Who will start a change?

There was a comment on my previous post that students must read better books and publishers must publish them. However, students who read good textbooks, think about the subject and write down their thoughts in the exam will probably fail in their exams.
The system is like this:-
In November or so, one of us lecturers gets a confidential letter from the university exam branch, and asked to set the question paper. An unwritten rule is that you must set a paper that is similar to the previous exam papers. A huge hue and cry will arise, if the question paper is 'tough' with student unions and MLAs involving themselves in it.
After the exams are over, we, the lecturers get letters from the university exam branch and asked to report to them for 'spot valuation'. A meeting is held for individual papers....chem paper I has say 40 valuers who meet, discuss what answers must be there on the paper and what marks are to be allotted to each part of the answer. If there is a question for 5 marks, then, in order to ensure uniform valuation, the 5 marks are subdivided-- say 2 marks for definition(as given in the textbook) 1 mark for example, 1 mark for the balanced equation (as in the book again) and 1 mark for the diagram given in the textbook. The student loses marks if any of these components are missing or not according to the textbook.
Thus a student who may understand chemistry well, but does not write as per these prescriptions, may even fail in the exam. Hence, he has to follow these textbooks.
The lecturers cannot change the pattern of the question paper and the student cannot answer in an unconventional manner. Who will start a change?

'khayali pulao'

I normally do not discuss my future plans with anyone, since I very often do not implement them. However, this time, I am sure I will regret it to my dying day if I do not implement the current plan of teaching in schools. Hence I talk about my plans to whoever I come across, interested or otherwise, in order to put pressure on myself. I hope I do implement them and my plans do not end up as another 'khayali pulao'.
There is a boy , a school dropout, who sells vegetables near my college. I tried to convince him to rejoin school, volunteering to go and talk to the principal of the nearby ZP school. But he refused.
I am sure, in class, he would not have been able to answer a question like 7+8=?, but at his shop, he weighs the vegetables and calculates the price(sometimes for 170 g of beetroot @ Rs 13 for 250g or such odd weights) and totals up.
This is what I would like to address. A child who is unable to cope in school, has skills that are similar to what is needed in school. There is some block.

plagiarism

Every now and then, some college lecturer publishes a book covering the current University syllabus. This is invariably a cut and paste job done in the two months' summer break. There are no references (forget in-text documentation) at all. Each chapter deals with the topic exactly as some other author has done(who might have also copied from another) and has a set of problems and diagrams chosen from different existing textbooks, typed out in order and then sent off for publication. Local publishers publish them; sometimes they even commission such books. This is done in all colleges.
Lecturers who write such books are given awards.
A talk on plagiarism---rudimentary stuff, not complex ethical questions where debate is possible, a talk similar to one that must be given to undergrad students--- seems to have offended some people.

dehydrated water pills

I had posted a link to Amazon long back. Today, I just visited the Amazon site again. now there are 13 peoples' comments 12 of whom are all very thrilled with the product.
Can you believe it?

refrigeration

I had wondered, with my admittedly limited knowledge of physics and engg. , why there were no airconditioners/refrigerators based on the Ranque Hilsch vortex.
Here is a paper
http://www.dissigno.com/downloads/Vortex%20Tube%20White%20Paper.pdf

self congratulations

Young women these days are so much better focused on their lives than those of my generation. But on a self-congratulatory note, let me say that they are so because we, their mothers brought them up to be so.
I asked my daughter few months ago, if she wanted to get married in the traditional manner of my finding a suitable boy, and she said emphatically "NO" So there the whole matter ended unlike my parents who manipulated and made me feel guilty and finally made me agree to the same question.
I get a lot of pressure from relatives about when I plan to 'get her' married and I too emphatically say 'when she wants to'. I have also managed to keep my husband out of it.
So I think self congratulations are in order.

success stories.

I keep complaining about my students and their shortcomings. Here is the other side.
Two days ago, an alumnus came to give a talk to our current students about his work. He is post-docing at a medical center of a good University in the US. Another classmate of his is doing the same. A third one is close to completing his PhD. One other has a research position at the NIH. From a previous batch, one is postdocing at Berkeley, another was at Harvard. So these are some of our success stories in science.
There are a few in the services...Army/Navy/Airforce- a few of them women officers. One in the IPS. Then there was this batch in which quite a few have started their own businesses. A few of them very successful.
So, inspite of not knowing if the electron is in the d orbital or the d orbital is in the electron, some of them succeed. Which just goes to show d orbitals are not all that important even if I have to spend 20 lectures on them.