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NDTV
11 hours ago
- Politics
- NDTV
India's Classroom Crisis: Why Your Teacher Is So Clueless About Everything
Why are we discussing the revised NCERT history books for schoolchildren? In all likelihood, most readers will not retain the new facts beyond the exam room. Fifteen years later, they would struggle to even spell Akbar or Aurangzeb. As for stirring the communal passions, bleak as it may sound, our children need no assistance from their textbooks for that. When 'education' - the whole eighteen-year stint with it for those with graduate degrees - fails to mark the student in even a rudimentary way, why even discuss its contents or philosophy? I've spent the past month in my ancestral village, setting up a dream project. What I've encountered here, once again, is a paradoxical crisis - an education system so hollowed out that hope and despair now coexist in equal measure. Teachers Who Can't Teach... There's no shortage of applicants for teaching roles - many hold MA, MSc, and degrees. And yet, subject knowledge is almost nonexistent. The degrees, in fact, seem inversely proportional to competence. Despite offering a competitive, scaled to match the local cost of living, it's nearly impossible to find a candidate who can explain concepts meant for 10-year-olds. Most arrive without even basic grooming or communication skills, something I'm willing to overlook if they exhibit even the slightest enthusiasm for the job. It's as if they've passed through their education years in a zombie-like state, absorbing nothing. One 26-year-old science graduate said mournfully, ' Humein toh ye sikhaya hi nahin gaya ' (Nobody taught us this). 'This' being the VIBGYOR: the seven colours of the visible light spectrum. I find myself rejecting dozens of applications a week - young people whose aspirations outstrip their abilities. This is India's 'demographic dividend' disaster unfolding in real time: a generation credentialed but not educated, credentialed but not skilled. Many possess neither critical thinking nor usable handiwork skills. ...Make Students Who Can't Think Socrates demanded that the educated citizen be one who could reason independently. Responding to the Athenian democracy on the brink of political decay, he prescribed not data or dogma, but dialectic: the ability to think. Today, India faces a widespread absence of education. And the failure lies where the future begins: in the classroom. Teaching - the one profession tasked with cultivating the next generation of thinkers - has been reduced to a fallback job for the unemployable. The result is not merely disappointing examination scores or declining international rankings, but an epistemological crisis: a population that has not been taught how to think. Barring a few exceptions, most school classrooms in India are manned by underqualified, underpaid, and often semi-literate teachers who are, at best, unmotivated and, at worst, actively undermining the formation of young minds. Why No One Has An Original Thought A teacher is supposed to encourage students to engage the mind in a rigorous dialectic of ideas, to distinguish truth from half-truth, to interrogate, to analyse, and to discover - as the Greeks put it - the archai of thought, the deep principles of truth, goodness, and beauty. The land of sage-teachers like Dronacharya, Vashishtha, and Chanakya knows that education at its best stirs the soul toward these foundations. At its worst, it deadens the intellect. Today, the Indian schoolchild is often condemned to the latter. And this has been our tragic intergenerational bequest. 'I did not write anything even remotely related to the question paper in the exam room but still have 80% marks in all the subjects,' confided an old acquaintance who proudly flaunts his law degree. Nathan Pusey, the legendary educationist who became the 24th president of Harvard University, once warned, 'In the eagerness of the developing nations to achieve health and plenty, there are urgent pressures at work to emphasise the material benefits of the university.' This is no longer abstract philosophy. Its consequences are seen in the young job applicant who cannot write a coherent sentence or frame an original thought. Anything Goes Education is not a luxury for the elite. It is the bedrock of national character. Societies are made - or unmade - by what happens in their classrooms. But how can one move to the philosophical goals of education, the capacity for judgment, for reason, for moral clarity, when even the rudimentary needs of literacy cannot be met there? In India, a silent catastrophe is unfolding today. But what's most troubling is the apathy towards it. There's no public outrage, no reckoning. Education is seen not as a process of growth but as a transaction - degrees as passports to jobs. The actual learning, the life of the mind, seems irrelevant. Were it otherwise, we would see uprisings, not resignation. There is no simple fix. But we must begin by demanding more of our teachers - not merely in qualifications but in the spirit of education. Without teachers, for whom education isn't merely degree acquisition and teaching not the last shot at employment, no number of tablets, start-ups, or skill certifications will save us. Amid eager schoolchildren waiting to be taught, I keep wondering: who will teach them, and what exactly will be taught? For now, I can only pray that they retain their spirit of enquiry for as long as they can hold on to it and not turn into zombies too soon. (Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based journalist and author)
Epoch Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Epoch Times
Pericles's Funeral Oration
In 430 B.C., the Athenian statesman Pericles delivered a 'Funeral Oration' to commemorate those who had died in war. His speech exalted Athens as a free, beautiful, and courageous city, illustrating the need to articulate higher principles and kindle hope in times of trouble. The Greatest Statesman of Athens The 5th century B.C. is often called Greece's 'Golden Age.' Democracy became a legal and political reality, Greek city states successfully deterred a massive Persian invasion and secured two centuries of independence, and philosophers like Socrates began asking probing philosophical questions that continue to concern humanity. Playwrights , Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Euripides wrote some of the most famous dramas to this day, while the physician Hippocrates laid the foundations for modern medicine and the traveling bard turned history into an intellectual discipline in its own right.
San Francisco Chronicle
16-07-2025
- San Francisco Chronicle
Ex-wife of UC Berkeley professor shot in Greece arrested on suspicion of plotting his killing
The ex-wife of a beloved UC Berkeley professor has been charged with arranging to have him killed in an Athenian suburb earlier this month, according to Greek media reports. Przemysław Jeziorski, 43, was gunned down on July 4 in Agia Paraskevi, a suburb of Athens, as he was walking to the home of his ex wife, Nadia Michelidaki, to see his two children. According to a story in To Vima, a Greek newspaper, authorities arrested Michelidaki and accused her of convincing her current partner to kill Jeziorski. Police also arrested her companion – who has not been identified – and three other men as accomplices. The three men, two Albanians and a Bulgarian man, were accused of transporting the shooter to the crime scene and giving him the firearm used in the crime.
New Indian Express
15-07-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Tyranny is an ever-present threat to civilisations. Here's how Classical Greece and China dealt with it
We're just a few months into US president Donald Trump's second term but his rule has already been repeatedly compared to tyranny. This may all feel very new to Americans, and to the rest of us watching on from around the world. But the threat of tyranny is an ancient one. We can learn much from how people in ancient Greece and China dealt with this issue. Where does tyranny come from? The peoples of classical Greece were separated into city-states known as the polis. A few of these, such as Athens and Argos, were democratic. Others, such as Rhodes or Chios, had had democratic features such as civic participation in public life. These city-states routinely faced external enemies but also the threat of tyrannical take-over from within. Things came to a head in 510 BCE under the rule of an oppressive tyrant known as Hippias. He was ultimately expelled, leading eventually to the establishment of democracy through reforms made under an Athenian statesmen called Cleisthenes. According to Plato, tyranny is the most degenerate political regime and emerges out of democracy's excesses. He argued that as democratic citizens become accustomed to living by pleasure rather than reason or duty to the public good, society becomes fragmented.
Toronto Star
06-07-2025
- Business
- Toronto Star
Gala at Evergreen Brick Works raises $1.5 million for WoodGreen's UnMet Needs campaign
On May 8 the Evergreen Brick Works was transformed into an Athenian garden to reflect the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' theme for second edition of the UnMet Gala. Nearly 500 business and philanthropic leaders attended the event, presented by Rogers. Led by gala chair Krystal Koo and co-chair Fernanda Dovigi, the event raised more than $1.5 million to support WoodGreen's UnMet Needs campaign. Incoming foundation board chair John Tory announced that with these proceeds, WoodGreen — which works with communities and policymakers to deliver services to meet the unmet needs of Torontonians — is just $1 million away from reaching the campaign goal of $25 million.
