Notes on Education

T he attention of this author was drawn to the present topic on reading a report that the government of India is planning to introduce a national level certifying examination for engineers. Over the past decade and a half a huge number of engineering colleges have come up across the country, many of dubious quality. They are producing a poor quality of professional engineers and hence such an exam would help control the situation while assuring the industry that employs them of quality. While a good move, what lacks in this change is what was mentioned as enlightened compassion. May we try and understand this. First it is necessary to explain what enlightened compassion implies. It refers to doing an act of good for another person’s long term interest rather than a short term one. The point is well illustrated in a classical story of a robber who was caught and about to be hanged in the public square. He was granted one last wish. He asked to whisper something in his mothe...

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 chil...

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...

V ery often the public is taken in by claims of a commercial product or service through their catchy advertisements. However they must remain cautious of them because often the worth of a product or service is inversely proportional to the percentage expenditure they incur on Ads. While this is true of all products and services across the board it is even truer of a service industry like education, health, housing, processed food and fashion i.e the most baisc of basic needs of humans where it is easy for greedy sharks to make suckers out of the gullible.. To verify this, check out that the best educational institutes do not have big ads in media. The good institutions do not need an ad. They provide a needed service and word of mouth is enough to keep them in demand. At the most they would have a plain small announcement. On the other hand the poorest institutions carry out big full page ads, even serial TV advertisements. The same holds for the housing builder lobby, medical...

  The future of a nation lies in how its children are educated S ince independence from British, there has been much governance deficit in India and the quality of things a government is supposed to do such as water and electricity supply, health and education, roads and sanitation etc.has been poor in many parts of India. While many of these areas may not have a long term impact, one thing that surely does is education because this influences a human for life, even his children, and thus the future of a nation is adversely affected if education is poor. While the quality of most government run schools has been poor, government personnel have circumvented the difficulty by putting there own children in more expensive privately run schools that offer a better quality of education. The family that ruled India most since independence, the Gandhi family educated their children in the most expensive schools designed by the British in India and also abroad. These are howe...

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buddhist_monks_%28Laos-2009%29.jpg W hile Nalanda University is regarded as the first university in the world, ancient universities were destroyed by invaders and time. When the British arrived in India some two centuries ago the concept of a university was reintroduced in India. With that came many western customs including western gowns and formal dresses worn at convocations for award of degrees. While this is appropriate for universities developed on the western concept, it is most inappropriate if it is done at the recently revived Nalanda University. The appropriate dress is the same one as must have been worn at the original Nalalnda University on formal occasions and that is the formal Buddhist Monk dress. This author intends to convey this link to the concerned authorities in the hope that the needful will be done. The Convocation Hall? Image Source: http://pediaa.com/what-is-the-historical-importanc...

Feel free to copy and use anywhere you like I n the beginning education was part of religious schools both at school and University level. However religion has now been separated from education, rightly so, because of secular values and degeneration in many modern religions. Over the past few centuries education programs have become independent of religious education in the main but at first moral education was included as a component of education. In recent years even this component has been removed. Should moral and ethical education be a part of all educational programs? Education is a tool that empowers a human to do both good and bad, to build or destroy depending on how it is used. Like a gun it can protect or kill. It may empower a good human to perform service to the world or a greedy banker to run away with all the profits under disguise of a bonus. "When you educate a man in mind and not in morals, you educate a menace to society." ----Theodore Roosev...

W hile socialist oriented countries provide free higher education to citizens that wish to pursue it, other countries have left it in private hands to various extents. In order to pay the cost of this education, students often take loans from various financial institutions in the hope that they shall be able to pay it back easily after they graduate with the help of a good job. It does not always turn out that way though. One can be unemployed or underemployed later depending on the state of the economy or the state of the person in future and repayment can become a huge stress compromising the very quality of life. In addition some of the loan givers may be predatory sharks that can harass much later. There are also many persons, including this author, that are in principle against taking a loan for any activity in life except dire life threatening or very short term emergencies (such as losing your wallet on a trip) unless the loan is a forgivable loan from a non-profit maki...