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Till my son came up to his Class X in the Central School (KV) in the campus of IIT KGP, I never bothered about supervising his studies...my wife took care of it. My job ended when I bought his school books and brown paper wrappers and covered all his books...a specialist job that took anything up to 4 hours. And taking care of his transport to his school and back.
Except once, when he was a toddler in the St Agnes School. In his Class I, I found his English handwriting was very nice and cursive. And his teacher was a Mrs Menon, a campus wife. But at the end of his Class II, I discovered that his handwriting turned suddenly lousy. I found out why. His Class II teacher was a nice enough lady, called Lilian Miss, but her own handwriting was even more Gandhian than my son's. Some lesson there...
And I sat with him for an hour everyday in his summer vacation with a cursive writing book and made him improve his writing.
One evening when he was in his Class VII at KV, I was taking my circular walk in our front yard (the weather was too humid to venture out on the roads). And my son happened to be sitting on the cement platform of our verandah, dangling his legs and swinging them and mugging up aloud some stuff that sounded familiar to me. And he was repeatedly reading, back and forth and forth and back, definitions of things like standard candle, candella, candle power, lumen, foot candle, lux and such crazy things. And I was wondering why photometry, of all things, in a Class VII Science book.
And I picked up his book and found that it was the first chapter on Light!
Feynman would have blown his volcanic top. He (or even I for that matter) would have started explaining in simple (but correct) terms how light is emitted, how it travels, how it is absorbed and made visible to us, how it is dispersed making rainbows etc. That story would have made Light exciting to kids. And challenging to the writer and teacher as well.
I thought ok, let me look into the photometry stuff that the book began with. And found that the author goofed up and mixed up everything badly enough to be practically incorrigible. And I sat down for an hour and rewrote the passage on a white paper, rectifying all the errors as best as I could.
And looked for the name of the author. To find instead that the book was written by an Editorial Committee appointed by NCERT. A Committee of 20 writing a Class VII book!!!
I had seen in Physical Review Letters in the 1980s, the heyday of particle physics, papers of length less than half of their list of authors (running up to 140 once...I counted them), the team that collaborated in various particle accelerators across continents to draw just a graph.
I guess the list of discovers of the God particle runs to miles like their underground Collider. No wonder that the Nobel went to a couple of theorists rather than the discoverers....they better give it to the Collider itself...
Anyway, I found the name of the Chairman of the Editorial Committee on the top, like Abu Ben Adhem. I recall he was from the CCMB at Hyderabad. And decided to send my corrected passage to him for whatever it was worth.
And I knew that, if I sent it with a covering letter on a white paper under the simple signature of G. P. Sastry, it would be trashed into the dustbin. So, I took my departmental letter head: Department of Physics & Meteorology at the glorious IIT KGP to write that courteous note from: Professor G. P. Sastry (didn't write Full Professor though, as one of my colleagues used to do since there are professors of all sorts, assistant, associate, visiting, honorary, supernumerary, etc).
And within a week I got an even more courteous reply from CCMB thanking me for sending my correction and assuring me that it would be put up before their Committee in its next meeting (over chai, paani).
I guess that was that...I didn't follow it through...
Here is RKN's version of Committee Meetings on which he served:
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...It was a pretty big job, and I worked all the time at it down in the basement. My wife says that during this period it was like living over a volcano. It would be quiet for a while, but then all of sudden, "BLLLLOOOOOWWWWW!!!" --- there would be a big explosion from the "volcano" below. The reason was that the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried...
...Feynman "Joking"
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Till my son came up to his Class X in the Central School (KV) in the campus of IIT KGP, I never bothered about supervising his studies...my wife took care of it. My job ended when I bought his school books and brown paper wrappers and covered all his books...a specialist job that took anything up to 4 hours. And taking care of his transport to his school and back.
Except once, when he was a toddler in the St Agnes School. In his Class I, I found his English handwriting was very nice and cursive. And his teacher was a Mrs Menon, a campus wife. But at the end of his Class II, I discovered that his handwriting turned suddenly lousy. I found out why. His Class II teacher was a nice enough lady, called Lilian Miss, but her own handwriting was even more Gandhian than my son's. Some lesson there...
And I sat with him for an hour everyday in his summer vacation with a cursive writing book and made him improve his writing.
One evening when he was in his Class VII at KV, I was taking my circular walk in our front yard (the weather was too humid to venture out on the roads). And my son happened to be sitting on the cement platform of our verandah, dangling his legs and swinging them and mugging up aloud some stuff that sounded familiar to me. And he was repeatedly reading, back and forth and forth and back, definitions of things like standard candle, candella, candle power, lumen, foot candle, lux and such crazy things. And I was wondering why photometry, of all things, in a Class VII Science book.
And I picked up his book and found that it was the first chapter on Light!
Feynman would have blown his volcanic top. He (or even I for that matter) would have started explaining in simple (but correct) terms how light is emitted, how it travels, how it is absorbed and made visible to us, how it is dispersed making rainbows etc. That story would have made Light exciting to kids. And challenging to the writer and teacher as well.
I thought ok, let me look into the photometry stuff that the book began with. And found that the author goofed up and mixed up everything badly enough to be practically incorrigible. And I sat down for an hour and rewrote the passage on a white paper, rectifying all the errors as best as I could.
And looked for the name of the author. To find instead that the book was written by an Editorial Committee appointed by NCERT. A Committee of 20 writing a Class VII book!!!
I had seen in Physical Review Letters in the 1980s, the heyday of particle physics, papers of length less than half of their list of authors (running up to 140 once...I counted them), the team that collaborated in various particle accelerators across continents to draw just a graph.
I guess the list of discovers of the God particle runs to miles like their underground Collider. No wonder that the Nobel went to a couple of theorists rather than the discoverers....they better give it to the Collider itself...
Anyway, I found the name of the Chairman of the Editorial Committee on the top, like Abu Ben Adhem. I recall he was from the CCMB at Hyderabad. And decided to send my corrected passage to him for whatever it was worth.
And I knew that, if I sent it with a covering letter on a white paper under the simple signature of G. P. Sastry, it would be trashed into the dustbin. So, I took my departmental letter head: Department of Physics & Meteorology at the glorious IIT KGP to write that courteous note from: Professor G. P. Sastry (didn't write Full Professor though, as one of my colleagues used to do since there are professors of all sorts, assistant, associate, visiting, honorary, supernumerary, etc).
And within a week I got an even more courteous reply from CCMB thanking me for sending my correction and assuring me that it would be put up before their Committee in its next meeting (over chai, paani).
I guess that was that...I didn't follow it through...
Here is RKN's version of Committee Meetings on which he served:
...In municipal, government or democratic organizations, time (for wisdom to dawn) is gained through the forming of committees. By the time the personnel is settled, correspondence got through, agenda drawn up, luncheons eaten, and the report is ready, passions have cooled and the burning question has lost its heat. Luncheons are the most effective sub-device for achieving delay. I'm on a certain advisory body, where the tiffin forms the most impressive item of the agenda. Nearly two hours of the meeting-time is taken in attacking the fare on the table. When we have managed to leave the cups and plates empty, and chewed beeda, we are in such a festive and forgiving mood that all burning questions begin to look silly, and some violent remark that one intended to make is just said in a generous, 'advisory' manner, which is further emasculated in the reported version popularly known as 'minutes'...
..RKN
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No Blog Tomorrow
Tomorrow evening we will all be busy attending and enjoying Ishani's Lily School's Annual Day in which Ishani will be participating in a dance. I asked her if it is the famous Lungi Dance and she replied it is a BIG secret...
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Aniket sends this:
ReplyDeleteOld management wisecrack:
Committees of twenty deliberate plenty;
Committees of ten act now and then;
But most jobs are done
By committees of one.
- Author unknown