An interesting idea

An interesting idea is to have special educational parks. Just like the software/ biotech parks, schools and colleges can be set up outside the city in one area with good high speed connectivity to the city centre.
As the author says, schools and colleges can share high quality infrastructure with just nominal cost.
Another aspect is, if three students in the college wish to study something uncommon, eg Spanish, we do not employ a teacher, but tell them to manage on their own, or refer them to the University department. This can be easily be solved in such education parks with one common teacher employed by all the colleges in the park.
However, one problem is that though this works easily for colleges, it is difficult for young children. Making a 5 year old travel 2 hours by bus to and from school is difficult.

civil services

Today an former student came to visit me with the news that he has qualified in the civil service exams- IRS to be precise. There seems to be a minor trend of our students getting into the civil services.
If a good Lokpal bill comes through and if more and more students start entering the civil services for reasons other than the good perks and fat dowry, maybe 10 years hence, we will have a good bureaucracy and hence better governance.

Study of the Biological sciences

I cannot explain how on the one hand, Hyderabad is trying to become a Biotechnology hub and on the other, enrollment in BSc biological sciences had plumeted to an abysmal level. Many colleges in Hyderabad have closed down their botany, zoology, microbiology and biochemistry departments.
The college I teach in, is holding on, but just about.
Apart from my self interest (no students, no job) if there are no students doing biology, how is this soon-to-be-booming-to-11 billion$ biotech industry going to find employees?
So why are there no takers for our BSc courses in bio sciences?

growing up

Most people who are 40 or older, would probably recall the age 13-20 -- give or take few years-- as the time they did most introspection and thinking.
That is the age when we have just figured out what life is about or at least thought we did. The age of growing up. During this time, we become who we are essentially going to be for all our lives, though further refinements do occur.
But if those years are spent inside dingy classrooms all day, and mugging all evening, this growing up is never going to occur. We will never know who we are.
So getting 100% in the XII is going to cost the child his self.
The ridiculous cutoffs in SRCC is a symbol of what is wrong with our school education.

admission

The SRCC wants a student to have scored 100% in order to admit him.
If they continue this trend, after maybe 10 years, DU will find that all its good colleges are filled with unidimensional people who only know how to write exams well. The fame that many of its alumni have attained in various fields will be history.
This trend is really scary.
But has anyone an alternative?