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Over my 70 odd years of life I find the thing that has been constantly screwed up is what was simply called Education in my school years.
First it was enlarged to Education & Sports, not a very sportive thing to do...I mean, we in our school took to sports and games after our education was through every evening.
Then it became Education & Youth Affairs...again a monstrosity for village kids like me for whom any Youth Affair then meant a Love Affair, which was frowned upon.
The latest label, I believe, deletes Education altogether and the ministry dealing with it is called Human Resource Development (to separate it from Animal Husbandry). I was perplexed with this MHRD because in my son's IT firm there is a post called HRDM (M standing for Manager this time) and the lady who usually deals with it has nothing to do with Education as we knew it:
Summary
Father who is remembered even today as the best Headmaster and English teacher in our entire Nellore District would be shocked at this job description if he were to apply for it.
And successive ministers who dealt with Education thought he (or she) was an expert at it and tried to change it wholesale during their short stints, to the detriment of their entire posterity...till they were soon shifted to the Ministry of Civil Aviation or Shipping as the case maybe...and tried to change them too.
When I entered high school in 1951 in our village, Muthukur, all high schools in the district were government schools except for a few in our Nellore town which were deemed Convents.
And all of us (like RKN's father) had what would now be called the (11 + 2 + 2 + 2) system. And if you lived through all those 17 years luckily you would get 2 degrees, BA (BSc) and MA (MSc), and were deemed fit for fruitful white-collared employment, and retirement with a grudging pension that would assure you 2 round meals a day (+ no 'health care') so you would die peacefully at 56, a year after you retired, before the government spent too much money on your pension which was dubbed unproductive...Father beat the system and lived to 80...
I never heard of PhD...there were no PhDs in our Nellore District...at least Father never talked of such weird things.
There was a BEd alright if you wished to discontinue after (11 + 2 + 2) and not end up as a Master but just as a Bachelor (of Arts as RKN wrote). This BEd would assure you a teaching position in a high school, like Father.
By when I completed my (11), the new minister thought I was in an obsolete system and changed it to (11 + 1 + 3 + 2). But I felt no different except that I came first in our university after (11 + 1) in my science group (with English added) and was admitted to (11 + 1 + 4 +1) and ended up with 2 degrees BSc (Hons) and MSc.
I didn't feel vastly superior to my seniors...if your arithmetic is ok you will tote it all up and find the same answer.
And then the minister was changed again and thought that 11 was too much and changed it to: (10 + 2 + 3 + 2)...again, the total remained the same.
The latest controversy has been that some of our prestigious colleges in the Capital thought that they had to be different from the hoi polloi. So they tried to copy the American System since anything American is Dreamy. And changed it to: (10 + 2 + 4 + 1). And they were snubbed rudely by our latest minister and they had to tuck their tails and follow the Rules:
Delhi University's Four Year Undergraduate Programme is history now, with 57 of its 64 affiliated colleges ready to admit students into traditional three-year courses.
www.dailymail.co.uk/.../FYUP-dead-buried-57-Delhi-Universitys-64-colleg..
Father would be turning in his grave were he buried instead of cremated...not following what the ruckus is all about...he still remains my best English Teacher (a la RKN)...
...Posted by Ishani
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Over my 70 odd years of life I find the thing that has been constantly screwed up is what was simply called Education in my school years.
First it was enlarged to Education & Sports, not a very sportive thing to do...I mean, we in our school took to sports and games after our education was through every evening.
Then it became Education & Youth Affairs...again a monstrosity for village kids like me for whom any Youth Affair then meant a Love Affair, which was frowned upon.
The latest label, I believe, deletes Education altogether and the ministry dealing with it is called Human Resource Development (to separate it from Animal Husbandry). I was perplexed with this MHRD because in my son's IT firm there is a post called HRDM (M standing for Manager this time) and the lady who usually deals with it has nothing to do with Education as we knew it:
Sample Job Description HR Manager
Develops policy and directs and coordinates human resources activities, such as employment, compensation, labor relations, benefits, training, and employee services by performing the following duties:
Father who is remembered even today as the best Headmaster and English teacher in our entire Nellore District would be shocked at this job description if he were to apply for it.
And successive ministers who dealt with Education thought he (or she) was an expert at it and tried to change it wholesale during their short stints, to the detriment of their entire posterity...till they were soon shifted to the Ministry of Civil Aviation or Shipping as the case maybe...and tried to change them too.
When I entered high school in 1951 in our village, Muthukur, all high schools in the district were government schools except for a few in our Nellore town which were deemed Convents.
And all of us (like RKN's father) had what would now be called the (11 + 2 + 2 + 2) system. And if you lived through all those 17 years luckily you would get 2 degrees, BA (BSc) and MA (MSc), and were deemed fit for fruitful white-collared employment, and retirement with a grudging pension that would assure you 2 round meals a day (+ no 'health care') so you would die peacefully at 56, a year after you retired, before the government spent too much money on your pension which was dubbed unproductive...Father beat the system and lived to 80...
I never heard of PhD...there were no PhDs in our Nellore District...at least Father never talked of such weird things.
There was a BEd alright if you wished to discontinue after (11 + 2 + 2) and not end up as a Master but just as a Bachelor (of Arts as RKN wrote). This BEd would assure you a teaching position in a high school, like Father.
By when I completed my (11), the new minister thought I was in an obsolete system and changed it to (11 + 1 + 3 + 2). But I felt no different except that I came first in our university after (11 + 1) in my science group (with English added) and was admitted to (11 + 1 + 4 +1) and ended up with 2 degrees BSc (Hons) and MSc.
I didn't feel vastly superior to my seniors...if your arithmetic is ok you will tote it all up and find the same answer.
And then the minister was changed again and thought that 11 was too much and changed it to: (10 + 2 + 3 + 2)...again, the total remained the same.
The latest controversy has been that some of our prestigious colleges in the Capital thought that they had to be different from the hoi polloi. So they tried to copy the American System since anything American is Dreamy. And changed it to: (10 + 2 + 4 + 1). And they were snubbed rudely by our latest minister and they had to tuck their tails and follow the Rules:
Delhi University's Four Year Undergraduate Programme is history now, with 57 of its 64 affiliated colleges ready to admit students into traditional three-year courses.
This dramatic end to the snowballing FYUP controversy came on a day of hectic meetings and intense politicking, including a resignation-that-wasn't of Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh.
A press release issued on Tuesday by the University Grants Commission (UGC), after six hours of deliberations with Human Resource Development ministry officials, said a communication has been sent to DU directing it to write to colleges immediately and tell them to admit students to three-year undergraduate programmes.
The release also listed colleges which have agreed to implement the three-year programme.
The list includes Hindu College, Jesus and Mary College, St. Stephen's College, Miranda House, Sri Venkateswara College, Lady Shri Ram College and Shri Ram College of Commerce.
www.dailymail.co.uk/.../FYUP-dead-buried-57-Delhi-Universitys-64-colleg..
Father would be turning in his grave were he buried instead of cremated...not following what the ruckus is all about...he still remains my best English Teacher (a la RKN)...
...Posted by Ishani
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A well known Hindi writer Sri Lal Shukl has written in his satirical Novel Rag darbari:
ReplyDelete" Education is like an empty can lying on a road and every passerby likes to kick it"