Rifts, Fissures, Cracks, Gaping Holes

Ref masanamuthu #38

[I`m thinking of making money some day by claiming how a lower caste guy like me got discriminated and came out successful after overcoming a lot of hardships to a ``receptive`` audience.. :-)) ]

Nobody will come listen to you. There is more money to be gotten out of whining.

Point #2: You didn`t get discriminated AGAINST; you got discriminated FOR. People like me LOST so that you could get a professional education you wouldn`t have qualified for.

Ref HP #11

[““Why do state schools function so badly?” “Why are teachers not better trained and why do they not teach?” “Yes, yes, we are knowing that only people with the right accents can get into English medium schools.” “How will Dalit children cope with problems in the curriculum, the barriers in the social system within the schools, lack of help at home?”

I am kind of surprised that why the author is being called a sore loser when all he had brought out some issues in the education system. What makes him a sore loser? Is it being sore loser to discus problem facing India?]

You mean, you are planning to write an article on the Pakistani madrassahs?

Ref avkrishna #7

[Some of the people who criticize you here cannot understand that, the merit based admissions which they advocate is not perfect and is determined a lot by family wealth, the education of elders. We need to level the playing field for backward castes and reservations are one of the best way.]

How does the education of a previous generation contribute to the ``intelligence`` or ``determination`` of the next generation? If intelligence is genetic, then you are supporting the caste system. If it is not genetically inherited, then every generation has to stand or fall on its own merit.

Re: # 73

````How does the education of a previous generation contribute to the ``intelligence`` or ``determination`` of the next generation? If intelligence is genetic, then you are supporting the caste system. If it is not genetically inherited, then every generation has to stand or fall on its own merit.````

What I meant by this is that the more educated the parents are, the more educated the children are likely to be. Not due to genetics, but due to a different nurturing environment where education is stressed, the awareness of different possibilities, financial means to secure these etc.

Do you disagree?

Thanks,
Avkrishna

Even this chinese guy gets it....

http://ia.rediff.com/money/2006/mar/22asoc.htm?q=tp&file=.htm

Q: Besides the predictable answer of infrastructure, what are India`s problem areas?

A: Ideology. Socialism is still ingrained in the minds of many in India.....

Revathy:

Yes, India has a serious problem of lack of good primary education for poor in general and low caste poor in particular. I am in favour of caste-based reservations in private schools and I also agree with the BJP that those reservations should be extended to the minority-run private institutions as well.

But this will only be tinkering with the problem. Even those low caste who make it under the reservations would most likely come from the creamy layer of the lower castes, so the incremental effect may not be very significant.

The root of the problem is the lack of attention paid to primary schooling. This is where resources have to be diverted. And it is not just a question of monetary resources; as soyasauce pointed out, there is a lot of corruption in government run schools. The lure of private tutoring has had a very serious effect on the quality of teaching in regular schools. Perhaps, a radical solution such as providing vouchers to poor parents which they can use in any school of their choice should be considered.

its very easy for indian states to increase their education spending by 4 folds..if they dismantle other nonsense state-owned beurocracies and PSUs ..e.g. dismantle the stupid tourism deparments of each state, electronic corporations, agro-products coporations and so on, and just the pension funds of employees will double spending for schools. but the commies will definately strike to protest this.

it`s good to see that the educated Hindus are aware of the scourge of Casteism as a blot on the fabric of an otherwise tolerant Hindu society -- and I am sure Indian Hindus have advanced since Gandhi`s days in this direction -- but seeing the Hindu matrimonial adds of educated kids in India Abroad or on Shadi com negates that feeling.....

what`s needed is more and more articles like these of self-criticism and self- introspection.....without apologies for a decadent practice of yore for both the Hindus and even the Muslims.....of the subcontinent....

Re: # 68 nasah
[... Hindu matrimonial adds of educated kids in India Abroad or on Shadi com negates that feeling...]

True.... but I think it mostly reflects the parental mentality rather than the kids` themselves.... the kid probably wouldn`t care as long as he/she gets a good looking partner with good earning potential :)

When I was a small kid, I used to visit a nearby Temple along with my father. The sight of too many beggars sitting outside the temple used to disgust me. One day I asked my father that when these beggars are sitting outside the temple for the whole day and God doesnt do anything for them then what is He going to do for us who come once or twice in a week to the temple?

My father replied that these beggars are made to sit outside the temple--so that in your pursuit of God, you donot forget that there many many poor people around who need your attention and care.

The above words of my father have left a profound effect on me.

Coming to the commies, yes we can throw them out of the country along with those who support them-- but let us not forget that then in our pursuit of ``God``, there will be nobody to remind us that there are poor people around in our country who need our attention and care.

If you make comparison with other countries then only you can come to some worthwhile conclusions. Variation in access to education exists in all countries. I think so we need objective index for comparison.

``Language, history, science, maths, these are the fundamentals of any curriculum. Yet getting acquainted with these skills, if not exactly mastering them, does not make a person educated.``

Indian education system does not impart basic enterprise skills. Even basic skill of ordering food in restaurants, taking a ride in bus/train, etc etc are all left to chance events in life of a person. Like sex education. Sometimes these ``real`` skills make or break future of a person. In USA a schoolgoer is taught how to drive a car. To drive a car you need a license. Earning a driver`s license is part of coming of age in USA. But you do not need a license to walk the street and find a place you wish to reach using walking as only ``technology`` that you use. Or using a bicycle or find your way about in a town. Most important skill that a schoolgoer in India will learn is to look up a number in telephone directory. Yet how many of us were formally trained to do that? How many of us made a telephone call from a PCO before graduating from school? There is a divide between those who made a telephone call in their school years and those who did not. So how about ``teaching`` how Indian PCO phone works? How about systematically making a list of ``real`` skills and make them part of curriculum?

re: private schools
I think private schools have ushered in a slow revolution in education in India. Even poor familes are sending their children to these schools where quality of education seems to be better than any govt schools.
This NY Times article talks about such a revolution.
( In this democracy of more than one billion people, an educational revolution is under way, its telltale signs the small children everywhere in uniforms and ties. From slums to villages, the march to private education, once reserved for the elite, is on.

On the four-mile stretch of road between this village in Bihar State, in the north, and the district capital, Hajipur, there are 17 private schools)
(``If anything should be free, it is primary education,`` said Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. No developed country, whether France or Japan, had educated itself using private schools, he noted.

A recent census in the slums of Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh, found that of 1,000 schools identified, two-thirds were private, according to James Tooley, a professor at the University of Newcastle in England who oversaw the research.

``In big cities, it`s more or less over,`` an economist, Jean Drèze, who helped write a national assessment of education in 1999, said of government primary education, although rural students depend heavily on government schooling. ``Within 10 to 15 years, government schools will be almost wiped out.``)

(But it has neglected elementary education. India spends only about 1.7 percent of gross domestic product on primary education, and 3.4 percent for education overall (compared with about 5 percent for Brazil). Up to 40 million children are out of school, something the government hopes will be remedied by a law passed in 2002 that made free and compulsory education a fundamental right for children up to 14.)
Sridhar

re: this article
A nice article
There is no doubt caste system is a big curse in India. It is a legacy of a mental sickness that pervaded the Hindu society in the past.
My hope is that with globalisation, caste system will become irrelevant.
Already, the strict hierarchial rule of the caste (where a carpenter`s son can only become a carpenter etc) has broken down completely at least in big cities, towns. In villges, old system prevails but will break down once globalisation spreads there.
Sridhar

Calling china a communist country is insult to communism. Its a dictatorship headed by a small group of people.

In one sense the Pakis are lucky....they got rid of their Bongs in 1971. If only, we could let them go and join Bangladesh, we would have 10% growth in rest of India and conquer the poverty issues

Mohar,

The desi commies need to be sent to china and interact with the chinku commies to learn about free market economics. But the real problem is the state of West Bengal. If it were not for Bengal, there wouldnt be enough commies at the center who could influence policy.

One way out is for the rest of the country to punish West Bengal and Bengalis for this nuisance. There must be a national level movement of non-cooperation to boycott Bengal and Bengalis until they stop voting for commies. There needs to be a concerted national action focused on making the bongs change their ways.

All industrialists should move out their operations and close whatever investment is going on there as long as those fools keep voting the commies to power. Also other states must discourage bongs resident in West Bengal to apply and get jobs out of state. You vote for commies, you live with them and enjoy their magnificent system. Dont try to get out of Bengal and enjoy a good life outside, when your choices are screwing up the nation.