Teaching the Teachers

Last couple of days has been a unique experience for me. I have been asked to co-ordinate a workshop. The workshop is being conducted by IIT-Bombay and is streamed to 100+ centres, there are around 9,000 faculty members attending it remotely. Technology is amazing isn't it. There have been a few glitches along the way some frustrating, some amusing. I wish to share it with you. In the remote chance of any of the attendee reading this, it is a figment of imagination, any resemblance to any person dead or alive is purely coincidental.

As long as the speaker is speaking everything is fine, participants listen (or sleep), do whatever they want to do. It is when the speaker wants to make it interactive the fun starts. There are centres with quality equipment and there are no issues there. It is with centres with lesser bandwidth that things go all wrong. The remote centre starts with hello, hello, hello; can you hear me......Result waste of time. Then there is the issue of time lag. The remote centre waits for answer and thinking the speaker didn't hear them starts repeating the question. At the same time speaker starts with the reply. So the result we get to hear question-and-answer simultaneously. Or the remote centre does not switch their mic off, resulting in an echo of the speaker's answer.

Now coming to the title of this blog, I will relate my experiences here with our participants. They are faculty members. Handling them is more difficult than handling students. We need to conduct some activity sessions, interact with them and try to get their opinion on the sessions being conducted and the topics being covered. They all want to speak, no compromises there. And most of the times, they go on parallel tracks. We discuss politics, how it is ruining their chances of research. One person starts on it and another starts off with some other aspect totally unrelated. I had lots of trouble trying to get the discussion back on track, without offending them. I couldn't yell, shut up and listen to me!!!!!!! It is fun, a new experience and at times frustrating, too.

Corruption

Kiran Bedi called Hyderabad the corruption capital. Not very surprising for those staying here. We are quick to blame the government for the state of affairs. But how far are we, as citizens, responsible for this state of affairs? It may be a case of egg first or chicken first, but definitely we encourage corruption, even if in small ways. Let me elaborate.

We pay tips to servants, over and above the salary, so they do our work willingly. Auto drivers ask for extra, we oblige in exchange for the service they are providing us. You may say these are minor things. Well it starts that way. Next we are paying the auto driver extra to carry additional passenger. Next we raise a hue and cry as to how government is looking the other way when autos are crammed with school children.

We go for a movie and the booking is closed. There is a guy there offering ticket for a slightly hiked price. Or better still, we watch the movie at home renting a CD/DVD one day after the release of the movie and cry foul about piracy.

We visit a doctor, there are others waiting but we slip a note to the attendant and get past the queue. Is it not bribing?

We have a stortage of water at home and call for a water tanker. There is a waiting period, we are not willing to wait, so we beg the driver to divert some water to our house. Then we raise a hue and cry over water being sold in black. Did we not trigger off that situation?

We blatantly flout traffic rules and when the cop catches us, we grease his palm and escape. Then we bemoan the traffic situation and inefficiency of the cops in handling the situation.

The hand that gives bribe is as guilty as the hand that takes. Remember the economics theory of demand and supply (I am twisting it to suite my point). As long as there are people willing to pay extra, there will be people expecting extra. And it is a chain reaction. One pays extra and has to take it from some other place to compensate for it. So stop bribing, it will take time but have patience. That is the only way to set things right, in my opinion.

Unsung Heroes

Yesterday I made coconut chutney, yeah, yeah, in the world of cholesterol and stuff I am still bold or foolish in that sense. It came out quite well, if I may say so myself. I tasted it and said to myself "hats off to the person who invented this dish". Then I realised I have no clue as to who invented that stuff, and many other that we take for granted.

So this blog I would like to list out all the things we should be thankful for but dont know to whom:

- Cooking, imagine life before people realised that food could be cooked? Eating raw vegetables.... bet no one was obese then.... And it is not just cooking, mixing of ingredients. That we can extract juice from tamarind, and we get rasam, sambhar and the yummy pulihora. That we can prepare tea from tea leaves, the list goes on and on and on.....

- Clothing, whoever got the idea to cover oneself, the less said the better.....

- House, shelter over your head in this heat, coming rains and cold winters

- Bathing, imagine the stink we would have created

- Talking, imagine trying to communicate using sign language, the deafening silence all around.....

- Script, what other way to pass our legacy along without written words....

I have run out of things to say, can you add to the list?

Woes of Entrance Exams

Lately, papers have been filled with news about the single entrance exam for admission into engineering and medical colleges. There has been a lot been said about whether it is good or bad. To the uninitiated, once a child completes his 12th or +two, they need to write a bunch of exams to get admitted into eng or med colleges across the country. There are various types of these colleges - state, nation and again at national level there are premium institutes and the not so premium. Forget about the choice available to the student, the selection pattern for each of these colleges is different resulting in myriad of exams, interviews, applications etc.. Those in-charge of higher education woke up to this situation and decided that it was high time the entire process be streamlined and came up with a single-exam format, which they claim will simplify the process and ease burden on the students.

While their claim needs to be proven, the thought that comes to mind is why did these exams come into existence in the first place. Students after spending 17 years realise that the education they got (or supposed to have got) is of no use. In order to pursue their line of interest (or their parents' line of interest) they need to appear for some additional tests. And these tests, neither in format nor content, donot resemble anything they have been used to in the past 17 years. So in effect they have wasted 17 years of their life. What do they do? Enrol into an institute that guarantees admission into your dream institute. These institutes are very smart. Initially, it was for the two years leading to the tests. Then they said, it is not enough. Competition has increased and you need to be prepared and need to start early - "early bird catches the worm". So now it is anywhere from 6 to 2 years of coaching. True, competition is on the rise, so is the admission to these coaching institutes. What to do? Entrance exams for admission to coaching institutes. Again, coaching classes for that, you need to start early, you see. So end result better start coaching from class I itself.

Is having a single test going to solve the problem? The educators are missing main point I feel. All these additional testing is coming from the fact that our schools are not efficient. If the schools do their job correctly, why would these so called premium institutes need to have additional screening process? Marks from the 12th class would suffice, to gain admission. So why are the schools failing? No one is paying attention to them. Framing syllabus is not enough, there should be some form of check to see if these syllabi are getting implemented. With the rise in high-paying jobs, the quality of teachers is falling. There is a low opinion of teaching profession. It is highly discouraged and is seen as the last resort by graduates. Lack of quality teachers is root of the problem, with low salaries and no encouragement from peers, is having a resounding effect on our education system. We need dedicated and well-qualified teachers, who can inspire students and guide them on proper path. Only when this scenario changes can any other measure work.