[Assam] article from outlookindia.com- Indian Education rote-ton
Ram Sarangapani
assamrs at gmail.com
Sat Jun 23 11:27:01 EDT 2007
Dear Mukul da,
You are welcome.
>You are so sensitive--and your memory!!!
Hehehe! my memory has its days - some days, I can't even remember my name!.
As far as sensitivity is concerned, I had to make that point to Umesh -
didn't want to but thought it relevant.
And hence: "And, I am not trying to show off here - *I think there are
many with that same Indian education who can do the same or better than I."*
I was in luck, you wanted something from Bunyan - we had, as children, read
him (I think in Edmunds).
And thanks for pulling my leg. :) :)
--Ram
On 6/23/07, mc mahant <mikemahant at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ram -
> How can I thank you more!
> You are so sensitive--and your memory!!!
> BR
> mm
>
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 08:30:00 -0600
> From: assamrs at gmail.com
> To: mikemahant at hotmail.com
> Subject: Re: [Assam] article from outlookindia.com- Indian Education
> rote-ton
> CC: assam at assamnet.org
>
> Dear Mukul da,
>
> You did wake up some far away memories. This is verse from John Bunyan's
> Little Sheperd Boy. I vaguely remembered a few lines, for the rest Google
> helped out. Here is the the complete verse:
>
> (Interesting;y enough, the Bible refers to humility in a number of places
> - both James and Luke make quite a few references on a similar theme, and so
> does our Gita)
>
> HE that is down needs fear no fall, He that is low, no pride; He
> that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide. I am content
> with what I have, * 5* Little be it or much: And, Lord,
> contentment still I crave, Because Thou savest such. Fullness to
> such a burden is That go on pilgrimage: * 10* Here little, and
> hereafter bliss, Is best from age to age.
> --Ram
>
>
> On 6/23/07, *mc mahant* <mikemahant at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Ram,
> Shall appreciate if you can mail the full short verse "He that is low
>
> Needs fear no fall
>
> -------------
>
> He
> that is humble
>
> --------------
>
> Shall have God to be his Guide."
> I searched a lot but nobody seems to remember this simple one.
> Thanks
> mm
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:07:49 -0600
> From: assamrs at gmail.com
> To: umesh.sh05 at post.harvard.edu
> CC: assam at assamnet.org
> Subject: Re: [Assam] article from outlookindia.com - Indian Education
> rote-ton
>
> Umesh,
>
> Too many people and too many times relegate rote learning to the dogs.
>
> Even today, I can "vomit" out the Psalm of Life by Longfellow for the
> most part or even some passages from Shakespeare, Robert Browning, Keats or
> Shaw. (and I wasn't a literature major).
> And, I am not trying to show off here - I think there are many with that
> same Indian education who can do the same or better than I.
>
> When I was forced to do the rote learning both at St. Edmunds and even at
> Don Bosco, Guwahati, I barely understood what these passges meant and hated
> those classes. The same went for history or Gandhian struggle etc.
>
> The question is if these important or valuable? Or who cares?
> IMHO - literature and other "impractical" studies make our education
> wholesome.
> I think, all subject areas are important. The methods of learning may be
> different, and some may be better than others - as for me rote learning and
> the mastor with the stick made all the difference whether or not I learned.
>
> --Ram da
>
>
>
>
> On 6/22/07, *umesh sharma* <jaipurschool at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Ram-da,
>
> I agree with you partially.
>
> We do need rote memorization fr many things -- like learning new
> vocabulary words (ofcourse, you can improve your knowledge of these by
> different techniques - such as using them in own words, match the following,
> flash cards - etc --- but it all amounts to rote ). We all learn a language
> by rote (and practice) - same with terms of history, biology etc. Ofcourse,
> the more you use these terms the better you get at remembering them.
>
> Further, most Indian students have more practical experience than most in
> USA - atleast till they are teenagers. Tom Sawyer style of "adventurous
> learning" is no longer possible in USA - since no student/child (below age
> 14) can go anywhere without escort. Further, most gardening, plumbing, auto
> repair/maintenance , cleaning is now done by hired staf in USA - so no
> practical learning about electricity and electrical and mechanical
> appliances.
>
> Ofcourse, beyond the basic knowledge thru rote - one must learn to apply
> the knowledge in various situations - in which Indian student lack - mostly.
> Some intelliegent ones are able to put two and two together and get by - or
> go abroad.
> That is street smartness - as the auhor wrote in his best seller book
> "What they don't teach at Harvard Business Schoo" - a required reading at
> HBS itself.
>
> Umesh
>
>
> *Ram Sarangapani < assamrs at gmail.com>* wrote:
>
> C'da,
>
> Thanks for forwarding this rather well-written article. I must say, it
> makes wonderful reading and does make one have second thoughts about the
> quality of education that most of us have received from India. :)
>
> Even with that didactic//memorizing by rote background, I came away with
> a few of things here: :)
>
> The first, of course, is that people can be taught (often complex things)
> even if they have had no formal education.
>
> The second, of course, is that, I find it a tad preposterous, that Dunu
> Roy thinks that education in India as "Instead, we have didactic
> instruction, memorising by rote, and vomiting out useless information for
> futile examinations... "
>
> The third, of course, is that according to Dunu Roy, the Govt. is pretty
> useless, ie. whatever they touched (his illustrations here) have been
> baseless, miscalculated, and ultimately, Roy and his group, had to go teach
> the "practical/down-to-earth" stuff to the affected people, and make the
> corrections.
>
> I have no argument with the first point - I do think it is highly
> possible to teach people to perform and operate complex procedures, if they
> are willing to learn and taught well.
>
> The notion that education in India is totally impractical I find it had to
> believe. You, me, and most NRIs have had this didactic education (including
> Roy). I really wonder, how, Roy & his group of intellectuals managed to get
> out of that mold?
>
> Most Indians too have this background too. Then, how is it that they
> manage to do very well in this country? How is it that they have not only
> done well in school in this country, but have proved to be one of the
> smartest in opening up successful start-ups (not just IT), and doing great.
> I don't know. Probably Roy will tell us.
>
> On the third point, it is quite easy to take pot shots at the Govt.
> machinery. and its incompetence. While I commend Roy and his group (are they
> some anti-dam people:) in taking the trouble to do a better job teaching
> than the education system, I wonder, if Roy can recommend that method for
> the whole country, and if that will be workable.
>
> --Ram
>
>
>
>
> On 6/22/07, *cmahanta at charter.net* < cmahanta at charter.net> wrote:
>
> *Knowledge As Weapon *
>
> Ordinary working people have the capacity to learn, to collect
> information, to look at it analytically, and eventually use it for bettering
> their own lives. This is, or should be, the central objective of
> "education". Instead, we have didactic instruction, memorising by rote, and
> vomiting out useless information for futile examinations...
> Dunu Roy
>
> It was some 30 years ago, in the mid-70s, that we got a glimpse of what
> the future might hold. We had just purchased 2 acres of land to build a
> workshop on, in the district of Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh. There had been
> some argument with the neighbouring owner about where exactly the boundary
> lay. So one day we dragged out the iron chain that surveyors use, and began
> measuring the land ourselves. A curious shepherd boy must have witnessed the
> proceedings, because next day a delegation of solemn farmers from the nearby
> village paid us a visit. They had heard that we were engineers, they
> explained, so could we teach them how to measure land? Why, we asked,
> whatever will you do with it? Well, they explained, the *patwari* (the
> government revenue functionary at the village) had been demarcating their
> lands and they were never sure whether he was doing it right. So we spent
> the next four hours demonstrating how the chain worked and how to calculate
> the area. In the process, of course, we began to learn that the chain was
> called a *jareeb*, the area was *rakba*, the *khasra* number referred to
> the record in the revenue department, their title was the *patta*, and the
> *patwari* presided over a *khatauni* in which all secrets were well
> documented.
> A week later, the same delegation was back, but looking less solemn and
> more brashly conspiratorial. Could they borrow our *jareeb*? We handed
> over the chain and then, not a little puzzled ourselves, we followed them at
> a discreet distance. In due course, we arrived at the village and a curious
> spectacle greeted us. On the farms of the village, the *patwari* was
> laying out his chain, and wherever he went, the farmers followed with their
> borrowed *jareeb* and laid it out in exactly the same manner. At every
> halt they would watch the *patwari* and when he began to enter figures in
> his notebook, they too would whip out a pencil and scribble on a piece of
> paper. Rarely had we seen a more harassed looking *patwari*! At the end of
> the day, the delegation was back again, beaming from ear to ear. Thank you
> for the *hathiyaar* (weapon), they told us, and handed back the *jareeb*.
> Can we, we asked them, see what you wrote? They took out their smudged piece
> of paper and showed it to us. It was covered with a series of numbers in
> meaningless disorder. But, they grinned, they had taken care not to show it
> to the *patwari*!
>
> This theme of knowledge as weapon has come back to us many times in the
> last three decades. In the mid-80s, a small party from the Palamau district
> of Bihar knocked on our door. Could we come to their village and see what
> the proposed dam on the Auranga river was going to do to their area? We said
> yes, but provided they were able to wrangle a copy of the DPR (Detailed
> Project Report) of the dam. Oh, no problem, they remarked, the irrigation
> department *chaprasi* (peon) was from their village. So, three weeks
> later, we were rambling across the farmlands of Palamau inspecting the river
> and its catchment and comparing it to what was written in the DPR. We were
> faced with a battery of questions. Look at that river, exclaimed the
> villagers, do you think it can carry as much water as to irrigate all the
> lands the department is claiming it will? And can you see the silt in it;
> how long will it take for the dam to fill up? The department says that this
> village will come under submergence, and that one will not, when we can
> clearly see that this village is higher than that one! How can we challenge
> their views?
>
> We took four days to instruct a batch of 20 young boys from the
> surrounding villages how to measure the flow in the river, the silt load
> that it carried, and the slope of the land.With that, they said, they
> would be able to take on the project's claims of projected irrigation, the
> life of the dam, and the extent of submergence. On the last evening, as we
> were packing to leave the next morning, they eyed us suspiciously. Where,
> they asked, pointing to the "dumpy" (a kind of telescopic instrument that is
> used to measure levels), are you taking that? Well, we said, this is our
> instrument and we are taking it back; if you want one you will have to get
> it for yourselves. How much does it cost, they queried, and where is it
> available? The nearest place, we explained, would be Ranchi and it would
> cost about Rs 3000. And then we retired for the night. Only to be woken up
> by an exuberant hammering on the door very early the next morning. Here,
> they said, is Rs 3000 collected from donations by all the villagers, and you
> can go and buy the dumpy yourself; otherwise how will we fight a *yuddh*(war) without an
> *astra* (weapon)?
>
> That the yuddh was joined became clear to us when, four months later, a
> parcel arrived with the postman. It contained a sheaf of papers containing
> the records of three months of daily measurement. We went to work on the
> data and came up with some very interesting findings indeed. The river, for
> instance, carried only half as much water in the monsoon months as the DPR
> claimed it did. This water also bore a silt load one-and-a-half times that
> of the figure reported in the project proposal. 25 villages were actually
> coming into the submergence zone, demarcated by following the full reservoir
> contour, as compared to the 19 acknowledged by the project authorities. When
> all these were factored into the calculations the benefits actually came to
> less than the costs! This was going to be one very unviable dam indeed, we
> informed the people of Auranga. They, in turn, took the report and
> propagated it all over the area through posters and leaflets, while the
> English version was duly sent off to the governments, the media, the courts,
> and even the World Bank. Today, fifteen years later, the Auranga river
> remains unbound.
>
> In the mid-90s, we had another set of visitors, but this time from the
> high ranges of Kullu district in Himachal Pradesh. Their villages and
> hamlets were being threatened by the declaration of the Great Himalayan
> National Park. What exactly was this Park, they asked, and how could they
> protect their families? So, two months later, armed with the relevant
> documents and reports, we pitched camp in their village. A young bunch of
> grazers and farmers listened attentively as we explained how the government
> had commissioned a study in the 80s and how this study, conducted by a pair
> of specialists from the Pheasant Society in the UK and Canada, had come to
> the conclusion that only by declaring the Park as a protected area could the
> rare Western Himalayan Tragopan (a ground-dwelling bird) be saved. And then,
> as we presented the details of the study, the listeners grew restive. No,
> they protested, it is not possible for the Tragopan to be disturbed by our
> herds because it nests in late winter and our grazers go up only in late
> spring. Even that figure of 25,000 animals is wrong, they objected, our
> numbers rarely cross 12,000. And it is not us who destroy the herbs, but the
> Nepali labourers from the Terai, who are unfamiliar with alpine ecology and
> are hired by the traders in the plains.
>
> We suggested to them then that they should do their own study and compare
> their findings with what had been reported by the foreign experts. Very
> well, they responded immediately, tell us how to do the study. So, for the
> next two days, we demonstrated to them how to draw transects and conduct
> animal counts, how to document the diversity of grasses and shrubs, and how
> to systematically record their observations.As soon as the snows melted,
> six of them headed towards the alpine meadows, following the same route that
> the scientists had taken ten years earlier. Two porters who had been taken
> along to ferry the supplies to base camp (at heights of over 3000 metres,
> one does not run into the occasional tea shop or restaurant!), became so
> familiar with the routines of measurement that they eventually became part
> of the study team. Six weeks later they returned, armed with a range of
> documented observations. A detailed examination of their records showed that
> they had successfully challenged every one of the findings of the
> government-sponsored study. In addition, their measurements indicated what
> was the carrying capacity of the meadows, how ruminants were in fact
> controlling weed infestation, and how the herbs could be harvested within
> the boundaries of conservation.
>
> This much, then, is certain: people fight their struggles for survival
> based on what knowledge they can create. Each one of the reports and studies
> cited above (and numerous others that have not been documented in both rural
> and urban areas) indicates that ordinary working people have the capacity to
> learn, to collect information, to look at it analytically, and eventually
> use it for bettering their own lives. This is, or should be, the central
> objective of "education". And yet, these are simple (and yet very complex)
> tasks that are not undertaken by our educational institutions. Didactic
> instruction, memorising by rote, and vomiting out useless information for
> futile examinations constitute the fundamentals of what passes for education
> in our schools and colleges. Perhaps there is a purpose to it all. Perhaps
> another Macaulay is required to explain it to us in yet another Minute. And
> perhaps, in some not too distant future, a group of young labourers will
> learn to document their own lives to tear this farce to pieces.
> ------------------------------
> *A graduate (and post-graduate) from IIT Bombay, Dunu Roy heads Hazard
> Centre in New Delhi.*
>
>
> ------------------------------
> # You may be missing other accompanying blurbs, related stories, graphics
> etc.
> Link to this story as it appears on the site :- *Knowledge As Weapon<http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070621&fname=dunuroy&sid=1>
> *
> www.outlookindia.com
> ------------------------------
>
> *MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "203.200.89.96"
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>
> Umesh Sharma
>
> Washington D.C.
>
> 1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
>
> Ed.M. - International Education Policy
> Harvard Graduate School of Education,
> Harvard University,
> Class of 2005
>
> http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
>
> http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
>
>
>
>
> www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
>
>
>
>
> http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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