Innovative Ideas for Teaching English

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The Hindu Editorial, Jan 23 2012 In a speech delivered last year to a gathering of India's finest scientific minds, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invoked Nehru to point to the organic "link between humanism, tolerance, reason and progress." "The practice of science," he said, "is based on both the search for truth and the adventure of new ideas." Precisely a year on, the government he presides over has betrayed those ideals. This newspaper has revealed how a 'plot' to kill the eminent author Salman Rushdie had been invented by the Rajasthan Police in a pathetic but successful attempt to dissuade him from participating in the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival. In the face of motivated protests from a gaggle of political opportunists and religious fanatics, the State government had first sought to stop Mr. Rushdie from visiting Jaipur. Upon discovering that he was, as a person of Indian origin, entitled to do so, it then resorted to a series o...

PRISCILLA JEBARAJ, The HINDU It is official: India has the world's most toxic air. In a study by Yale and Columbia Universities, India holds the very last rank among 132 nations in terms of air quality with regard to its effect on human health. India scored a miniscule 3.73 out of a possible 100 points in the analysis, lagging far behind the next worst performer, Bangladesh, which scored 13.66. In fact, the entire South Asian region fares badly, with Nepal, Pakistan and China taking up the remaining spots in the bottom five of the rankings. These rankings are part of a wider study to index the nations of the world in terms of their overall environmental performance. The Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Columbia's Center for International Earth Science Information Network have brought out the Environment Performance Index rankings every two years since 2006. In the overall rankings — which takes 22 policy indicators into account — India fared mini...

Emphasis on universal schooling is fine,but the discourse must now shift to quality Three reports in three months paint a grim picture of school education in India.First,a leading corporate published the Quality Education Survey on high-end schools in metropolitan cities,which found them lacking on quality parameters and indicted them for excessive reliance on rote learning.Second,the OECDs Programme for International Student Assessment ranked Indian higher secondary students only better than those from Kyrgyzstan among 74 participating countries.And third,Prathams Annual Status of Education Report (ASER),2011,assessing schools in rural India,found declining attendance,over-reliance on private tuitions and declining reading and mathematical abilities of children in the six to 14 years age category. Taken together,the three reports make it amply clear that despite a welcome high enrolment rate around 96.7% at the primary and upper primary levels,the quality of school learning is simply...

India's school education success story has a flip-side - more than half of the students in class V in rural India cannot read the text taught in class II in 2011, - even though around 97 % of children in 6 to 14 age group are now enrolled in schools. The startling fact is finding of NGO Pratham's annual education survey of 6.3 lakh children across India in over 16,000 villages, who under the Right To Education Act are supposed to get quality education. A non-government report, an annual feature since 2005, evaluates the learning ability of students through a simple test based on what students are taught in their classrooms. A survey conducted 18 months after watershed RTE law was implemented found that there is a decline of 5% in learning ability of students in schools even though the parents are employing more private tutors than ever before. Around 52% in Bihar had age appropriate learning level in Pratham's first survey in 2006. Five years down the drain, the numbe...

As the country's top policy makers mull a historic and expensive food security Act to address the needs of India's malnourished citizens, it is fruitful to consider the experiences of the Maharashtra government's nutrition warrior, V Ramani. By re-imagining the corroded plumbing of government-where a substantial part of India's multi-billion-dollar spending on social-security programmes leaks away-Ramani has shown how the nation's dismal malnutrition statistics can be improved without great cost. Thanks to Ramani's work, Maharashtra reported a 60% drop between 2005 and 2010 in the number of severely malnourished children. Thousands more now have a chance at a healthy life in a country with the world's largest number of malnourished people. Ramani, 54, an Indian Administrative Service officer who set up and headed Maharastra's nutrition mission until he left the government in 2010, had a seemingly boring formula: Commitment, strategy and a refusal to l...

With reference to the report Malnutrition a national shame, says PM (January 11), our political leaders and policy-makers should be ashamed of themselves that even after so many years of Independence, 45% of our children  are malnourished. But let's not blame the political class only. The fault is ours too because we don't keep a tab on the usage of funds meant to tackle these issues. Every election, voters get swayed by caste and religion. Instead, we should demand a report card on development issues from the leaders. Only then, will they be forced to take constructive action.  --Gyan Prakash Jain, via email

Statistics can be mind-numbing, especially when they set out to tabulate human deprivations. But taken in the right spirit and with the right purpose in mind, statistical reports can work as guiding light for focused action to overcome those challenges. Which is precisely how the central and state governments must look at the Hunger and Malnutrition Report (HUNGaMA) that was released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Tuesday. The report, a work of the Citizens' Alliance Against Malnutrition, is alarming as well as upsetting. Of the 112 districts surveyed across Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh — some forming parts of India's infamous 'Bimaru' club — the report found that almost 42% of India's children, numbering over 61 million, are malnourished and stunted. Unsurp-risingly, it also found that girls lose their nutritional advantage that they have over boys in the first few years of their life as they grow older. W...

At a time when India is striding ahead economically, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday termed the prevalence of 42 % malnourished children in the country a "national shame."    Releasing a report on Hunger and Malnutrition survey, brought out by Naandi Foundation, the PM said though child nutrition is on a decline, the prevailing levels are still unacceptable. "... the problem of malnutrition is a matter of national shame. Despite impressive growth in our GDP, the level of under-nutrition in the country is unacceptably high," the PM said. The report, which surveyed 1,09,093 children and 74,000 women in 112 districts, including 100 districts with the poorest child development indicators found that prevalence of child malnutrition had dipped to 42 % from 53 %  in the last seven years. "This represents a 20.3 % decrease over a seven year period with an average annual rate of reduction of 2.9 %," the report states. While 42 % of the children under fiv...

Ratan Tata calls on Narendra Modi along with Cyrus Mistry Ratan Tata, the outgoing chairman of over USD 80 billion conglomerate , on Thursday introduced his successor Cyrus P. Mistry to the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi during a courtesy visit at his residence in Gandhinagar, a top state official said. "Mistry has evinced interest in strengthening business ties with Gujarat," official sources said. The 43-year-old Mistry, the son of Pallonji Mistry, Chairman of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group that holds 18 per cent stake in Tata Sons, holding company of Tata Group, will take over the reins from Tata after he retires in December, 2012. On invitation of Gujarat government, Tata Motors had relocated the mother plant of Nano to Sanand from Singur in West Bengal in 2008, after it faced stiff opposition there. The Tata group companies like Tata Chemicals Limited and Tata Consultancy Services already have operations in Gujarat, while Tata Power Limited is sett...

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything  without losing your temper or your self-confidence", said Robert Frost. An educated person respects the diversity of opinion. He enters into an argument with an open mind not to prove his point but to add a new perspective to his understanding of the issue. He has the ability to integrate seemingly contradictory ideas to form a holistic picture. This provides better insights into the nature of the problem and its complexities. Vineet 'Ramananda'

IIT-Delhi alumnus Soumitra Dutta has been named the new Dean of the Ivy league Cornell University's business school, joining a growing list of noted Indian-origin academicians assuming leaderships roles at prestigious global universities. Dutta, 48, is the first Indian-origin dean at the 66-year old Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. He will become the 11th dean of the New York-based Cornell University's business school when he begins his renewable five-year term on 1st July. He is currently a professor of business and technology and founder and faculty director of a new-media and technology innovation lab at INSEAD's French campus, where he has been for more than 20 years. Johnson becomes the first major business school in the United States to hire a dean from a business school outside the country. Cornell President David Skortan termed Dutta's appointment as a "natural fit" with Johnson's increasingly global outlook. Dutta "has e...