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| EDUCATION TRIBUNE |
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Malpractices taint the system
In being sensitive lies the skill
CAMPUS NOTES
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Malpractices taint the system CORRUPTION is widely seen as having seeped into the entire administrative fabric of the Indian society. It is estimated that the Indians pay a whopping Rs 26,728 crore as bribes every year. According to a survey of the Transparency International, education is the third most corrupt public service, and corruption plagues the academics around the world in all nations alike. Corruption in education in India is estimated at Rs 4,137 crores per year. While everyone accepts commercialisation of unfair practice in education as a national shame, not much has been done to control the situation. The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal has got “Prevention and Prohibition of Unfair Practice in Technical and Medical Education Institutions and Universities Bill-2009” prepared as part of his 100-day programme after taking over. To act against corruption is a stupendous task, but let’s make a beginning. The roots of corruption in the education system lie in the attitude of most people that education is a business. Our system, though designed very well, leaves a lot of scope for corrupt practices to creep in and the individuals in position of authority use such loop-holes to their benefits. Central agencies like the All-India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), which grants approvals for medical/engineering institutions, are not clean as their chairmen and directors get political patronage from powerful politicians-cum-businessmen. People who pay whooping fee and bribes to operate such institutions find ways and means of recovering that money in as short a time as possible by resorting to unethical and unfair means. Absenteeism is major problem in educational institutes. A UNESCO study report reveals that teacher absenteeism in India is 25 per cent only after Uganda. Private tutoring, which is identified as an unethical practice by UNESCO, is another problem. Exploitation by tuition shops of various types has been accepted by most of the parents and students as their fate. Class teachers encouraging and coercing students to attend tuitions after classes is widely practiced. Another well-established practice is cheating by students in examinations. It is understood that examinations are “fixed” in many states, not to talk of leaking of question papers by teachers for a few silver coins. No wonder, such a large percentage of students score ridiculously high marks, which have no relation with their knowledge and skill. It is not only the secondary and the higher education system in which corruption is rampant, primary education is also ridden with many unfair practices. The management of primary schools charging fee to fill their deep pockets, creating artificial scarcity of seats and keeping the “right of admission” with them and not allotting prescribed seats to economically weaker sections of society makes a mockery of the entire system. It is easy to understand why even in small towns where primary schools are dime a dozen, teachers are exploited with rock-bottom salaries. To fool the system, such teachers are paid less but made to sign against higher amount. In government primary schools, especially the rural schools, absenteeism is very high, while many a teacher takes turn to go to school. Centre sponsored schemes like midday meal are misused in connivance with higher-ups as every one gets the agreed share. Universities (and deemed universities) and colleges with none or fake recognition go unchecked even while they play with the career of thousands of students. The issue of politics in teacher appointment, promotion and transfer is yet another problem. Institutions conducting self-financing programmes appoint casual/part-time/ guest faculty only for part of the academic session at negotiable low rates. The absence of any rational and well-established criteria for appointment of teaching and non-teaching staff and a uniform policy for promotion and transfers leave a lot of scope for bribing the management. Teaching professionals in institutions like IITs and IIMs provide consultancy for a fee. What part of the fee goes to the parent organisation as per rules is conveniently left to the discretion and honesty of the teachers concerned. The practice of inviting retired bureaucrats as guest faculty or appointing them in plum positions in educational institutions for reasons other then merit also needs to be condemned. We score very low on the Human Development Index (HDI) since there is heavy correlation between corruption and HDI, as corrupt nations don’t develop their human resources. The teacher is always looked up as custodian of the moral fibre of society. However, degeneration of the value system of teachers of today is most unfortunate. According to a Latin phrase, “corrupti optimi passima”, meaning that the corruption of the best is the worst. It can be easily concluded that Indian education system is in distress. But what is shocking is that there is a lack of courage to speak out. It needs to be understood that corruption in education is not a petty crime, as it is destroying the very foundation on which we wish to build a great nation.
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In being sensitive lies the skill MANKIND’s greatest problems come from its own uncontrolled emotions of selfishness, passiveness, jealousy, fear, apathy and hate. Internal strife, a conflicting moral compass, and a lack of choice in emotional responses to every day relationships are the greatest problem. Today, science has discovered a tremendous amount about the role emotions play in our lives. Researchers have found that even more than IQ, your emotional awareness and abilities to handle feelings will determine your success and happiness in all walks of life, including family relationships. Emotions and feelings are the prime movers of human activity. They are connected with the specific modes of activity important for the development of the individual and his relationship with society. Proper emotional training of the young, growing child—often called the little savage—is highly desirable to fit him to hold a place in the civilised society. Thus, emotional training is very important for a teacher if he values physical, mental and social health of his pupils. Educators, long disturbed by schoolchildren’s lacking progress in maths and reading, are realising that there is a different and more alarming deficiency: emotional illiteracy. While laudable efforts are being made to raise academic standards, this new and troubling deficiency is not being addressed in the school curriculum. If kids grow up in a kind of sanitised world, they’ll never develop real emotional intelligence because they’ll never be trained to deal with hot emotions. Negative emotional experiences for a long period disturb the total personality of an individual and lead to neuroticism. If such individuals are not taken care of properly, they may lose equilibrium of the self with their environment. One reason they are so poor at this basic life skill, of course, is that as a society we have not bothered to make sure that every child is taught the essentials of handling anger or resolving conflicts positively, nor have we bothered to teach empathy, impulse control, or any of the other fundamentals of emotional competence. Emotions are an integral part of human nature. Through emotions, we respond to life in many different ways—with anger, happiness, fear, love and loneliness. Emotions influence our thoughts and actions; they inspire our needs; they affect our bodies and have impact on our relationships. Many of the problems in modern society are due, at least in part, to people being unable to understand and appropriately express emotions. On the other hand, people who deal with emotions in a positive way find tremendous benefit. Emotional literacy can contribute to health, positive relationships, success, and quality of life. It is a preventive tool, which properly understood, can help solve many social ills—violence, illness, drug abuse, dysfunctional relationships, and global societal conflicts. Emotional literacy is the ability to recognise, understand and appropriately express our emotions. Just as verbal literacy is the basic building block for reading and writing, emotional literacy is the basis for perceiving and communicating emotions. Becoming emotionally literate is learning the alphabet, grammar and vocabulary of our emotional lives. Being emotionally literate is universally relevant. It can benefit every individual as well as organisation. It has the capacity to transform each person and their relationships. Thus, emotional literacy is the key to living a full rich life. It can be implemented rapidly, safely, and with lasting effect. Learning how to become emotionally literate is one of the best investments that human beings can make for themselves and their children for a better future. It is an essential life skill that must be a core part of every child’s education. Therefore, we may say emotional literacy is the momentum of life. It is time now to unshackle ourselves from the constraining bonds of “intelligence only matters, everything else is a waste” as grasped from learning hard facts, to let it encompass finer feelings of life with all its emotions. Shouldn’t we be teaching these most essential life skills to every child? If not now, then when?
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Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar THE university has dispatched the admission cards (roll numbers) to all the eligible candidates appearing in the University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) to be held on December 27. Seven centers have been created on the university campus and the remaining 11 in the affiliated colleges. According to Dr N.S. Tung, coordinator, UGC-NET examination, the admission cards have already been dispatched to all the eligible candidates. However, the candidates who have not received their admit cards should contact the office of coordinator situated on the ground floor of the Administrative Block of the university from December 23 to 25. The candidates must bring two passport-size photographs duly attested by a gazetted officer. He, however, clarified that no admit card would be issued on the day of the test under any circumstances.
Refresher course on environment A three-week refresher course in environmental studies was inaugurated by Prof. Inderjit Singh, registrar of Guru Nanak Dev University. The refresher course is being organised by the Department of Botanical and Environmental Sciences under the aegis of Academic Staff College (ASC) of the university, on the theme of "Holistic Approach to Environment". Earlier, Dr Amarjit Singh Soodan, the course coordinator, said keeping in view the importance of the subject, the thrust area had been chosen and experts, eminent scholars and scientists had been invited to deliver lectures. While delivering the keynote address, Prof. Shashi Kant, Department of Botany, Jammu University, Jammu, pointed out that the world community was not able to reach a consensus on environmental issues like climate change and global warming because of inflexible attitude of the developed countries. He emphasised two points to remember—-"Think globally and act locally" and eco(logy) and eco(nomics) must echo together to achieve the desired objectives. Dr H.S. Bhatia, director, ASC, said environment had become a global issue today and it should be addressed from multiple angles, while Dr V.K. Garg of Guru Jambeshwar University focused on acqa-scams.
Rs 37.5 lakh grant for Punjab
School of Economics The University Grants Commission (UGC) has approved the Punjab School of Economics of the university for the continuation of the Special Assistance Programme (SAP) for the next five years and sanctioned a grant of Rs 37.5 lakh to the department to uplift infrastructure for research work, including maintenance, modernisation and upgradation of the equipment. Dr Parminder Singh, head, Punjab School of Economics, said Prof. R.S. Bawa and Prof. Satish Verma had been appointed as coordinator and deputy coordinator, respectively, under the SAP by the UGC for this purpose. Besides these appointments, an additional project fellow has also been sanctioned by the commission for a same period to carry out the research in identified thrust areas viz. employment generation in Punjab with special reference to rural sector and social infrastructure on which the data bank would be generated, he added. — Contributed by P.K. Jaiswar
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