Musty Tomes Full of Trouble

#13 by haideri

[Just googled ``Most corrupt countries in the world`` and this is the first record I got.

href=``http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/08/29/corrupt.index]

Yaar, two things to consider here:

1. The news item is dated 2002.

2. Your source is a news site, while mine is the very organization that conducted the survey.

Hope that helps.

Ref Urstruly #15

[To me there is more to education. The core principle of education should be to enhance our awareness of self. That is an attribute that separates us from animals, that we can visualize and analyze ourselves as a third person. This is the attribute that allows us to judge between right and wrong. This is what makes us better human beings from just being men. The education of religion is only one part of it. While religion gives us the moral frame work only the self-awareness gives us the tools to build our character around that framework.]

Yo, would that include looking at the requirement to have 4 pious, adult, male Muslims as witnesses to the act of penetration before a conviction for rape can be obtained? Would a DNA analysis of semen be considered sufficient proof in Sharia courts?

Or is the Word of God inviolable and a woman should always have with her 4 adult males so that she would have witnesses in case she should get raped?

Dont ever forget that childhood is also where religion is born and nurtured. Religion would die without the brain washing in the name of `education`.

Urstruly #1. Thank you for the note. Your assumption that a country of a billion people can be judged as you would judge a pot of rice from few grains was fascinating.

Samosa #2, try this link, http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2005-09,GGGL:en&q=NCERT+BJP

Subroto #6. Thank you, but I am afraid I cannot claim to be bias-free. It is, first and foremost, an opinion piece, and my tilt may come off in some places, but what I was trying to do was to suggest some ways out at the bottom. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn’t. But apologies if the bias came through strongly.

Bjkumar #7. That is indeed a fair point, but think about it if you have school going children, how many times do you think they will actually go to the internet/library to research over and above what is written in the school books? Hardly, mate.

Urstruly #15. Now that`s more like it, a comment that I can respond to :). You are absolutely right in thinking about the fallacies within our educational system being geared towards providing wage/salary slaves. But that`s a feature across Asia, Middle East, Latin America and Africa. Rote learning is what is provided. But that was not the angle I was talking about at all and you mention it in ``awareness of self``. Self actualisation in other words. But then, to understand self, you need to have an identity, and that is the angle I was looking at when I wrote this essay. It is the basic identity that is formed by textbooks. When you are talking about primary and early secondary education, vocational training is a bit further from the mind, and providing a solid identity grounding is slightly more important.


Apologies, I cannot see many responses because they have been filtered out or my firefox browser is not showing them, hence will not be able to respond.

``To me there is more to education. The core principle of education should be to enhance our awareness of self.``

look, its simpler..the nai, mochi and the mali, simply lack tools to read, acquire knowledge and enhance their own knowledge, however romantic you find it. a basic 10 year education simply gives you the tools..you can then get awareness or simple hygine...the educated needs the basic tools oa acquiring more info that HE chooses. trying to make a better person thru education brings in ideology, and theirin is a big problem..what is the right ideology.

mbas and coomupter literate simply are armed with tools, its upto them what they do with them.

Re: # 14

There is two kind of education. One may be called the Vocational Education, for lack of better words. If we set this as a standard of education then there is virtually no one illiterate in the world. For example, a farmer, who has never seen the inside of a school, may know his vocation very well; sometimes so well that he may be able to teach a thing or two to the so called agriculture engineers. Similarly, a sweeper who sweeps the streets and cleans gutters knows his vocation very well though he never learnt it in the schools. If we extend this logic further, all the engineers, doctors, MBAs, computer programers, and lawyers even when their education was far more structured than that of farmer, cobbler or sweeper have only the vocational education. That is the point author was trying to make when he pointed out to McCaulay`s education system that was pointed towards training slave minded drones for the British imperialism. While he correctly pointed out to the ideological bend that education has taken in Pakistan, he failed to differentiate between education in India and how it has changed from McCauly`s making of vocational drones and the education of today that created another set of vocational drones.

To me there is more to education. The core principle of education should be to enhance our awareness of self. That is an attribute that separates us from animals, that we can visualize and analyze ourselves as a third person. This is the attribute that allows us to judge between right and wrong. This is what makes us better human beings from just being men. The education of religion is only one part of it. While religion gives us the moral frame work only the self-awareness gives us the tools to build our character around that framework.

The education system in Pakistan in this respect even with the ideological bend failed because of the immorality, cowardice and dishonesty of those on the helm, so it did not give us self-awareness whereas in India it failed to start in the first place. So the end result is that the two countries are producing vocational drones. You create more than us, that`s all.

actually what i dont understand is why is urstruly is using a ``western neo-imperialist`` standard (i.e. corruption). should not the quality of education be evaluated on more relevant measures such as how ``just and godfearing`` the society has become, or maybe per-capita jihadi quotient?

i find one refreshing change (dont know if its due to education system)..more people seem to indulge in classical arts of india, such as the music and dance than ever before. less refreshing is rise of (at least not fall of) mysticism among the educated; e.g., ``vastu`` knowledge is a must for any practicing architect more than understanding of bulding code.

overall, the education system is far from a success, not so much from quality but quantity perspective of getting 10 years of universal education..say equivalent to sri lanka or kerala.

#12

Just googled ``Most corrupt countries in the world`` and this is the first record I got.

href=``http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/08/29/corrupt.index

``HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Bangladesh and Indonesia are ranked among the world`s most corrupt countries, according to an annual survey by German-based Transparency International.

In the Asia Pacific region, New Zealand and Singapore were amongst the least corrupt countries while Australia, Hong Kong and Japan also had low levels of perceived corruption.

At the other end of the scale, Bangladesh and Indonesia were joined by Vietnam, Pakistan, the Philippines and India as being considered highly corrupt.

Covering 102 nations, the Corruption Perceptions Index claims to ``reflect perceived levels of corruption among politicians and public officials.``

It is based on 15 surveys from nine institutions and includes the perceptions of country analysts and the business community both resident and expatriate. ``


haideri

#4 by jang

[why 3rd most corrupt? which are #1 and #2?]

Bangladesh and Chad are the most corrupt (#1) countries ranked at 158, Pakistan is at 144 (marginally better than Bangladesh), while India is at 88. That explains Urstruly`s heartburn.

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harimau,

My bengali friends tell me that in any fair election the commie ba$tards would lose hands down.

The comrades have come up with ways to rig an election that would put Lalu to shame.

Apparently comrade Subroto is an exception, not the rule.

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Wll then maybe Nehru was right - for a nation to go forward it was time to stop dwelling on past injustices (real or perceived). Blaming and maligning any community is not going to help.

Beads, the concerns expressed here may have been legitimate at some point but are now obsolete (or about to become so) due to the internet - because in future, such information will never be gathered from just one source - so better accuracy will automatically ensue. If individual countries revisit their textbooks to more closely align contents with actual facts, that will result into a more uniform account of history - assuming that history really matters in this day and age - I am beginning to doubt that because the world has changed so much in the recent past and continues to change at such rapid pace that there are few historical precedents to guide us.

In the meanwhile, there is little to be gained by ``rubbing it in`` to our Pakistani friends - they know in their hearts what they have missed out. On an individual basis, there is little difference between the capabilities of the Indians and the Pakistanis - each one can shine (or stink) as much as the other - but as our friend HP so confidently pronounced on another board - size matters, and that holds for populations as well.

Indians` size is greater and that is simply a fact of life!

Interesting write-up but have you written it completely free of any bias from your side ;-)

#3 Its rather sad that you are out to ruin this board with your scatalogical obsession and even more sadder when i realise that you are probably one of the older (age wise) interactors here.

The article is proof that all Bengalis are hopelessly brainwashed.

Nehru had his coterie of left-wing historians write textbooks glorifying the Islamic thugs who ruled India. They were made standard textbooks in schools and colleges and National awards and money were showered on persons like Romila Thapar for their treachery.

If only Indians had been taught the truth about the actions of Islamic thugs in India, we would be rid of the most backward of the 140 million+ Muslims by now. They would all be living in Pakistan or Bangladesh. We would not be wasting money on the Hajj pilgrimage and similar crap. We would not have banned ``Satanic Verses``; instead, we would have a subsidized Eastern Economic Edition printed and sold in India. We would have had army tanks ring any frikking group of people protesting the absolutely fantastic cartoons that Jyllands-Posten had published and at the first sign of stone-throwing, there would be retaliation from the tanks` guns.

Pakistani Butt-Fakhrs (this includes Behram1) and any hand-wringing self-hating Hindu who is sorry he doesn`t have enough females in his family to be raped by Islamic thugs can enroll at Jawaharlal Nehru University and continue to get their daily dose of illusions. Perhaps Jawaharlal Nehru was right: it is easier to brainwash people than to provide them with their daily dose of tranquilizers.