Pleasant surprise
In your India’s most preferred pre-schools survey 2010 (EW May), we are ranked among the top ten early childhood education institutions in Chennai. We are pleasantly surprised at the close conver-gence of your views and ours on what constitutes a good kindergarten/primary school.
For the past half century and more, we have been working hard on each of the ten parameters you have mentioned, to be where we are today. We are happy to be recognised for our efforts by a magazine as well known as yours in the world of education.
Devila J. Patel
Principal, Bambino Educational Trust
Chennai
Words of praise
Thank you for the cover story ‘India’s most preferred pre-schools’ (EW May). With your professional approach and commitment to education, Education-World has been taken to a different level. Congratulations!
Lt Gen (Retd) Arjun Ray
CEO, Indus International School
Bangalore
Gaia curriculum export
Re your cover story ‘India’s most preferred pre-schools’ (EW May), it’s wonderfully written. Precise, informative and well put together. Congratulations! Thank you also for writing about Gaia Pre-school, Bangalore and about me in a way that is positive, and for airing my opinion that early childhood education should be affordable.
I’d like to inform you that the Gaia pre-school programme and curriculum has been successfully exported through re-training of teachers to the students of Christel House, Bangalore and more recently, to Christel House, Lavasa which opens in June 2010. This will change the course and lives of many families quite dramatically.
Thanks to this programme, Christel House kindergarten-class III children, who come from the poorest homes and are all first generation literates, can now read and write with understanding. Our aim now is to ensure that these children become self-learners and are able to compete on a par with students from any (including internat-ional) school.
Nina Kanjirath
Gaia Pre-school
Bangalore
Open warfare
I refer to your editorial ‘Rogue bureaucracy spurring Naxalism’ (EW May). The Naxalites’ murder of 76 CRPF men is no less than an open declaration of war. The Union government must respond as it would in a war situation, and the strongest possible measures must be taken to eradicate Naxalism. India has won wars in the past, so why can’t Naxalites be eliminated forever? Air strikes/military attacks and all other similar measures must be used to end this evil insurgency.
Simultaneously the Central and state governments must stimulate socio-economic reforms so that such insurgencies don’t recur in future.
M. Kumar
New Delhi
Ill-conceived legislation
The clearance of the draft Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill is no solution to the existing lacunae in India’s higher education system. Your editorial (EW April) gives the impression that you are supportive of this proposal.
The so-called reputed universities of the world are certified on the basis of their own parameters which we should not blindly accept as universal. If there were really so many suspicions about our higher education, how has India emerged as one of the largest man-power exporters of the world?
Dilip Thakore’s review (EW February) of Dr. James Tooley’s book A Beautiful Tree, which extensively cites a treatise on Indian education before the arrival of British in India by T. Dharampal, is testimony to the high quality of education before Macaulay. We have grossly underestimated ourselves and blurred our vision to the extent that the most erudite scholars in the country are smothering Indian education while trying to import taxonomies on educational processes from the rest of the world.
Liberal passage should not be allowed to foreign varsities as it will have devastating consequences for the fabric of Indian education!
K.V. Atriya on e-mail
Cadillac habit
Re the wars of The Hindu (EW April). Why so much space devoted to the power struggle of a North Korea style organisation dominated by brothers, cousins and nephews? The Cadillac communist has got too used to his cadillacs and won’t let go.
It’s that simple!
S.P. Ramamurthy
Chennai
Privilege of the rich
Congrats for your detailed cover story on iDiscoveri (EW March). The bold initiatives that Ashish Rajpal and his team have taken to ensure that real learning happens in India’s primary school classrooms should be welcomed by one and all.
Yet the plain fact is that extensive research on the iDiscoveri scale can only happen in private sector enter-prises and will never be accepted by the millions of government primary schools where rote learning is the rule. Therefore real education will always remain a privilege of the rich who can afford private schooling.
Deepak Kapur
Delhi
Corrigendum
In the career Focus page titled ‘Demand surge for spa professionals’ (EW May), Heymal Kampani of Cosmic Mandala 15 — The Spa, Mumbai was inadvertently spelt as Heymani Kampani. We regret the error — Editor