>You should wait for all participants to gather their thoughts- an they will
>come out with gems.
>Do not rush anybody.Let out a long Rope!
GOD-NE wants to move!!!
Rajen
----- Original Message -----
From: mc mahant
To: A Mailing list for people interested in Assam from around the world
Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 9:42 AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] From Outlook India: AnIndictment ofIndianHigher Education
Baruasaab,
Ok for a quicky. By foreign means no Assamese,no English-only IN the Foreign
Language, force-fed.
<We also need higher education and technical education> I only went to 16+.
And you list 15 Types of colleges?campuses+Universities? Maybe we can lump all
these in one GOD-NE. But these- later.
<what will be these and where in North East will be these> : GOD -NE should
be everywhere!
You should wait for all participants to gather their thoughts- an they will
come out with gems.
Do not rush anybody.Let out a long Rope!
mm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [email protected]
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 09:16:51 -0600
Subject: Re: [Assam] From Outlook India: An Indictment ofIndianHigher
Education
Dear Mukulda:
Very well!!!
I support point # 2,3,4 fully except for 'foreign language' term. Could
not understand the 'Only one foreign language per area cocept' in item # 1.
We also need higher education and technical education. Engineering Degree
College, Diploma College, Technical Training college, Agricultural College,
Petroleum Engineering college, Tea Training college, Rice Research center,
Medical college, Nursing college, Homeopathic college, Vetenary college,
Chyropractic college, Acupunture college, Ayurvedic college, Community college
for adult education, etc.
Let us try to find out what will be these and where in North East will be
these.
Thanks
Rajen
----- Original Message -----
From: mc mahant
To: A Mailing list for people interested in Assam from around the world
Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 7:23 AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] From Outlook India: An Indictment ofIndianHigher
Education
Really love this concept: GOD
You be the collector/moderator of mission GOD-NE(of course).
Let us begin with a serial flow of random thoughts from all . None
will be accepted/rejected.
They will be edited/moderated/presented finally in Assamnet to Powers
Coming up:
Can I offer a few to start with?
1.. Only One foreign Language per area-Say Digboi -Thai;
Pasighat-Tibetan,Rangia- Bhutia,Dibrugarh-Cantonese,
Sibsagar-Russian,Jorhat-Mandarin ;Nagaon- Korean ;Guahati-French;Dhuburi -
Farsi; Silchar-Arabic, Kokrajhar-Magyar--- in
School/college/Signboards/Newspaper Language-Brides from those lands
preferred---.
2.. Universal free primary School-cum-creche -walking distance -
from3yrs till age7 - mostly in THE Foreign Language. Extensive use of
Video,Calligraphy,Phonetics,customs,Music,dance.Universal Internet
3.. Co-Ed MiddleSchool 7>11 yrs. Prime Language=FOREIGN + Some formal
mother Tongue-Assamese/Bodo/Bengali/Khasi in the Foreign Land' s best
Curriculum. Self-Assessment as often as you wish.Course material will be
E-format -constantly updated into the IntraNet by a Teacher/Compiler Group.
4.. Girls'&Boys'High School 11+>16+ will stress on
Agro/Soil/Green/LifeScience/sexEducation + Problem Solving
mentally/Physically.Each will finish as expert hands on--
Cad/CNC/ChipTechnician/Crane-Earthmoving operator Welder---.One Sport
predominates in the area (see 1 above) same as sport preferred in the Foreign
Land. Main Practice
I am Done for now.
mm
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
>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: mc mahant
To: 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
( 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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