Passing On The Baton To Our Kids

Sorry, it should have been 'biases' instead of 'baton'.  Learning by rote prevalent in top schools too:

In a telling instance, 40-43 per cent of students in classes 4, 6 and 8 felt that education for a girl is not as important as her responsibility towards her family; and in another, nearly 60 per cent of students showed less acceptance towards immigrants from other States, as they felt that “immigrants have to conform to the State's traditions, take away jobs from natives and also are a source of communal disagreements.”

Nice work parents.

Drawing a correlation between the students' lack of critical thinking and their views on social issues, the study says, “Rote learning is often deceptive and passes off as apparent learning, but does not let students develop higher order thinking skills such as critical thinking, creativity and application. Students who do not develop these skills also will not be able to think rationally and discriminate between what is good or bad in various social and ecological issues being faced today.”

One thing though.  Kids of 9-10 (class 4) are generally more interested in playing than studies.  Many wouldn't stop twice before saying '3 units + 2 tens + 4 hundreds' = 324.  They might not even pause to figure out that the place values are in the reverse order.  

The PDF is here: link.

Thousands march in student protest over university fees: BBC

Link.

Some 4,000 officers are on duty, as demonstrators march peacefully in a protest against higher tuition fees and "privatisation" in universities.
...
The student protest, organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, is against the government's plans for a market-driven higher education system and the rising tuition fees. 

"We are being told by a cabinet of millionaires that we will have to pay triple tuition fees," said campaign leader Michael Chessum.
...
Protesters carried placards which read "Scrap Tuition Fees" and "Free Education" and chanted "No ifs, no buts, no education cuts" and slogans criticising the police over rubber bullets.
..
Paul Clark, director of policy at Universities UK, which represents higher education institutions, says universities will not be damaged by increased competition. 

"I think that the level of private involvement in higher education at the moment is relatively small and is likely to remain that way for the forseeable future although we know there are plans to, to change this," he said.

So, where do we go with privatisation in India? 

Soaring Student Loans in the USA

As the calls for for-profit private education institutions get louder, here is one data point to take heed of: A 511% rise in student loans 1999 in the USA.

Obviously the number of students didn't grow by 511%. So why are education loans growing so rapidly? One reason could be availability. The government's backing lets credit to students flow very freely. And as the article from yesterday noted, universities are raising tuition aggressively since students are willing to pay more through those loans.

And the state of for-profit colleges over there is uncovered here: For-Profit Colleges: Undercover Testing Finds Colleges Encouraged Fraud and Engaged in Deceptive and Questionable Marketing Practices.

Puzzled

That's what I am by a NY Times piece in The Hindu (link here via Churmuri). Growing craze for Indian eduction in Japan? Wow. But again, just "roughly" half a dozen Indian schools in the whole of this nation which is so crazy for it? Double wow!

Triumph of hype over reality? I don't know.

Heretic

Interesting thought from Atrios:

It's somewhat heretical to say, but I'm one of those who thinks that too many people go to college, though it may be individually rational for them to do so given the signaling nature of it. That is, going to college doesn't really transform people into better works for a lot of jobs, but employers require a college education because it's how people signal they aren't a "complete loser"* who couldn't even manage to graduate from college.

*To be clear, I don't think one needs to graduate from college to avoid loserdom. That's my whole point! It's just that in our society it's become an entrance ticket to a lot of careers even when the education you get in college isn't really training for those careers.

True here also - that lots of things learnt during college don't get used on the job, and there are lots of jobs that don't need a degree. Including IT, as this commenter notes:

i've only got one year as a drama major, and been cto for three companies. odd, isn't it? but i have been passed over for jobs at or below the level i was alredy doing because i lack a degree.

But we still need lots more of education in country, rather than less, at this point of time I guess.

More Money For Education

Good tidings. From DH:

“Education is an area of special focus in the 11th Plan. Education is our best hope for achieving inclusiveness and for spreading development to backward regions and marginalised groups,” Dr Singh said.

Dr Singh can say that again.

Food for thought:

Asserting that public education was indispensable, he said the deficiencies in basic education could not be met by the expansion of private schools, which “have not been able to play that role anywhere else in the history of the world.”

Of course, no self-respecting private school would go to even the least remote village.

Toilets In Government Schools

Are very difficult to come by. DH writes about it. And the Primary and Secondary Education Minister says it is just a matter of 2-3 years before the toilets are ready. Kids are really having it tough in Bangalore lately. 2-3 years before they can get toilets in their schools. At least that many years, and most probably many more, before they are able to walk on the street without fear of dogs (since the birth control program lets dogs back on the streets after sterilization).

An Idea

Mr Narayana Murthy:

Just one example is if all exporters paid their taxes, and if we were to go and tell Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram to constitute a fund that will be used to provide breakfast and lunch to 35 million schoolchildren at Rs. 10 a meal, and if the Government were to make a matching grant, we would have Rs. 32,000 crore to bring more children to school.

Tharoor's Question

Writing about Indian doctors serving America's poor, he asks:

The easier route to a green card may not, however, be the only incentive for the foreign doctors. The New York Times wrote that many found greater professional opportunity in these blighted rural communities, less professional discrimination — and greater material comforts. Typical earnings, the newspaper reported, ranged from $80,000 to $2,00,000 a year. Only in America can you make that much by serving the poor.

No wonder Indian doctors prefer to work in Welch than in Warangal or Wardha. But must the Indian taxpayer subsidise them for seven years to do so? That's the question on which I'd welcome readers' views.

And though he leaves out "engineers and economists, scientists and scholars", I think the question should include them too. In a lot of cases they too are just following the money.

Here's a suggestion : let the government open new medicals colleges, provide them with good infrastructure, pay the faculty well, allow the best of only the non-general category students in - and have a clause making it mandatory for all students who study in them to serve in the villages for five years after finishing. Kill two birds with one stone.