These days I am in mood of art, so I will share an interesting video with you all. I liked it very much and I hope so do you. Its very dynamic and the beauty lies in the pictures as well as its creation from sand and colors of light on it.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Get Crafty
After years of sleeping somewhere, suddenly my creative surge came into existence after a Rangoli project at my daughter's school. I had done some oil paintings long time ago but since then never had chance (or wish) to do anything. I am into sand paintings these days. While I was searching some motivation ( or design) for the canvass I bought for the purpose, I came across this beautiful site which seems to get contribution from many talented artists. I hope you will also enjoy as I enjoyed browsing its pages.
Fall colors
I have been following with interest discussion related to IIT entrance exams at the blog of Nanopolitan. He makes many valid comments about the extreme pressure created by the exam on students as well as about coaching centers. In the country where job security after traditional education is so scarce, the obsession with IITs is hardly any surprise. Maybe we need statistics of from IITs and also from big companies about percentage of non-IITians people they have in their top work force. I am pretty sure that it is not so small. In my experience of living abroad in 8 years at different institutes/universities, I have seen equal number of IITians (add IISc alumini here as well) as well as non-IITians in foreign universities pursuing masters, Ph. D. and post-docs (though not enough statistics to make any claims). These facts once available can be widely publicized, which might help in easing students and their parents from excess obsession with IITs.
The more series issue related to extreme coaching, other than the financial burden it puts on families, is burn-out of young talented students. Even successful students who managed to clear the JEE exam, will have tough time in focusing again after this level of coaching. And those who failed will have tough time in accepting reality and getting on with their life. It is extremely unwise for the country to use the potential of young talent in this way.
Meanwhile, its almost the end of autumn in the cold country I am living, so here is some pictures which I took over the busy weekend.
The more series issue related to extreme coaching, other than the financial burden it puts on families, is burn-out of young talented students. Even successful students who managed to clear the JEE exam, will have tough time in focusing again after this level of coaching. And those who failed will have tough time in accepting reality and getting on with their life. It is extremely unwise for the country to use the potential of young talent in this way.
Meanwhile, its almost the end of autumn in the cold country I am living, so here is some pictures which I took over the busy weekend.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
Everyday Mathematics
I came across this beautiful site created by University of Chicago School Mathematics Project for young children to increase mathematics learning in their daily environment. Its beautifully designed with simple activities for children and parents.
http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/
Learning can be so much fun if combined with passion and imagination.
http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/
Learning can be so much fun if combined with passion and imagination.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Home Schooling
Education, in its current form, where an average child spends for 20+ years in school/college/university etc. to be able to useful to the society, is very recent human endeavor, for past 200 years or so. This is the need of post-industrialized society where the demand of highly specialized individual is higher and such long education years are necessary. Modern societies need more people who can do specialized tasks other than the manual jobs, and therefore higher need for educated people. Also, since these jobs pays well as compared to traditional jobs, it becomes a good investment from the point of individual/family as well. But like everything else in this world, this form of structured education has its own pros and cons.
First, about pros, since it outweighs the cons, otherwise , we all would not be sending our kids to the school anyway. Education, in its current structured form, other than providing formal learning of different subjects, serves many other social and emotional aspects as well. It creates an artificial environment for a growing up kid. This environment provides opportunity to explore many different specialized field to the child such as language, math, science, art etc etc in very coherent way. It also provides an artificial world to the child where s/he is mainly expose to the kids of similar age group, thus sharing a common growing up experiences (this is also cause of many other problems but nevertheless it brings many joys). School in its current form is an wonderful organization for growing up. It is kind of protective environment for the young people where they are removed from the real world experiences and can focus on development. The math, science or social science you learn in the school is long forgotten, but the foundation it built is ever-lasting. Wherever I am today, it is only because of my education. I have many fond memories of my schooling years, and also some of the life long friendship.
Now about the cons, in my opinion, the biggest disadvantage of such organized uniform education is that it creates a herd of people (according to people who oppose the formal school education in its current form at early years). In most cases, unless you are lucky to have other experiences, it removes personality from person. Of course, when you are teaching a big group of students, you can not have personalized education suitable to your personality, interests and needs (remember, we are not talking about the society where everyone should be only doctor or engineer, I am talking about society where it is fine to be an artists as long as this is what one likes to do).
Even if we assume that these cons are big (or exaggerated), in my opinion, the pros of current system outweighs heavily, and thus we are all sending kids to the school. My 5 year old daughter gets so much of exciting rich experience in her school (I will write about this on some separate post) that I personally think I can not provide to her in home. Of course, most of her problems later will be because of peer pressure, but I consider this also as a part of growing up process which is important.
So when I first learned about the home schooling, I was bit surprised. A simple Google search will bring you many more results. Later, I found out, that there is a strong society who believes in home schooling and for many parents, the disadvantages of uniform education and problems of peer pressure on young mind, is too big to send child to the school. In recent years, I have met many parents in my neighborhood, who believe in home education at early years. They take years off from work to educate their child according to the state curriculum, arrange meetings with other home schooling parents to provide social experience for themselves and for children, and try to provide as rich social and learning experience to the child as possible, but with full control. This was new to me and I found it intriguing. This is only possible in developed countries where people can afford such options, not in India where the struggle for survival is still too big, but anyway it is an interesting thing to know.
First, about pros, since it outweighs the cons, otherwise , we all would not be sending our kids to the school anyway. Education, in its current structured form, other than providing formal learning of different subjects, serves many other social and emotional aspects as well. It creates an artificial environment for a growing up kid. This environment provides opportunity to explore many different specialized field to the child such as language, math, science, art etc etc in very coherent way. It also provides an artificial world to the child where s/he is mainly expose to the kids of similar age group, thus sharing a common growing up experiences (this is also cause of many other problems but nevertheless it brings many joys). School in its current form is an wonderful organization for growing up. It is kind of protective environment for the young people where they are removed from the real world experiences and can focus on development. The math, science or social science you learn in the school is long forgotten, but the foundation it built is ever-lasting. Wherever I am today, it is only because of my education. I have many fond memories of my schooling years, and also some of the life long friendship.
Now about the cons, in my opinion, the biggest disadvantage of such organized uniform education is that it creates a herd of people (according to people who oppose the formal school education in its current form at early years). In most cases, unless you are lucky to have other experiences, it removes personality from person. Of course, when you are teaching a big group of students, you can not have personalized education suitable to your personality, interests and needs (remember, we are not talking about the society where everyone should be only doctor or engineer, I am talking about society where it is fine to be an artists as long as this is what one likes to do).
Even if we assume that these cons are big (or exaggerated), in my opinion, the pros of current system outweighs heavily, and thus we are all sending kids to the school. My 5 year old daughter gets so much of exciting rich experience in her school (I will write about this on some separate post) that I personally think I can not provide to her in home. Of course, most of her problems later will be because of peer pressure, but I consider this also as a part of growing up process which is important.
So when I first learned about the home schooling, I was bit surprised. A simple Google search will bring you many more results. Later, I found out, that there is a strong society who believes in home schooling and for many parents, the disadvantages of uniform education and problems of peer pressure on young mind, is too big to send child to the school. In recent years, I have met many parents in my neighborhood, who believe in home education at early years. They take years off from work to educate their child according to the state curriculum, arrange meetings with other home schooling parents to provide social experience for themselves and for children, and try to provide as rich social and learning experience to the child as possible, but with full control. This was new to me and I found it intriguing. This is only possible in developed countries where people can afford such options, not in India where the struggle for survival is still too big, but anyway it is an interesting thing to know.
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