Tell Your Friends....

22 Jun 2013

"There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat.”

Not allowed to cheat, students lay siege in China

What should have been a scene of 800 Chinese students quietly writing their university entrance exams erupted into an angry protest after invigilators tried to stop them from cheating. 

Earlier this month, students at a high school in Hubei Province were aggrieved to find they would be supervised not by their own teachers, but by 54 external invigilators roped in from different schools across the county, The Telegraph reported. 
The move followed last year’s exam debacle when the province’s education department found 99 identical papers in one subject. Invigilators screened students with metal detectors to find hidden mobile phones and secret transmitters. As soon as the exams finished, a protest broke out. 


A crowd of parents and students chanted: “We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat.” The protesters said that cheating was endemic in China, so being forced to appear for the exams without help put students at a disadvantage. 
Hundreds of police personnel cordoned off the school and the local government conceded that “exam supervision had been too strict and some students did not take it well”.


Original article in Mirror

This happened in a  communist country. In democratic places this wont happens , because when nearly a 1000 people demands around 5% teachers don't have right to reject....(JUST FOR KIDDING).

Need of Academic Institute

An educational institute main purpose is to develop a certain level of competency in next generation. These institutes are designed to transfer knowledge gained so for by efforts of previous generations in different fields and to increase the thinking level to the present status. If this is not done the future generation may spend time/resources to reinvent the wheel. As it is not possible to  develop knowledge at individual level, institutes are designed as a mass program to increase individual capabilities and capacities, in turn entire society, as much as possible. The acquired knowledge used as much as possible for further acquirement of it in future. That is how humanity moved from geocentric stage to universe and to present multiverse theories.

As every individual approach and psychology is different their orientation towards subjects differs. One may highly spiritual oriented and other might be a chemical/physical.  Understanding learners early years orientations and shaping them also a part of school education. In the school years, the learner not only acquires maximum understanding in all the areas, but chooses an area of interest to expertise. So that mathematically oriented person may not go into wrong filed or literally oriented choose analytical mathematics as a field of study because there is a choice to study.

The assessment process in educational frame works is only to estimate the level of capabilities achieved to expected levels. Any group or an individual not achieved the expected level for whatever reasons, then automatically it is institute responsibility to find out how and what to do to impart the expected learning level. If not done, the next generation society will struggle with limited improvement or it has to depend on only available resources.
This is what i feel about the educational institutes and assessment process.

The present day technology is going to replace the jobs that exist and going to create much more sophisticated jobs. In the machine floors previously thought tough jobs which require great skilled hands to complete the assembly lines are replaced by the machines. In the banks, cash disbursal considered as a highly skilled job, replaced by ATMs, and maintenance customer accounts and cheque clearances. Google ‘driver-less car’ is one to say.

All those things that follow specific routines are replaced by machines.

Sure coming decades, with these technology developments are going to replace all jobs which follow specific routines. But going to generate new jobs which require high end abilities and qualities.
Just five years back to get a seat into the engineering or management stream, youngsters used to place all efforts. Within a short period they are rejecting to join. Almost 1 in 3 seats are not even getting applications according latest news. As these courses are designed to get a job and when this generation feels they may not get job doing these courses may be the reason. And present day generation may have alternative options.
The same trend may continue if the coming generations think they have other available avenues to get educated with literacy, numeracy and redundant structures, the school education is going to face consequence.
So to face situation we require immediate action to change the present education system. 
Watch Economist  Andrew McAfee in TED talk.
What to you say???



19 Jun 2013

Need to reinvent schools

"We don't need to improve schools. We need to reinvent them for our times, our requirements and our future. We don't need efficient clerks to fuel an administrative machine that is no longer needed. Machines will do that for us. We need people who can think divergently, across outdated "disciplines", connecting ideas across the entire mass of humanity."

Sugata Mitra is professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, and the winner of the $1m TED Prize 2013. He devised the Hole in the Wall experiment, where a computer was embedded in a wall in a slum in Delhi for children to use freely. He aimed to prove young people could be taught computers easily without formal training.

Read the full article in 'Guardian'.