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Some ideas on education in Karnataka

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Written By tsubba - 18 April, 2008

Bangalore Culture education kannada Schools suggestion Language and Culture

At the outset this, has nothing to do with the civic life of bangalore as such, but as much as bangalore is tied to the rest of the state at the hip, and as much as the output of our schools is crucial to its economy, culture and in shaping its citizenry it may be worthwhile to discuss this issue here.

A fundamental assumption is that school education should be universal and must be a fundamental right that is enjoyed equally equally by all, especially with respect to quality. Towards that there was a discussion between a few folks at churumuri. please read through that link and related responses to that post.

i am posting the post that started the discussion there to start a discussion here, but observations by churumurigas including rameshgowda, and girish are very very crucial.

#1. towards universal education, why cant we have: kannada, social studies, including civics in kannada. english, science and maths in english. for all students irrespective of their backgrounds and location?

#1a. this would help students to be bi-directionally globally connected to the fast changing world of the sciences. english is the de-facto language in the peer reviewed world of science. for example, so many papers in the sciences from non-english speaking countries are rejected because of lack of clarity in communication. quite a few of these papers are so poorly written that it is impossible for others to look beyond the language, and assess the quality of research. i.e. many times papers are rejected, even when international reviewers sense that they carry important information, because they cannot be sure the authors mean what the reviewers think the authors mean. this is limited world of academics, where you can find people idealistic enough to read a paper a 10 times. you can imagine the impact of this in the much more pervasive world of practical engineering/sciences where people have actually invested their fortunes. on the otherhand, it took modern scientists to “discover” that there is a species of freshwater cat fish now called glyptothorax kudremukensis. perhaps the locals have known of this fish since ages as kemmeenu and they could have told more about it if it were not for the language barrier? similar is the case with mount “everest” aka sagarmaata/chomolungma.

#1b. studying social studies and civics in kannada would help children think about their immediate surroundings, their history and their role as citizens in kannada. hopefully, with kannada as the medium for social sciences and civics, the schooling syllabus will also be more local in content and more relevant. growing up we learnt all about the map of india, but knew nothing about the map of how our town. genghis khan, napolean and akbar we learnt about but nothing about abbakka, benki nawab and kempe gowda, who i now learn, via internet, was a pioneer in rainwater harvesting. the constitution of india and magna carta we learnt about but not who or what a mayor, a corporator or a panchayati head is. had to learn out of school that gaNasabha’s were probably the earliest forms of representative governance. it is left to word of mouth learning post graduation to know how local governance works. what the byelaws and traffic rules are, what is meant by a revenue site or an agri land. what use is a education in civics without knowledge of these everyday essential facts?

#1c. if the issue of medium is amicably resolved, perhaps attention can then be focussed on the more critical issues of pedagogy - issues like how to move from rote learning and testing regurgitative ability to testing for understandability and application.

#1d. developing facility in both kannada and english will also facilitate cross-over and cross-pollination. it will enable kannadigas who are scientists to easily help preserve and sustain naaTi science. at the same time it will enable kannadiga scientists to contribute to popular scientific content in kannada directly. similarly, it will enable students of the arts direct access to ideas from the west.

kannada can only be saved if kannadigas are confident and directly enabled and see no contradiction in being a kannadiga and a citizen of this modern world.

---------------------- perhaps we can consolidate and translate that discussion and any discussions we might have here into kannada, and try to get it into some kannada papers. any volunteers?

COMMENTS

education

tsubba - 19 April, 2008 - 06:37

sri, thank you now, first to santsub. indeed movies are a very very important thingie. but the most fundamental thing about movies is writing. and to write you require some sort of awareness of context and a ceratin facility with language to communicate that which you cannot communicate with visuals, right? rest of the rant later.

Help these foreigners learn Kannada

City.Zen - 19 April, 2008 - 06:43

Sorry that this is out of context. Deshpande Foundation, Stoneham, MA is sending 8 fellows from the U.S. to Hubli in June. They will work with an NGO for an year. They urgently need a CD and a book so that they can start learning Kannada even before they get to Hubli. Any suggestions?

A bit more about IITs

s_yajaman - 19 April, 2008 - 16:53

City.Zen sir,

Agree with your views on migration - but why should the government have to so heavily subsidize one set of people but not be able to set some terms and conditions of its own?

A bit more about IITs from Wikipedia

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), are a group of seven elite autonomous engineering and technology-oriented institutes of higher education established and declared as Institutes of National Importance by the Government of India. The IITs were created to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of India after independence in 1947. The students and alumni of IITs are colloquially referred to as IITians.

The candidates belonging to the general category must secure a minimum aggregate of 60% marks in the qualifying examination of the XIIth standard organised by various educational boards of India. Candidates belonging to Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Physically Disabled (PD) categories must secure a minimum aggregate of 55% in the qualifying examination.[25]

The IITs follow a reservation policy that is notably different from the quota policy elsewhere in India. As per the rules of admission to IITs, 15% of the admitted students must be of the Scheduled Castes, and 7.5% of seats are reserved for Scheduled Tribes.[27] (As of 2006, no separate reservation exists for the Other Backward Classes in spite of the Mandal commission recommendations). The IITs are not bound to fill these quotas of seats, and many of them remain vacant owing to the nature of selection process. In 2004, 112 out of 279 seats reserved for ST candidates, and 11 out of 556 seats reserved for SC candidates, were left vacant.

As per the rules, all the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates must take the IIT-JEE with the rest of the students. Based on the results of IIT-JEE, those SC/ST candidates who score more than two-third of the marks scored by the General Category student admitted with the lowest score are admitted directly to IITs.[27] Another group of candidates who do not meet this relaxed admission criteria are offered a "Preparatory Course" comprising of English, Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics at the IIT concerned. After one year of study, those candidates who are able to secure a grade higher than the prescribed cut-off mark during end-of-semester exams are allowed to continue regular studies. There is no relaxation on the criteria for passing the exams or graduating a course. The candidates admitted through the reservation policy are also subjected to the same criteria as the general candidates for graduation.

I see nothing totally unfair in this system - the very best don't anyway suffer; the ones at the margin get knocked out but not by a completely worthless adversary.  What we need to eliminate is the creamy layer.  If I have benefited from the reservation process then my kids should not get it.  A new set needs to gain the benefits.

The risk of ghettoising the reserved category is that it is easy to neglect them systematically.  You can't do that easily in an already reputed institution.

Hope this helps.

Srivathsa

I agree partly with you

s_yajaman - 18 April, 2008 - 17:30

Tarle,

I coincindentally gave a small rant on this very matter. So it's good that you put up a post where I can continue my rant :)

I am not sure how learning social studies in Kannada will help if the content is not about Karnataka. Also, if each state were to do this, and if I had a transferable job what would happen to my kids?

When we studied geography or history or civics (albeit in English) the content progressed from local to global (inspite of my school being an ICSE school and supposedly elitist). It started from Bangalore district to Karnataka State to India and then to world geography. Same for civics - it started from the gram panchayat to Blocks to Municipal level to the State Legislatures to Parliament. We learnt how voting happens, the mechanics of a presidential election, what the different branches of government are, our fundamental rights and duties, the directive principles, etc. etc. Same for history - Bangalore, Karnataka, India,World. The issue I see here is an uninspiring syllabus in the majority of the state board schools.

The ICSE syllabus is very demanding, but is outstanding in the breadth and depth of topics it covers. I have seen the SSLC syllabus and sadly I cannot say the same (I might be wrong!).

I think all of us should have the right to choose the medium of instruction and the board for our kids. I owe them a good education; my first responsibility is to them and not to a religion or to a language (that's the way I see it at least). We would be all shooting ourselves in the foot if we rejected English.

Looking forward to some stimulating discussions :)

Srivathsa

"I disagree with what you say, but will defend to death your right to say it" - Voltaire

 

Indians (Innocents) Abroad

City.Zen - 19 April, 2008 - 14:43

@Srivathsa: "If the government asks them - in what way has India or Indians benefited from this fabulous education you have got apart from other Indians feeling good and proud, what might they answer?" Migration to wherever a person can bloom to full potential is always good for everybody including the country of his birth. Look at the following examples:- The whole economy of Kerala State at one time, it is said, used to run on the remittances of NRI Malayalees. The Deshpandes whom I mentioned earlier have done lot of good for India and Indians and IIT-C. Had they stayed back in India after their IIT education, they would not have prospered as they have done and consequently would not have done much good to India. In fact, my own joint family has seen tremendous prosperity just because one person went abroad TO WORK. On the other hand, my grand uncle soon after WW-II returned to India after studies in London because of his love for motherland and thereby limited his career to just being a deputy director of IIT-B and some corporate directorships. Had he stayed in Europe or migrated to the U.S., where better facilities were available, he might have been far more successful in a short time and become much more useful to India and his fellow-Indians. Re: "But this set of govt institutes somehow needs our protection from the govt itself :)." -- I must be very careful talking to an IIM alumnus, but even to my limited knowledge it seems these elite organizations thrived and built up their reputations largely because of the autonomy they enjoyed. It is this autonomy that must be protected now is what I feel. Of course, if by destroying autonomy we are able to produce thousands of highly capable technocrats and managerial talent from amongst the backward classes, then that is what we must do. I agree with you, it is always good to have a healthy discussion - we get lots of fresh insights which otherwise would not occur to us. Thanks very much.

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