by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US President Donald Trump’s administration has rescinded seven Obama-era policy guidelines that called on universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses.
In a joint letter, the Education and Justice Departments said on Tuesday that the guidelines “advocate policy preferences and positions beyond the requirements of the Constitution”, reports The New York Times.
“The executive branch cannot circumvent Congress or the courts by creating guidance that goes beyond the law and, in some instances, stays on the books for decades,” said Devin M. O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wrote in a separate statement: “The Supreme Court has determined what affirmative action policies are constitutional, and the court’s written decisions are the best guide for navigating this complex issue.
“Schools should continue to offer equal opportunities for all students while abiding by the law.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the guidelines, published by former President Barack Obama’s administration between 2009 and 2016, were “unnecessary, outdated, inconsistent with existing law, or otherwise improper”, reports Efe news.
He said his decision was based on an executive order that Trump signed in February 2017 and which required the creation of committees within government agencies to identify, revoke or modify regulations they considered unnecessary.
The Supreme Court ruled in favour of affirmative action in 2016, but it has been a controversial issue in the United States for decades.
The Trump administration’s move comes a few months before a court is expected to rule in October on a highly anticipated case which is pitting the Harvard University against Asian-American students.
The students have accused Harvard of systematically excluded some Asian-American applicants to maintain slots for students of other races.
Democrats and civil rights organisations denounced the administration’s decisions.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said the “rollback of vital affirmative action guidance offends our nation’s values” and called it “yet another clear Trump administration attack on communities of colour”.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
(Credit: The Hindu)
New Delhi : Common schools for everyone will in “no way result” in education of masses, as “students are divided” in schools in the name of uniformity, an academician said on Wednesday.
At a meet on ‘Exploring Current Educational Scenario – Issues and Possible Solutions’, Delhi University history professor Vikas Gupta said: “It is not about how many students are admitted from different castes and religious backgrounds in the same school, but after being admitted, the level of their participation taken and allowed in schools is largely important.”
How much of diversity is visible at this point, he asked, criticizing the governments, both at the Central and state levels, for “forcefully imposing one kind of knowledge and language to the students”.
Terming today’s diversity and uniformity in schools as “mechanical bulldozing”, Gupta said that current education system is in complete contrast with the Justice Rajinder Sachar committee report which suggested that every public institute must maintain immense diversity.
“We pretend that the lower section of society is educated… that is illusion,” he said, adding that diversity is not only about the intake in schools.
Interacting with the minority community students in the meeting, Aam Aadmi Party leader Atishi Marlena said: “Instead of bringing experts from America and Europe, we used common sense to make sure government schools in Delhi run successfully.”
However, she added that this common sense was not being implemented till today.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneur, Success Stories
By Mohit Dubey,
Lucknow : Much before the Indian parliament promulgated the Right to Education Act (RTE) in 2009 that guaranteed education to all a committed local teacher had already pioneered the idea of making school access a reality for hundreds of underprivileged children, irrespective of their social status or economic background.
Meet Lakshmi Kaul, the unassuming woman, originally Lakshmi Krishnamurthy from Kerala, who is not only responsible for imparting good education to hundreds of children of housemaids, drivers, office boys and other low-income families but also ensuring that there is no discrimination against them at school.
In the heart of the city, in Indiranagar neighbourhood, Kaul runs a school named K K Academy where children of professionals like chartered accountants, doctors, lawyers and the rich mingle with the poorest. Kaul found this school in 1989 as a place where her daughter could take the formative steps in primary education.
“Schools at that time too were very expensive and out of reach for the poor sections. So it struck me and my husband (Arvind Kaul) one day that why shouldn’t we start a school of our own,” Kaul told IANS while reminiscing how that seed of an idea has now grown into a full grown tree.
An IIM-Bangalore graduate of early 1980s who worked in Indian Telephone Industries, Bangalore, Kaul narrates how she decided to take a break from the “maddening corporate world” and do “something more meaningful and fruitful”.
The school started with a skeletal staff and five children in a garage of their house. Soon, students were coming in droves, largely owing to its affordability and accessibility and the couple purchased a house a few hundred metres away from their own.
“As management professionals, we realized that while goals were good but they had their own pressures…something that our sorted out minds were not ready to be ambushed with,” she says with a chuckle while recalling how she and her husband decided to go full throttle, purging their own domestic expenses and giving “our best shot to the school”.
The school has grown manifold since then and has a 3,250-plus strength now and has classes from first to seventh standard.
“Our core belief is that quality education should be accessible to children from all backgrounds, irrespective of caste, creed, religion, special needs or economic background” Kaul says while adding how the school has very often had instances of the saheb’s (master’s) child studying in the same class as her family’s driver.
“These have been true case studies of seamless integration. We have not had any complaints from parents or children; those who don’t ascribe to this concept of equal opportunity probably choose to send their children to more cosmetically fancy schools,” a teacher adds.
“I have never seen children making comparisons based on family background. As a matter of fact, I have seen them being extremely supportive and mindful. A large part of the credit for this goes to the teachers, who do not differentiate and do not tolerate any kind of bias. Children very much follow this lead,” the founder says.
In the year 2011, the school instituted an annual award for the graduating class, in the memory of a dear professor from IIM, Dr G.K.Valecha. The selection was based on academic progress, leadership qualities, innate desire for learning and interaction with students and teachers. It has been five years now. The recipients of this award in four years have been children whose education the school is supporting.
Many of its former students of this school are now working for multinational companies and are successful in their own spheres, she informs.
“A large number of them have gone on to study science, and then engineering. Also commerce and law. They have gone on to become lawyers, chartered accountants, teachers, engineers, bankers, IT professionals and even a published author. They are supporting their families and are role models to many others in their communities,” she said.
In this year’s Class X CBSE Board, Hritik Verma, the school maid’s grandson scored 93 per cent marks and Harsh Kanaujiya, a driver’s son, scored 91 per cent.
“Both studied till Class VIII in our school.”
In the ICSC Board exam, Kabir Ali, whose father is a tailor, scored 92 per cent, she adds.
Through generous help off and on from her IIM batchmates who are now at powerful positions in the corporate world, the school has managed to operate with a modest fee and no re-admission fee.
Lakshmi happily informs that the school now has a computer lab, many tablet computers for the children and a library that has a decent collection.
An alumni, who long ago studied at the school and is now working for an IT-major recently visited the school along with his girlfriend.
“I was touched when the boy told me that he wanted his would-be-wife to first meet me and then his parents,” says a nostalgic and emotional Kaul.
Phoolmati, the aging ‘aayaa’ (maid) working at the school, had three of her grandchildren study here and they are now up with good schools for their higher education.
Chirpy as a child she informs, between motherly requests to allow her to make some coffee, that the school changed their lives forever.
Gulab Devi, mother of the first RTE student at the school, shares the sentiment and says how her son Durgesh would not even speak and now after two years in school he does not stop talking.
“Ab to bahut accha hai, pehle to bolta hi nahin tha, ab to din bhar padhta hai aur bak-bak karta hai (Now he is very good. He didn’t talk much earlier but now he studies the whole day and keeps talking about it),” she says breaking into a big smile.
Shreya Verma, daughter of a pharmacist, too says that her life has had so much of a value addition that words fall short.
Aavya, daughter of a woman police inspector posted in Hathras, is asked to sing a song. “She is our singing leader” informs a teacher who has been working at the school since its inception.
“Ekla chalo, ekla chalo re…” the girl belts out a soulful rendition of Rabindranath Tagore’s famous song. Its lyrics beautifully explain how one should not be afraid of venturing alone if no one else heeds your call. Lakshmi Kaul just did that and never felt the need to look back.
(The weekly feature series is part of a positive-journalism project of IANS and the Frank Islam Foundation. Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
New Delhi : SRM University in Andhra Pradesh has announced 200 scholarships for meritorious students from economically humble backgrounds.
Engineering aspirants and those interested in programmes like BBA, B.Com, BA and B.Sc across 12 disciplines are eligible to apply for the scholarships on offer for students with over 60 per cent in their boards and family income less than Rs 4 lakh per annum, a SRM statement said.
The scholarships range from 100 per cent to 25 per cent waiver of the entire tuition, hostel and mess fees. The last date for receipt of applications is June 15, 2018.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
By Amit Dasgupta,
The CBSE results are out and students would be enrolling in droves for university education. While children find it exciting to embark on the next chapter of their life-journey, it is also a worrying and stressful exercise because of the significant demand-supply mismatch and, further, that none of India’s higher educational institutions feature in the top 100 QS rankings. For students with exceptional aptitude, this can be a major disappointment. For a country of India’s size and aspiration, this is a major failure.
The reasons behind India’s education crisis lie in the seven-decade approach towards the sector. Research was never embedded in our culture and education was essentially equated with teaching. Consequently, our approach tended to be static and bookish and focused only on how many went to school.
At the national level, this is not a bad thing. We would otherwise deny children the right to education and many would be forced to become child labourers. With the enactment of the RTE legislation in 2009, around 260 million children attend school in India today, making it the world’s largest school system. There are around 1.5 million schools with over one million run by the government. The education market is currently valued at $100 billion and is set to double by 2020. This is impressive.
But what India needs is not just the right to education but the right to quality education. According to a disturbing report carried a couple of years ago in a prestigious Indian magazine, only seven per cent of our engineering graduates are employable.
Unless the education system is substantially rewired and is, in fact, overhauled, we would damage the future prospects of our young population and thereby lose our demographic dividend. This requires changing the very DNA of our education system from inside out. The government recognizes this and over the past several months, a series of initiatives have been under discussion, including the contours of a New Education Policy.
There is credible skepticism, unfortunately, as to how India would achieve what surely must be an ambitious agenda without consistent budgetary allocations and a clear understanding of what ails the system.
To be fair, the sheer magnitude of the problem is intimidating. Over past decades, we have drifted along with ostrich-like self-delusion. We have been risk-averse and blind to the changing educational needs of a knowledge economy. The majority of our schools lack not only basic amenities but also teachers. Where teachers are available, the majority are over-stretched and under-qualified. It is no wonder then that our graduates are not employable.
A nation’s future is forged by its education system. A defunct system will usher in a dismal future. In 2006, US Education Secretary Margaret Spellings had criticized American universities and colleges by reminding them that without serious self-examination and reform, they risk seeing their market share substantially reduced and their services increasingly characterized by obsolescence.
We face a similar danger, though to a significantly lesser extent with regard to market share because the bulk of our educational institutions are government-owned and operated. But obsolescence is a genuine and credible threat.
The question we need to ask is what is the purpose of education? In other words, what do we hope to achieve from education. This really means one of two things: either the student or the teacher is central to the education system.
From ancient times, our approach to shiksha, or education, has been the relationship between the teacher, or guru, and the shishya, or disciple. Shiksha was not the imparting of information but of deep knowledge that comes from years of study and experience.
Unfortunately, we appear to believe that this is precisely what our education system imparts! Consequently, most teachers don the mantle of the guru. They are, in fact, disciplinarians, who run classrooms like policemen.
Across the globe, technology has replaced the teacher of yesterday. We can no longer provide modern day education using the earlier century’s methodology. The embrace of technology and the disruptive shift in thinking is critical to revamping our education policy.
Put simply, the teacher only sharpens the pencil and allows for the inherent talent in each student to be revealed. It’s not that teachers don’t know how to teach. Rather they don’t really know why they teach. Teachers need to recognize that students are central to the system and they, as teachers, are only facilitators and nothing more.
This requires a fundamental attitudinal shift that is critical to rewiring our education system. It can happen only if we embrace autonomy of thinking. When we do that, we would foster curiosity and thus, creativity. To achieve this, our teachers need to be educated.
World-class education systems do not have an ideological focus but are entirely market driven. Like the market, they anticipate the future and ascertain how best it needs to be navigated. If India’s future is to be determined by the quality of education that it offers, mindsets have to dramatically change. As H.G. Wells reminded us: “Civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe.” Our choice would determine where we are headed. The problem is we are running out of time.
(Amit Dasgupta is a former Indian diplomat who now works in higher education. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amit.dasgupta2013@yahoo.com)
—IANS
