morning boy's letters on serious matters and commentary on funny things aplenty
Dear Parent,
I really wasn’t expecting to find something like this. But then I did.
Check this: https://ruj-bsdu.in/index.html
It is Bharatiya Skill Development University. These sanctuaries weren’t there earlier when I was younger and willing to explore.
Wow! That’s a long name. Never knew such an institute exists. Are the teachers good? Interesting option.
The name of the place is interesting too. Kundi.
And there’s a sub-line right under the name which I didn’t see ever earlier. INSTITUTE OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE.
We don’t have to be poorer.
Imagine that folks need to informed, and advised about the ‘benefits’ of walking?! And since there are ‘benefits’ of walking, so we should walk?!
The headline would read: Science says Walking has 7 Benefits.
Really? And then we have the audacity to say we are educated?!
And if your time goes into reading such stuff, would you have the time to read anything better?
Wait, there’s a Youtube video with another 9 benefits of walking?! O, wow!
I don’t want to read your s***. Bye!
Categories are containers. It seems that talk is possible only in categories.
Broad categories = Big containers
Broad categories may be equated with generalizations.
When we are in trouble though, specifics may help us more than generalizations.
Specific = Small Categories = Small containers
Children ought to be placed in small containers of learning more often than in big containers.
Just as a software is built up of modules, youngsters may be built through modular education.
Dear Parent,
I am opening the newspaper every morning with a sense of anticipation.
Anticipation of discovering an interesting entity hiding behind a boring ad.
I was rewarded for my curiosity twice this morning. Wrote about the 1st discovery earlier in the morning. This is the second one:
I visited the website and was so surprised to find out all the published material that may help youngsters to learn some skills that matter and that one can really call ‘creative’. I am going to order some myself.
And it’s got a nice short-form: NIMI. No?
Dear Parent,
This is the first time that I’ve come across this entity.
Email id given is iatldh@iapht.org. Arouses my curiosity.
Is the website http://www.iapht.org? Let me check.
Just checked. Yeah! That’s the website.
Picked a part from the website:
Objectives
To provide latest testing, R&D and training facility to industry. To upgrade quality levels of industry to meet international competition. To Facilitate reverse engineering applications.
Huh! I wonder how many youngsters know this.
I know I know you want your kid to get into IT and build an app and receive 100-crore funding. This is reality.
This institute is just a dream.
Non-fluid colleges take away so much of the time of our youngsters.
And then we don’t quite find them employable after college ‘education’.
They don’t find interest in most jobs they take up right after college.
There is no way for them to shape themselves any better since all their time is gone.
Dear Parent,
On top of the silly textbook-based education till 10th, got created a scoring system.
On that scoring system of 10th got created a silly tri-partite silly stream-based textbook-based system of higher education.
College, the less said the better. Another set of textbook-based education for 3 or 4 years.
Post-graduate, more textbook-based stuff, barring I guess medical education.
Tell me one thing, in what sort of place would a child tend to learn chemistry better? What should be the combination of textbook and non-textbook education for a child to develop better interest than she already has?
Do you really believe that a youngster studying for at least 21-22 years of life can do only this much by the time she graduates? Is that the only ability and talent that a typical youngster can display to get a job? Really?
What convinces you so much of your beliefs? And why wouldn’t you ask yourself such questions anyway?
Mind you, I haven’t even factored in the textbook-based tuition classes that youngsters are made to sit through and all the textbook-based ed-tech that they’re surrounded with.
No, don’t tell me that youngsters are dancing and becoming popular on social media. It’s some talent I understand; I really am not talking about dancing.
Books I have loved reading. What kind of books do you read?
Looking to gift her something special?
Are you an interior-designer in Ahmedabad? Or an architect?
Dear Parent,
Kids have to be made self-learning beasts. It doesn’t mean that they don’t have to go to schools and colleges and earn their qualifications or degrees.
Till a certain age in childhood, actually they already are self-learning beasts. But then some things happen and some things don’t happen, and they stop being those beasts.
If an effort is made to make them self-learning beasts, they may regain their beastiality. And perhaps they may not even need tuition classes for most things.
*Those college-going kids who sprang up in exhibiting and asserting their ‘scientific mindset’, and have taken the so called c-o-v-i-d vaccines are not necessarily the self-learning beasts I am talking about.
Here’s an example of how our education is unable to educate us.
My office complex has plenty of tuition classes. Mothers come driving their cars to drop and pick up their kids at different times.
The complex is situated such that drivers of cars often have to make u-turns right outside the complex to catch the right direction for their purposes.
There’s plenty of road space to make smooth comfortable u-turns without backing up and adjusting again and again, but mother-drivers don’t seem to have translated radius taught in geometry to turning radius in car-driving in practical situations.
As a result of this, often these mother-drivers hold up the movement of traffic and on some occasions cause mini traffic jams too.
Dear Parent,
In some of my conversations regarding sending kids to tuition classes, I hear parents say about what other parents think about sending their kids to tuition claases: My kid will be ‘left behind’.
Left behind? Like how? What does it mean? Have you bothered to elaborate and understand for yourself all the meanings of ‘left behind’?
Dear Parent,
Say your kid starts performing without the aid of tuition classes and tuition teachers, would you like that?
Or do you want your kids to go to spend time at tuition classes without fail?
Why do you think kids have to spend so much time at school and then at tuition classes?
Suppose, kids don’t spend much time at tuition classes and still perform well and get a hell lot of time to play outdoors most of the days, would you like that?
This ad in today’s TOI caught my attention. Some interesting courses listed there. Prompted me to check the website, and upon visiting the website, found a bit more.
There’s a program called Integrated Five Years B. Sc. In Furniture Technology. This is for students who’ve passed 10th.
The page says the course will be conducted at Kubernagar ITI.
Make notes. Stare at every word. Follow the links. I want to be young again.
Create songs of understanding. I don’t mean ‘reflection’ or ’empathy’ at this moment.
Physics and Textbooks are forces pulling in opposite directions.
The combination of parental pressure and children’s memory = engineering grads.
My cousins want to build careers of their grown up kids with college degrees.
One wants to enrol his kid for a design programme with a whopping fee-structure.
Goals and management models and plans are rather poor ways of initiating one into ‘the art of looking forward’.
CITY AS CLASSROOM by McLuhan
What a start! Beautiful simple questions.
To arouse interest in engineering among uninterested kids, start with reverse engineering.
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