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| EDUCATION TRIBUNE |
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‘Read India’ drive benefits thousands
of schoolchildren Private varsities’
new antics
to lure students First person
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‘Read India’ drive benefits thousands of schoolchildren Out of them, 40 million can recognise a few alphabets, 40 million can read some words and 30 million some paragraphs. But over 55 million of children will not complete four years of school, eventually adding to the illiterate population of India. More surprising are results of a survey conducted in the most-urban Delhi by Pratham, an NGO, involved in imparting quality education to the underprivileged. These show that roughly 50 per cent of children in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi schools in Class III cannot read a simple paragraph. Pratham is an initiative by Madhav Chavan, a lecturer of chemistry in Bombay University. Launched in 1994, initial fundings for the project were by UNICEF. Now the ICICI and other corporate houses are supporting Pratham India Education Initiatives. According to Mr Chetan Kapoor, Programme Director, who joined the NGO in 2002, this problem among children had to be addressed fast. The number of affected was large. Which meant a learning programme had to be evolved by which more and more children could be involved in the process of learning to read, but in a short duration of time. It was with this factor in mind that the accelerated learning programme was evolved through which children learned to read within six to eight weeks. Through normal classroom procedures, in MCD schools, children take out six months to one year and in public schools about five to six months to learn to read. The Read India Campaign was launched by Pratham in February 2003, after a survey of Class III students in schools in Delhi where it was found that roughly 50 per cent of the enrolled students could not read a simple paragraph. The situation in other parts of country is even worse. In states like Bihar, 80 per cent of children, despite being enlisted in schools, cannot read. This programme broadly combined two approaches that exist for learning a language. One is the whole language approach in which a child is taught through sentences and paragraphs. The second is the traditional decoding and encoding approach where “A” stands for an apple and likewise. With ideas and inputs from several source and eminent educationists, including former NCERT Chairperson A.K. Jalaluddin, the programme was given a final shape. On the basis of classroom exercises, five techniques were developed—story reading, “barakhari” which is a chart of all symbols in the Devnagri script, word games where teacher writes a word and children come up with rhyming words and “kuch bhi bolo” and “kuch bhi likho” where the child is brought to the centrestage of the classroom. The most important component was the assessment of each child carried out in the beginning of the exercise according to his or her initial level on the basis of which the progress was mapped. Pratham activities have now reached across 15 states and the accelerated learning programme is being carried out in Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and Gujarati. Pilot projects are on to initiate the programme in Tamil. Mr Chetan Kapoor says that from February 2003 till date, more than 1.5 lakh children have benefited from the programme. The success rate is high and 70 to 80 per cent of the children are able to read comfortably at the end of the two-month programme. As a follow-up procedure, the NGO is establishing libraries across the country and coming out with nominally priced Read India Books. Most children enrolled under the programme are first generation readers and have practically no or very little support at home. For Rs 60, which is the total expenditure by the NGO in helping a child learn to read, the price is small. |
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Private varsities’
new antics to lure students Slowly
but steadily the noose is finally tightening on the razzle dazzle breed of education outfits that were registered in Chhattisgarh last year as state universities — but were fleecing students in and around the National Capital Region, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. In fact, one of the high-profile universities based in Noida recently signed an “agreement” with City University, London, to offer an undergraduate course in engineering. The pace and style with which the agreement was executed amply shows what such universities propose to hold out to the students once their shops are closed by the authorities. The students are advised to beware of such tactics and verify from the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the UGC whether they recognise the programme run by City University, London. Those who want to know the details about the British higher education set-up and the credibility of British universities should contact the British Council office which runs a full-fledged student counselling service at its centres in New Delhi and Chandigarh. The reason behind jittery Chhattisgarh universities’ frantic bid to metamorphosise themselves into a new outfit is a stern order issued by the new Chhattisgarh Government, directing all private universities registered in Chhattisgarh to buy 25 acres of land each to create the required infrastructure and to deposit Rs 2 crore each with the state government’s regulatory commission, failing which they are to be denotified. The denotification order, issued in April this year, forced private universities to unite and fight the grim threat to survival. The very first step they took was to challenge the government notification in the Chhattisgarh High Court which declined to entertain their petition as a public interest litigation (PIL). In another move, a proxy called Higher-Education Upliftment Society, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Chhattisgarh Government order to denotify private universities in the State. The apex court issued notice to the state government on July 6, but refused to stay the government order which still hangs over the private universities like the sword of Damocles. The three-judge apex court Bench comprising Chief Justice R.C. Lahoti, Mr Justice G.P. Mathur and Mr Justice A.K. Mathur, made it clear that it would not pass an interim order on the question of denotification as it was a serious matter involving 112 universities, including big names. It asked the state government to provide details to the court in two weeks. It may be recalled that the sudden spurt of private universities in Chhattisgarh during Ajit Jogi’s tenure had generated so much heat that even the University Grants Commission, which normally remains on a Rip Van Winkle sleep shrugged off its slumber and issued the Establishment of and Maintenance of Standards in Private Universities Regulations 2003, on December 8. The Regulations explicitly defined the parameters of the private universities and even restricted them to “operate within the boundary of the State concerned.” The regulations insisted on the development of universities’ main campus within Chhattisgarh for initial five years after which they could open off-campus centres off-shore campuses and study centres elsewhere. Now that the controversial private universities in and around the NCR have already registered a number of gullible students and spent a fortune on publicity they simply cannot go out of business. They are struggling to survive-and survive they can by enticing more students by publicising tie-ups with foreign universities and institutions, which are beyond the purview of the AICTE or the UGC. But make sure whether the promised foreign degree is recognised in India and abroad before shelling out your parents’ hard earned money to a private university. For details contact: info@academics-india.com |
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First person Teaching
was, is, and will remain my first career choice, though the ‘whys’ have definitely changed over the years. As a little girl, I was enamoured by my teachers— the tick-tack of their high heels as they sauntered past us, the charmed circle that they formed in the staffroom, and their red-pen stylised signatures sweeping with a flourish across the page. Oh, the power that they wielded in those remarks—‘keep it up’, ‘good’, ‘poor’, ‘could do better’! Life depended on them. And so, while playing our favourite game of “school-school”, I’d vie to be the teacher, brandishing a stick to ‘discipline’ the students—naughty little imps! In the adolescent years, when romance ruled the roost, a teacher would be the heroine of my fantasies; ah, what would it be like to have an adoring group of boys and girls hanging on my every word, treasuring the pearls of wisdom that I’d cast at them! Well, reality meted out its hard knocks. Facing a group of academically uninterested, but keen to see how-she’ll-tackle-us youngsters was a daunting task: the games of power-play were tough. I realised the terrifying responsibility implied in the words, ‘educere’ -to nurture, to nourish and grow. I realised how damaging the red pen actually was: those red lines and remarks such as ‘poor’ were painful gashes across a learner’s hesitant efforts, decimating their assignments to a mangled mess of mistakes. It was easy to change to a blue pen, but believe me, it’s awfully difficult not to give in to the urge to point out every error, or to criticise and compare. One realised, that if one wished to teach well, one had to learn even better. One couldn’t possibly dispense from the fount of knowledge if one’s own level was low. One also couldn’t shoot off high-flown lectures, leaving one’s students groping without a clue to what we were saying, the input had to be comprehensible. It wasn’t enough to know ‘what’ to teach, the ‘how’ was equally important. Teaching was a craft that required not only continuous updating of knowledge but also planning, honing and refining of skills. Along with this dawned the understanding that education didn’t mean filling in, it involved opening up—unlocking the well-springs of creativity and the desire to learn and achieve. My students’ achievements, my little successes, all these experiences are exhilarating, yet humbling. A ‘sutra’ binds us all-teacher, student learner, guide—and each time there is a lesson for me to learn, there comes along another to show the way. The writer is a teacher in Government College, Sector 46, Chandigarh. |
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