxom or rather the North
East?
Rajen
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>mc mahant
To: <mailto:[email protected]>A Mailing list
for people interested in Assam from around the
world
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 7:59 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] From Outlook India: An
Indictment of In dianHigher Education
"Education" is what brought many Assamnetters to where they are.
They surely want their old country folk to be
properly educated to do something better-live
better-healthier-happier-more useful to the
world/humanity.
So at Thanksgiving 2007 after Turkey and
Cranberry pudding they should pledge to work out
a very well thought out plan to enable Direction
to Purposeful Education for all in Oxom now
and for the Future.
Time and tide waits for no man.
mm
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2007 12:56:41 -0600
To: [email protected]
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Assam] From Outlook India: An Indictment of In dian Higher Education
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( Highlighting mine: cm)
We Do Need That Education...
China is re-orienting and investing in its
higher education sector to meet the challenges
of the future, but India continues to ignore the
systemic collapse that is crying out for an
urgent and drastic overhaul.
HARSH V. PANT
A few days back, two news stories appeared in
the Indian media. One was the absence of Indian
universities from a list of top 200 (not 100!)
higher educational institutions in the world
while as many as 10 Chinese universities made it
to the list. The other was about the letter that
the Aligarh Muslim University Vice Chancellor
has been forced to write to the parents of his
students threatening to convert the academic
session into a "Zero Year" in case of a repeat
of campus violence -- in mid-September, earlier
in the year, the university had been forced to
close down after violence and arson on the
campus in protest against the murder of a
student. These news items are symptomatic of the
rot that has set in the Indian higher education
system, which seems to be in the news only for
wrong reasons.
Amid all the claims about the rise of India as a
major player in the international system, it is
often ignored that India continues to face some
fundamental obstacles in its drive to achieve
its full potential. One of the most significant
of which is the crisis in India's higher
education system, something that gets drowned in
the din of those feel-good stories about the
engineers and managers emerging from India's
premier professional institutions such as the
IITs and the IIMs.
Sometime back, inaugurating a national
conference of Vice Chancellors (VCs), organised
by the University Grant Commission, the union
human resources development minister, Arjun
Singh, described higher education in India as a
sick child and asked that it should be given a
new direction so as to be able to better serve
the cause of the nation's youth. Seeking a road
map on higher education from the VCs, he asked
them to define "what should be the content,
extent, methodology and basic ingredients of
higher education." While Singh's comments
certainly need to be welcomed, especially if
they are able to generate a debate in the
country on the future of higher education, it is
indeed surprising that it took him more than
three years to address what should have been his
top priority when he assumed office. It is also
interesting to note that some of the minister's
own actions in the past three years have not
exactly served the goals of improving the
quality of higher education in the country.
Knowledge is the key variable that will define
the global distribution of power in the 21st
century and India has also embarked on a path of
economic success relying on its high-tech
industries. But given the fragile state of
India's higher education system, it is not clear
if India will be able to sustain its present
growth trajectory. While India's nearest
competitor, China is re-orienting and investing
in its higher education sector to meet the
challenges of the future, India continues to
ignore the problem as if the absence of
world-class research in Indian universities is
something that will rectify itself on its own.
While India may be producing well-trained
engineers and managers from its flagship IITs
and IIMs, it is not doing so in sufficient
numbers. There is also a growing concern that
while private engineering and management
institutions are flourishing due to rising
demand, their products are not of the quality
that can help India compete effectively in the
global marketplace.
India has the third largest higher education
system in the world, behind only the US and
China, that is churning out around 2.5 million
graduates every year. Not only is this catering
to just about 10 percent of India's youth but
the quality of this output is also below par.If
we leave aside the IITs, the IIMs, and some
other institutions such as the AIIMs, the Indian
Institute of Science, and Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research, we will find a higher
education sector that is increasingly unwilling
and unable to bear the weight of the rising
expectations of an emerging India. The Indian
universities, which should have been the centre
of cutting edge research and hub of intellectual
activity, are more in the news for political
machinations than for research excellence. Years
of under-investment in higher education and a
mistaken belief in providing uniform support to
all universities irrespective of the quality of
their output has made sure that the academics
have neither the adequate support to provide
top-quality education to their students nor do
they have any incentive to undertake
cutting-edge research. India desperately needs
research-oriented globally recognised
universities to be able to participate in the
modern-day knowledge-based global economy to its
full potential.
In his perceptive meditation on the state of
higher education in the US, The Closing of the
American Mind, Allan Bloom concludes that "a
crisis in the university, the home of reason, is
perhaps the profoundest crisis" for a democratic
nation. Though the crisis that he was drawing
attention to arose from a different set of
issues facing the US academia in the 1960s and
1970s, the present crisis in the Indian
universities is equally profound and has the
potential to directly affect the future of India.
This brings us to the larger issue that is at
stake in this debate about the future of higher
education in India. Because of the demands of
the market, most students today find
engineering, medicine or management to be the
most lucrative options to study. And the Indian
education system is such that it has created an
artificial divide between various streams so the
context in which its engineers, its doctors and
its managers are emerging is not shaped by the
liberal ethic of higher education, something
that should be the essence of higher education.
Social science and humanities are being devalued
today vis-à-vis science and technology which can
have some serious consequences.
Democracy requires a questioning citizenry
brought up on liberal education that gives its
citizens the ability to interrogate and
investigate the claims of authority. The real
value of liberal education comes from a
distinctive quality of mind and character that
encourages the ability to explore moral and
political questions from a variety of
perspectives. India's higher education has long
ceased to ask big questions, the most important
of which should be: What kind of citizens is the
Indian education system producing?
Some scholars have pointed out that a process of
privatisation of higher education system is
underway in India, a result not of some
comprehensive programme of education reform but
as a consequence of the collapse of the public
sector and the withdrawal of the middle classes.
This is indeed a worrisome trend and it is hoped
that the government realises that just by
pumping more money into the system or by
building more universities it will not be able
to remedy the underlying rot in the system.
With the National Knowledge Commission calling
for a fundamental change in higher education and
the HRD Minister finally realising that
something drastic needs to be done, the stage is
hopefully set for a radical overhaul of the
higher education sector. However, despite its
tall claims, the present government's record so
far inspires little confidence that it is up to
this task as it has continued to ignore the
systemic collapse of Indian higher education for
the last three and a half years.It would be a
grave travesty if a government led by an
educationist himself fails to do anything to
stem the rot in India's higher education.
Harsh V. Pant teaches at King's College London
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