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| EDUCATION TRIBUNE |
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Higher education needs to meet higher expectations Headteacher bans children from using improper enunciation Studyscape
Campus Notes
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Higher education needs to meet higher expectations SOME learn to earn, while there are others who earn to learn, and are ready to take risks at any cost. Does India have an excellent higher education system or is it struggling in a sea of mediocrity? After having worked with a reputed TV channel for almost three years, one day Rahul decided to quit and joined a media course. Having got a seat in one of the premier institutes of the country, he still isn’t sure if he has been provided with the best of education. Is it something to do with an international university tag or lack of opportunities here in India that are putting pressure on today’s youth? But the real issue is, why should our students seek to go to foreign universities? So, what are the real issues that are hindering the growth of higher education sector in our country? Is it infrastructure or a lesser number of institutions? Certainly not! At least by looking at the increasing number of Central universities, deemed universities and last but not the least, private institutions who offer the so-called ‘value-for-money’ degrees. So, is it to do with the higher level of research study and learning as compared with foreign universities? Overall, the higher education system in India is not at par with international standards. There are really some good institutions here, but not good enough for our growing population. The European system of higher education, introduced in India by the British in 1857, seems to be losing its charm among today’s generation. Educational and research standards in our universities have suffered a downslide, and this problem needs to be looked into seriously. Look at China, it has funded about 100 of its universities very heavily to make them strongly research based. India needs some world-class institutions as it is a very large and growing economy. Besides, there is another bigger threat — our higher educational institutions of enormous importance have been suffering from political interference too. There is no denying that our students have the potential of doing excellent research and contributing richly towards learning. At least, looking at the kind of writers, thinkers, engineers and scientists that we have, we can say there are a lot of brilliant people in the country, but many of them still prefer to study abroad as they fail to find top-level institutions here. Aspirations for higher education have been quite high in India right from the beginning. Higher education has been the principal instrument in transforming a country from underdeveloped to a self-sustained developed nation. But with the changing times, challenges in higher education are no longer nation centric. They have already attained global dimensions. With the explosive growth of knowledge in the past century and with the development of hi-tech tools of information and communication technologies, competition has become a hallmark of growth all across the globe. Knowledge is not only going to be the driver of Indian economy, but also it is going to permeate into all the strata of Indian society for a better quality of life and living conditions. Therefore, it’s high time that India rose to the occasion and revamped the higher education system to be more vibrant, competitive, meaningful and purposeful. Besides, there is absolutely no substitute to quality of higher education, although the country has been faced for a long time with the serious problem of meeting the quantity needs of our society. It’s time to do away with the defective recruitment system, deal with unemployment, fill vacant posts, stop brain drain and try to cash in on learning rather than on number of educational degrees. Let’s build world-class universities in this world-class nation. |
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Headteacher bans children from using improper enunciation
THE news that a primary school headteacher sent a letter home to parents telling them when to correct their children’s speech has caused some consternation. Carol Walker, the head of Middlesbrough’s Sacred Heart Primary, advised parents to correct phrases like “I dunno” to “I don’t know” and “yous” to “you” lest their children be disadvantaged in job interviews. Was this the social engineering of a middle-class teacher (albeit one from Stockton-on-Tees) trying to destroy centuries of local dialectal tradition? Or a completely justified attempt to improve her children’s grammar? Sadly, for any defensive Teesiders, most of Walker’s points were valid — what teacher worth their salt wouldn’t correct “I done that” to “I have done that”? But several of Walker’s suggestions wade into the murky, elastic territory of proper word pronunciation, too. Who’s to say why a clipped received pronunciation of a word is of any more worth than a Middlesbrough eight-year-old’s learned interpretation? John Prescott, the former Deputy PM who has lived in South Yorkshire, Cheshire and Hull (he was born in Wales) is sceptical. “I quite understand why she feels she wants to say that but it’s the justification — namely, that you won’t get a job if you talk with a northern accent — that’s curious,” he says. Speaking proper may help you get ahead in the world but there’s a certain charm to dialect misuses that — so long as people learn to differentiate when writing — you can’t help but love. For instance, one of Walker’s banned phrases is the charming northern “gizit ‘ere” for “give it to me” (my school playground preferred “gimme it”). The school also advises correcting “werk” and “shert” to “work” and “shirt” and “letta” to “letter”, which are simply the kids’ accents. Ridiculous. Leave them be. If people aren’t being employed on the basis of having an accent then it’s probably the company’s fault and not the bairns’. Us northerners get a lot of this and —frankly — a rebellion is due, it’s time to start correcting southerners. If I had a pound for every time someone stared at me blankly for saying “bath” with a hard “a” rather than the weirdo southern pronunciation “barth”, I’d have enough to fill a barthtub. And, despite a natural dulling of my own Mancunian/Lancastrian tones, thank to a decade of living darn sarf, I’m still regularly corrected on my own pronunciations by southern colleagues on certain words (for the record, guys, the ‘oo’ in ‘room’ would suggest that it’s room and not ‘rum’). But do strong accents make us sound dumb? Research from Bath Spa University in 2008 suggested not and that the Yorkshire twang was more intelligent sounding than even received pronunciation, so any early age tinkering might have the opposite effect to the one desired. So hey, teachers, leave those kids alone! — The Independent |
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Studyscape HARIDWAR: A school here said an essay related to Saturn by one of its Class VII students had won recognition from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Gayatri Vidhyapeeth, Shantikunj, said of the 29 entries from its students, one by Dhara Sharma, a student of Class VII, “has achieved the position within first 10”. Similar essays by Dipesh Bharti, Saurabh Rathi and Jasprit Kaur of Gayatri Vidhyapeeth at Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh had also been picked by NASA, it said. The international essay competition related to pictures taken by Cassini-Huygens, a flagship class NASA robotic spacecraft sent to Saturn. Since 2004, it has studied the planet and its many natural satellites. The Haridwar school said participating students were asked to write an essay within 500 words expressing their scientific and artistic view of the pictures taken of Saturn. — IANS
Packed lunches may be banned in British schools
LONDON: Britain’s top education official is considering banning students from bringing packed lunches to school and making cooking lessons compulsory for children aged seven to 14. The government aims to ensure that students can make up to 20 dishes, the Daily Mail reported. Education Secretary Michael Gove is considering a ban on packed lunches as part of the battle against child obesity. A fast food chain has been tasked with the campaign for preparing better school meals. The campaign wants pupils to be banned from bringing in packed lunches or leaving the school at lunchtime, at a time when only 40 per cent of children eat school meals. It suggested that parents should spend the two billion pounds that annually goes on packed lunches on school meals instead. — IANS
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Campus Notes RUPALI THAKUR has joined as the new Registrar in the university. She replaced Raman Sharma. Thakur is the first women topper of the Himachal Administrative Services in the state and she is a 2000 batch officer. Earlier, she was posted as the Registrar of CSK Himachal Pradesh Agriculture University, Palampur. She has also served as AC to DC at Bilaspur and as AC at Jubbal Kotkhai and also as SDM at Nalagarh. A stint as senior administrative officer at PGI, Chandigarh, is also to her credit besides a short stay at the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment. Projects sanctioned
Two projects — Establishments of Clonal Bank and Development of DUS Specific Characterisation of Poplar Germplasm and Establishment of Clonal Bank and DUS Specific Characterisation of Willow Germplasm and Validation — have been awarded to the Department of Tree Improvement and Genetic Resources under the leadership of Dr N.B. Singh and Dr Sanjeev Thakur. Expenditure to the tune of Rs 3 crore will be borne by the funding agency, Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Authority, Government of India, informed Dr Singh. The university has developed clones of poplar and willow and is one of the leading centres for both the species. Such projects are sanctioned to the crop-based lead institutes. The scientists of the department are involved in collection, testing, breeding and development of promising clones of willow and poplar. There are about 450 clones of poplar and 200 of willow which are being maintained on the university campus. Multi-location trials on both the species are being conducted within and outside the state at 25 locations covering 15 states for providing site-specific recommendations to the growers. Meanwhile, a new project under the Rashtriya Krishi Vigyan Yojna worth Rs 10.15 lakh has been sanctioned for the Department of Extension Education, where the farmers would be disseminated information regarding integrated pest management. Dr Anil Sood, Principal Investigative Officer, said they would conduct awareness campaigns, demonstrations, training camps as well as kisan gostis to inform the agrarian community about integrated pest management. Exchange programme
Four students of the university have come back from their first visit to Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada, as per an exchange of scholars between the two institutes. This was facilitated after the university had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the College of Forestry and the Faculty of the NRM, Lakehead University. Applicable for a year, according to the terms of the agreement, each institution can send four scholars to the other to participate in the programme that will last for four weeks. The university will now receive a batch of eight students from Ontario University under the exchange programme, informed Dr S.D. Kashyap, Dean, College of Forestry. Precision farming
A model course in precision farming for enhancing productivity in horticulture crops will be conducted by the Department of Extension Education from February 12 to 19. According to Dr Anil Sood, participants from 7 states will attend the course comprising horticulture officials. The course has been sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture. —
Contributed by Ambika Sharma |
SOME learn to earn, while there are others who earn to learn, and are ready to take risks at any cost. Does India have an excellent higher education system or is it struggling in a sea of mediocrity?
After having worked with a reputed TV channel for almost three years, one day Rahul decided to quit and joined a media course. Having got a seat in one of the premier institutes of the country, he still isn’t sure if he has been provided with the best of education. 