Notes on Education

O ver the past five decades human population has increased hugely to touch a near seven billion now. As a consequence, there is a huge pressure on both urban and rural lands accessible by basic infrastructure such as roads, electricity and water. Humans are devising ways to manage with less and less land for their life and activities. The pressure is also influencing educational institutions that have to do with reduced land availability. Nevertheless, certain minimum requirements still exist for land for different types of educational institutions ranging from kindergarten to university. This author has written about such land requirement before for separate type of educational institutions. The present note summarizes all these findings in a single comprehensive table. An affiliated college is one that prepares students for a university level examination but does not have authority to grant university degrees on its own for which it affiliates itself to a university. A

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Youth-soccer-indiana.jpg Open areas When this author was young he lived in towns and cities that had open areas for children to play football, cricket or hockey or just to fly a kite and run around. Since then human population has expanded and many towns and cities are devoid of open areas for children to play in. The ensuing lack of green exposure and playgrounds are leading to nations full of compromised individuals that are low on health and high on stress. What is even sadder is that the same lack of open spaces has crept into schools too and children do not get a respite of green and open spaces even during their school hours. Perhaps it would be an enlightened government that shall prescribe certain minimum open area that schools for children must have before they are given a license and recognition to operate. The question arises as to what should be done with schools that already exist if new regulations are propose

A central question that has a huge impact on the lives of young children is of age. What age should formal schooling begin and at what age may the child be sent to a preschool/kindergarten and for how many years?   Different practices prevail in different countries as regards age and preschooling and this is appropriate since social conditions within homes and the resources available to schools vary from country to country. The question that needs to be answered first is - Is it a good idea for government to regulate questions related to age of school going children and the years they may spend in preschools prior to entering class I? As regards government run schools, the government does have to come up with a policy for the same. However, private schools could be left to make their own choice. That could work well in the ideal case since then each school can come up with a policy that is best suited to the area within the country it operates and the kinds of children

T his note is with reference to schoolchildren in India although it may have relevance for children of other countries too. While much has been written about and much needs to be done to improve the quality of school education in India, this note is not about that at all but rather the environment in which this education is delivered, something of equal if not greater importance. There are at the present time many issues that add misery rather than joy in the lives of school children. These are things like, weight of school bags, quality of food served free or in schools canteens, commuting to schools, behavior of teachers, disproportionate amounts of homework given, lack of play grounds and open environment, noisy school architecture, schedules and timing etc. Rather than covering all of these topics together and losing focus, we shall take these issues one at a time and see what simple changes can be made to remove this distress. Let us begin with annual school schedules