38. Another X’mas, Another Message

 

My college celebrated the x’mas season today (22 December 2011) as Communal  Harmony Day. Religious leaders representing the three main religions- Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, were the invited guests. The General Lecture Hall where the programme was conducted and the college corridor adorned a festive look.

Fr. Noble V. Jacob:

“ Remember ...rationality  has got its own limit...Try to be a human at least  for a minute...Its this,  which will save our  great nation...”

Imam Jamaluddin Mankada:

“ Today more and more students get educated...but, more and more criminals  are on the rise... Ones  goal in life seems  to have shifted from the ideals of ‘Bapuji’ to ‘3G’...Education  will achieve its true objective only when it  guides a person from knowledge to self-knowledge...”

Swami Guru Njana Thapswi:

“ Towards the end of his life,  Sree Narayana Guru who preached ‘One Caste, One Religion,  One God for mankind’ consecrated a temple with a mirror as ‘idol’ to symbolically suggest  that one should know oneself to perceive God...It is a law of Nature to bestow one with what one deserves...and so  it is meaningless to force children to take up Engineering and Medicine as the only two professions worth pursuing...”

Well..., another message for the Curriculum Committee!! [Please  read Post # 27 in this Blog]

Any comments dear reader?

37. Who is likely to be the best ?

·      * A poet becoming a teacher

·      *A novelist becoming a teacher

·      *A dramatist becoming a teacher

As a student of the English Literature  Course offered  in H. H. The Maharajah’s University College, Thiruvananthapuram in the late 1980’s, I had the good fortune to be taught by  a  popular  poet, a renowned  novelist and an acclaimed actor-cum-dramatist.

Each one of them,  I must admit had their own unique approach to teaching.

I did however perceive an edge  in the dramatist!  Naturally too, for what does a dramatist,  who is also the director of a stage performance do? He would try several tricks up his sleeve to get the best out of a potential actor. And while teaching... how can  a dramatist be any different?... Won’t he try to get the best out of a student?

Well... do you  agree with me?

36. Does verse allure the mischievous ?

A Practicum submitted by one of my trainees (Ms.Anila) of the academic year (2010-11) is entitled  “A study on the extent/level of poetic creativity among high school students”. The following is an extract :

While teaching  poetry in the classroom...have witnessed one constant and surprising occurrence. It is amazing to see that poetry has touched the most unexpected of the students in the classroom- those with the weakest language skills and worst behaviour problems. The reason is that the world of imagery gives them freedom to communicate in a new mode and releases these students from the confines of Standard English and allows them to say the undesirable as imagery in Poetry.

Any comments?

35.Impressions on Quality Concerns

Dr.Ningamma Betsur, Associate Professor, Mysore University was the Resource Person for the thematic session on quality concerns  in Education, at  the National Seminar organized on National Education Day (11 November 2011) by the Department of Education, University of Calicut. During the  lecture,  the speaker attempted to explore several dimensions of quality. The concept of quality she opined  is :

·        inherently multidimensional.

·        linked to results and partly to objectives and components that intervene to reach these results.

·        values with time, need, interests and convictions of various groups and people.

·        not homogenous at any given time and the heterogeneity of quality is associated with objective and subjective considerations.

Other observations made include:

·        In India for instance, we may place moral values at the top  while assessing quality...not perhaps in other countries.

·        Earlier quality education for women in India meant making them come out of their homes and undergo  a regular and useful course of study in an educational institution. Today, it focuses on women empowerment.

·        It is a pity that after  getting eighty percent marks for the Pre-University examination, on failing to get an admission for the MBBS  course, students commit suicide. It is high  time our education empowered  our children to accept  failure.

·        If quality is our prime concern, we ought to develop the  ability in our students  to ask critical questions. But what normally happens is that in our classes in colleges, teachers lecture  where information from the teacher’s notes is transferred to the student’s notes with real information entering either head!

During her lecture, Dr. Ningamma introduced a few  anecdotes to illustrate her arguments. Given below are  a few:

·        Once   while  food was being served  during a marriage  function  a relative of  a  civil engineer  noticed that the sambar  just poured was running down the banana leaf. At once he asked the  engineer: “What kind of Civil Engineer are you who cannot even manage   the flow of sambar!” . Can this failure be attributed to the kind of education we are imparting in our engineering colleges? It is here that issues related to quality should come up for discussion.

·        A student once  inquired  why he is denied the privilege of not using a chit with the main points, during  the university examination, when many Professors who  engage classes for them, use a chit with the main points jotted down!

·        One great advantage of the setting up of NAAC in India is that many college buildings which had not received a coating of paint for decades have now adorned a  charming look.

Dr. Ningamma during her lecture referred to the  communiqué of the World Conference on Higher Education 2009  “Quality criteria must reflect the overall objectives of higher education, notably the aim of cultivating in students critical and independent thought and the capacity of learning throughout life. They should encourage innovation and diversity”. [UNESCO (2009) 2009 World Conference on Higher Education : The New Dynamics of Higher education and research for Societal Change and development: Communiqué. Author, Paris. p.4]

After the presentation, when  the audience  were invited to join the deliberations, I made the following observation: “Well..., the UNESCO communiqué  highlights the cognitive domain... what about the other domains/ dimensions?...We in India normally go into raptures when we make a reference to education of the Vedic age, particularly the Gurukula System of Education...but  did we have a NAAC then?”

A  front page news item in the Malayalam Daily, Kerala Kaumudi  dated 13 November 2011 reads:  Ninety percent of the students in the self financing engineering colleges in Kerala failed to clear their final examination!

Any comments dear reader?