Preparing to ‘bell’ the CAT
Neeraj Bagga
SANDAL Deep Singh’s passion to overcome complications and odds in life through studies forced the Progressive Educational Society (PES), Amritsar, to sit up and take notice to eventually stretch the number of Super 50 to 51. Hailing from a nondescript Burj Masta village of Faridkot district, Sandal had to cover 8 km daily till the completion of matriculation this year from Government Senior Secondary School, Aryan Wala village.

How to discipline students
Balvinder
IT has become almost a cliché to say that “Spare the rod, save the child”. Literally speaking, the “rod” surely is no remedy to discipline today’s children. However, no preacher of the cliché ever provides with measures that would help a teacher or a school in managing children, who today are more hyper than the youngsters of yesteryears.

Campus Notes
Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak
Last date extended
MAHARSHI Dayanand University (MDU) has extended the last date for the submission of application forms for various PG courses at its PG Regional Centre, Meerpur (Rewari) to September 15. The candidates interested in taking admission to MBA, MCA, MA (Economics) and M.Com (Hons.) five-year integrated course can apply up to September 15 with a late fee of Rs 1,000. For details, candidates may contact the office of the Director, PGRC, Meerpur (Rewari).

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Preparing to ‘bell’ the CAT
Neeraj Bagga

Progressive Educational Society is coaching rural students for prestigious engineering entrance examinations

SANDAL Deep Singh’s passion to overcome complications and odds in life through studies forced the Progressive Educational Society (PES), Amritsar, to sit up and take notice to eventually stretch the number of Super 50 to 51.

Hailing from a nondescript Burj Masta village of Faridkot district, Sandal had to cover 8 km daily till the completion of matriculation this year from Government Senior Secondary School, Aryan Wala village.

Sandal’s brilliant performance in Class X, despite underprivileged background was enough for the chairman of the society, Vice-Chancellor, Guru Nanak Dev University, Prof. A.S. Brar, to accommodate the 15-year-old.

His case is not an isolated one in Super 51. Instead, majority of the students enrolled for preparing to “bell” the CAT (Common Admission Test) for various reputed engineering institiutions located across the country has the same story to tell.

Harman Kaur of Chak Madrasa village in Muktsar district had resigned to her fate as she had taken admission in the nearest senior secondary school in an adjoining village which offered only humanities stream for the students of the 10 +1 and +2 classes.

She recalled that one day, an official from the office of the district administration knocked at their door, as her family did not have any telephone connection, to ask her to appear in the interview at Amritsar. In the absence of a telephone connection, it was the only means of communication left for the organisers of Super 50 to contact this successful candidate of the entrance test.

Brainchild of Prof A.S. Brar, a 14-member Progressive Educational Society (PES) was formed with prominent functionaries and academician as its members like principal, finance and education secretaries and honorary secretary of Khalsa College Governing Council Rajinder Mohan Singh Chhina and others to materialise the plan.

For Brar, it is no less than a dream come true as born and brought up in a nondescript village in Faridkot district, he had to paddle nearly 14 km to receive education. “I invariably desired to pay back to society which helped me achieve heights in my career”.

Therefore, the PES offers the package to those students who belong to rural area of Punjab. The PES is coaching the students at Khalsa College Public School, while their residential arrangement has been made at the adjoining Khalsa College’s hostels.

The PES, with a financial support of Rs 1.4 crore from the state government, conducted a state-level test to select the genuine candidates. Now, the successful candidates-28 boys and 23 girls-are being offered free boarding, lodging, books, study material and other requisite facilities. They are studying in the ten plus one class on the CBSE pattern in the same school. They come from almost all the districts of the state.

Under the active supervision of Sarbjit Kaur Brar, Principal, Khalsa College Public School, the ambitious project is inching towards greater objective of imparting quality education. Interestingly, Sarbjit Kaur, a Ph.D in Chemistry who had been a research associate at IIT, Delhi, is the wife of Prof. A.S. Brar.

“Initially, there were teething problems in settling down of the students, as many of them had never gone out of their houses and some had never travelled by train,” said Sarbjit Kaur. Naturally, there was homesickness. She took upon herself to counsel the students and to provide a parental touch by visiting them in their rooms and classrooms. During her frequent interactions with the students, she realised that individual contact with students and their counseling were important in making them mentally strong and psychologically prepare for putting their best to crack one of the most toughest entrance examinations in the country.

Hence, she came up with a concept of teacher guardian programme as per which each teacher was given the responsibility of nine students. Apart from regular teaching, these teachers took on the mantle of parenting and counselling the students to develop their frame of mind to face the challenges while not allowing them to lose their focus.

Before this, the major task was to enrol creditable teachers to raise the academic level of the students to compete for all-India engineering tests. She said after painstaking efforts, they zeroed in on physics, chemistry and maths teachers. Another challenge was of fine-tuning students’ English as most of them had their education in Punjabi medium. Thus, a remedial class in English was introduced. Many of the students, especially girls, would have dropped out of schools or ended up in adopting other streams in village schools but for the PES, they see light at the end of the tunnel.

How to discipline students
Balvinder

IT has become almost a cliché to say that “Spare the rod, save the child”. Literally speaking, the “rod” surely is no remedy to discipline today’s children. However, no preacher of the cliché ever provides with measures that would help a teacher or a school in managing children, who today are more hyper than the youngsters of yesteryears.

While corporal punishment to children is a cognisable offence, its effects have not been that positive. The rise in general indiscipline in schools is due to haplessness of teachers who these days refrain even from shouting at their students for the fear of a backlash. It has come to such a pass that in the past couple of months, several incidents of students slapping their teachers have been reported from schools in Chandigarh, which is one of the highly literate cities in the country.

While in a few cases of reported corporal punishment by teachers, stringent action has been taken, from dismissal from job to filing FIRs against them, a lenient view is being sought by many against the erring students who dared to slap their teachers.

If not corporal, some stringent punishment has to be there to check the growing indiscipline in schools because it may affect society at large at a later stage.

The riotous agitations, leading to extensive loss of human life and public property, that political goons initiate at the drop of a hat is perhaps the outcome of leniency that we have been giving to our students.

The recently concluded elections of the student councils at Panjab University, Chandigarh, and its local affiliated colleges can well be exemplified to vindicate my assertions.

Teaching remained almost extinct during the whole “holy” month of elections. Almost every rule, from holding rallies to putting posters, was broken with impunity. Pitched battles amongst supporters of warring parties having veiled political support were a daily routine. Police flag marches in these institutions of higher learning often would give a scary look and feel. All this despite the university’s wise manipulation to hold elections on a date that was close to some holidays, so to have minimum attendance of students. 
It is pertinent to note that when students today have no fear of their parents, teachers and the prevalent lame laws, what kind of citizens would they turn to be is anybody’s guess!

When we, as students, would fear our teachers, it was not always because of the fear of corporal punishment. It, in fact, was mixed with an awe and respect of an inexplicable kind towards them.

By seeking student appraisal of teachers and by “spying” teachers through surprise checks by non-professional babus, who have no pedagogic experience or knowledge, a teacher’s status has been reduced to that of a lifeless robot, who is expected to deliver his lecture at a specifically space and time and in return get his salary. But on some particular day in a year, they are asked to remember and talk about our past educational excellences at ancient Indian universities, where people from distant lands come for learning.

In such a sullen situation, things probably would continue to drift from bad to worse, even if more number of education-related laws are added to our already overburdened Constitution.

The writer retired as Principal, Government College for Men, Chandigarh

Campus Notes

Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak

Last date extended

MAHARSHI Dayanand University (MDU) has extended the last date for the submission of application forms for various PG courses at its PG Regional Centre, Meerpur (Rewari) to September 15. The candidates interested in taking admission to MBA, MCA, MA (Economics) and M.Com (Hons.) five-year integrated course can apply up to September 15 with a late fee of Rs 1,000. For details, candidates may contact the office of the Director, PGRC, Meerpur (Rewari).

Students to perform at Games

The students of the Department of Music of MDU will give musical performance at the inaugural ceremony of the Commonwealth Games on October 3 under the guidance of faculty member Dr Ravi Sharma. The cultural team will present a sitar recital on the occasion.

Workshop on bioinformatics

The Bioinformatics Centre will organise a national-level worskshop on the university campus from September 14 to 16. The workshop will be sponsored by the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. According to the co-ordinator, bioinformatics, the current topics like scope and applications of bioinformatics, biological databases, bioinformatics tools, sequence analysis, phylogenetic analysis, data mining , programming and docking will be discussed in the workshop.

Empowering women

The Women's Studies Centre of the university will organise a one-day workshop on "Empowering Women in Higher Education-Role of Women's Cell" on September 24. According to the Director, Women's Studies Centre, Dr Jagmati Sangwan, this workshop was meant for the awareness on the issue for in charge(s) of women's cell in the affiliated colleges of the university.

Pt. B.D. Sharma Health University, Rohtak

Eye donation fortnight

Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda presided over the silver jubilee celebration of the eye donation fortnight function organised by the Haryana State Eye Bank and the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology (RIO) of Pt. B.D.Sharma Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences here recently.

Addressing the gathering, Hooda said it was because of the efforts of medical fraternity and NGOs that more and more people understood the importance of eye donation and came forward for pledging their eyes in large number.

He said the country needed at least one lakh corneas every year, whereas the availabilty was between 30,000 and 40,000 corneas. Therefore, there was need to do more work. Good results could be achieved by motivating general public and creating awareness among the masses, he said. Appealing all to come forward and be a part of this movement, he said eye donation was perhaps the greatest gift one could offer to humanity.

— Contributed by Bijendra Ahlawat

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Armed Forces

Director, Career Guidance India (CARING)