Covid Online Classroom Farce

ModiSarkar has spent 22000 crores in the last six years over Muslim scholarships and Madrassa reforms. The average per year spend is nothing alarming. However, what are the returns that the country is getting on this spend? If you ask me – negligible. Even otherwise, the Muslim community is one that will not go beyond its religion and it’s like spending money on a horse that refuses to run. The nonsense of “Ek haath Quran & Ek haath Computer” is perhaps the most moronic slogan I have ever heard from Modi. That was a couple of years ago. The biggest contributors to the Covid epidemic in India were the Muslims of the Markaz gang. Cut to the present Covid situation where schools and colleges are closed and normal schooling has ground to a halt. We hear many stories of difficulties and misery. One such recent story was a villager in HP having to sell his cow so that his kids could attend online classes being ENFORCED by the school:

I cannot vouch for this story but it seems actor Sonu Sood and others are now trying to help this man get his cow back. But as the story mentions, it is hard to understand how two kids in different classes would simultaneously learn online from one device. The smartphone is hardly a device to learn from in a regular classroom setting; one would need at least a laptop size screen and controls. Secondly, if the family has never used smartphones, laptops or internet before, they would need some training for a while to even get used to working with the smartphone and accessing online classroom. Covid is making even schools a gang of idiots. There is no way primary school students can learn from online classrooms. Schools and parents are also locked in a fight over fees and why fees should be paid when there are no regular classes. Schools demand full fees claiming they have to meet salaries and other expenses whether the school operates or not. In this Covid situation the idea should be to stick to the most essential but the news we keep getting alarms us and makes us laugh too:

Why in hell do schools behave so brainlessly? I believe it is the conditioning that they have gone through under every govt that they should not “think” in doing anything. They should behave like morons without any concern for the end-user (child) who consumes their products. A primary student, of say Class-3, wouldn’t attend online classes diligently on her own. She needs hand-holding by a parent. It’s the nature of kids to waver, to be distracted and to find some subjects uninteresting. PT and Yoga are not life and death matter for a student. People tend to forget that schools are basically “academic” centres. But the PM and GOI promote Yoga so much as a mania as against Math or Science that schoolish idiocy sets in. Instead of just Yoga, there should be a revolution that promotes interest in Math and making Math an enjoyable subject. But then Ramanujan Modi cannot wax eloquently on Math as he does on Yoga. There shouldn’t be any online classes for primary students up to Class-7 whatsoever. They can do home-study with the help of parents. But even if some online classes are held then only the most essential subjects should be taught:

English (Or Hindi, Tamil whichever is the medium) Math and Science are the only subjects that need to be taught even otherwise. These are also the subjects that should be tested. Other subjects like history, civic or social studies are not essential subjects and the students can read their text books casually and that is enough. Even otherwise, our history and social studies books are nothing but badly written garbage that the students will not miss anything in life if they don’t read them. It is only as discerning adults that people discover true history of anything. They also discover that MK Gandhi was not the only Independence warrior and that thousands of others played bigger roles. Schools are also battling with parents over fees. This is an area that the GOI or State govts should have intervened and created an amicable resolution so that both sides are satisfied. The Covid situation has brought about burdens and liabilities on everyone and parents cannot bear the same burden of fees and at the same time teachers cannot go without salaries. This should not have been such a great problem to solve if the HRD ministers of the Centre and State had sincerely involved themselves:

Once I put out a few tweets on this topic, I got some hilarious responses too. It seems there are schools charging even “transport fees” with the argument that they have to pay drivers and transport staff. This is downright stupid. In most schools, the transport is on a “contract” basis with vendors. Even so, the biggest component of transport services is the fuel. Schools would certainly not be paying for fuel with no transport. If they do have to pay salaries for drivers and staff it is manageable within the reasonable amount to be collected as fees:

Schools usually do not operate with much logic. They are centres of “Chaos” just like any govt is. Visit any school on any given day (when they are open) and you will find some staff member running here and there in some kind of emergency or the Principal still obsessed with old, redundant systems of teacher and schedule management. Schools are NOT centres of excellence in India as they should have been. They are more like assembly-line manufacturing units that produce finished goods to be packaged off to some college. There are thousands of people protesting the anti-Hindu garbage in history books in schools. This remains so as politicians have been using young students as raw-material for their own Communist garbage. If ModiSarkar has made no effort to change that, it is because Modi himself is a closet-Communist and that’s why the excessive devotion to MK Gandhi and excessive love for Mughal tombs.

A recent survey in TOI put out some information on what is happening in our school education system. It claims private schools are grooming 50% of the students being educated in the country. I don’t know what exactly they mean by “grooming” but assume it means being prepared for the next stage and a performance-driven life. Within this whole story is some damaging piece of information that everyone knows but it appears govts are totally clueless on how to measure school education. For a long time, govts’ only measure of education was enrolment in schools. They didn’t even bother to account for the drop-outs. Every govt has juggled these numbers to show they are doing better in the education domain and every govt is full of morons who really don’t understand what education is supposed to deliver: a “Learning outcome”. That outcome is never measured by anyone in the govt system:

My years of experience with schools have shown me one thing clearly – students and parents have developed a slight fear of Math. Adding to this problem is language skills that aren’t developed well. Instead of speaking, reading and writing well, language is taught and tested as some text and grammar material. These are the reasons India will remain a laggard and a country with poor innovations and enterprise.

Additionally, schools have been forced to create some kind of idiotic, composite culture that leaves a student rootless and disconnected to her own roots and culture. This is driven not only by garbage by our history and social studies books but also by social behaviour. SM has examples of glorification of Mughal mass-murderers, whitewashing of their crimes and nonsensical topics that look down upon Hindu culture and teach moronic stuff like “All Gods are one and Allah is the only God”. Why would a secular state be teaching any religious stuff at all? If the previous HRD minister Prakash Javdekar is an undisputed moron then the current one is not far behind. What does Pokri really think of education. If you see his own daughter – she strikes a Kathak dance pose (she claims to be a Kathak dancer) for her Eid greetings. In the South, Hindus often talk about Jesus and other Christian icons being dressed up as Hindus to fool people. Dressing up Jesus is not illegal unless you use it commit some fraud.

Covid is not some new disease that has afflicted our schools. For long our schools are centres of incompetence, over-burdened students and poorly trained and paid teachers. I have consistently argued that instead of increasing subjects, school education in India needs to cut down on subjects as many of them are outright garbage that students don’t need to learn. And even if any student is interested in some of this stuff then in this day and age there are enough tools to quickly learn anything. Covid will pass sooner or later but the bigger disease remains in the schools. Narendra Modi is not very interested in education. Time and again his govt forms some Committee and that is all. We will soon find more students leaving India for studies elsewhere. All this crap of Vishwa Guru, Aatmanirbhar etc are just as much lipstick as anything that this govt has been doling out. It is clearly up to parents to take care of their child’s education and culture. Leaving it to schools is a dangerous mistake.

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Stressful Education, Dreadful HRD

Unlike the West, Indian education had a slightly different pursuit in its history. The purpose of education was not to merely methodically gather facts, concepts and processes for being knowledgeable or for a job. The pursuit of knowledge used to be to discover, it had a sprinkling of spiritualism and to understand our universe and cosmos better. Indian educational-history was driven primarily by science and math. Unfortunately, much of the great contributions to education by ancient Indians has been wiped out from school text books by the Commies. Instead, it is shocking to hear that under Congress, Kapil Sibal had hired scamsters like Teesta Setalvad to write topics for Class 4 kids. Some topics in Social Studies books had content on Barkha Dutt, Rahul Gandhi as if these scamtards are icons for kids to emulate. But the shock doesn’t end there. CBSE tests Class-12 students in Indian dances like Bharata Natyam, Kuchipudi, Odissi and so on.

How in hell do you test someone’s dancing skills in a written test paper? And how in hell are these subjects, which are of private pursuit under a Guru, part of the regular school curriculum? There are many such stupidities and that will make this blog a mile long. The Indian schooling system has degenerated into a huge cesspit of money, greed, political mechanism and an assembly-line production facility. One is now primed and brain-hammered to believe that schools exist only to pass some exams and then go on to the next exam and then another and then another. While the process as a qualifying mark is inevitable, making it the sole hurdle to cross is nothing short of demeaning education itself. Therefore, when PM Narendra Modi published “Exam Warriors” in early 2018 it seemed quite odd to me:

Why would the PM of a large country be writing on how to pass exams of all things? We have millions of coaching classes, in addition to schools, doing that job. However, I am sure Modi’s book was well-intentioned, good-humored and aimed at easing exam pressures. A PM must have that much luxury to counsel students about the dreadful exams. It is also a good PR exercise that portrays the PM as caring for students and their problems. But that book wasn’t a one-off thing. It has now become a regular feature of Modi counselling students on exams. This started with a “Pariksha pe charcha” in January 2019:

 

I think by this day and age, most parents have realised children should have the freedom to pursue their dreams and ambitions. Parents also realise that not all kids are scholastic geniuses and there are many other avenues for careers now. I thought the PM’s interactions were a one-off event (with the book earlier) to encourage students to be positive and not be “tensioned” over exams. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. He has become a regular “counsellor” and wants to do another “PPC” this month:

 

Naturally, this makes me ask the question – Can you treat someone like a patient forever and keep treating him over and over again for the same symptoms? If that is the case, then the person would have to be in the hospital permanently or in a care-centre. As the PM with enormous powers and a huge mandate, Modi has been given absolute powers to change anything that causes stress for children – be it exams or other social evils. For six years now, his HRD ministry has done absolutely NOTHING to address the serious problem of school education rotting and depreciating like a stinking cabbage:

 

You cannot play a psychologist to school kids every year. It is time Modi asked his HRD minister what exactly he is doing about reducing stress in schools. Why should schooling be a painful exercise for children. Most children, especially when they get to early teens, don’t like going to school. It’s more or less like a jail for them. And the previous HRD Minister, Prakash Javdekar, shamelessly claimed he had changed nothing in the five years he was the minister. If you are incapable of any positive change, why are you a minister in the first place? The current minister, RP Nishank, is equally a moron even if he has good qualifications and background. It is shocking what the HRD ministry is busy with – and that is moronic quizzes like these:

Malala and Bollywood Othello? And these guys are charged with changing the course of education positively? I don’t think these HRD guys have a clue on what to do with education. All it takes to reduce stress of exams is to dramatically change what is being taught in schools and what should be tested. I have written earlier too, that subjects like History, Geography, Civics etc should be taught but NOT tested so stringently that the student and the parent coaching her don’t have to burn midnight oil to prepare for a lousy memory test. What sense does it make in this age of information at your fingertips to memorise ordinary facts? If a student wants to specialize in any of these subjects then she can do so towards her college end years or even later. Specialisation in history is a matter of research and not memorizing facts for an exam. This, coupled with good writing and investigative skills are called for such research work.

There is more to the entire destruction of education system in India. Education is not something govts can cater to a large population. It needs private enterprise and dedication. The anti-Hindu Congress brought in the RTE which discriminates against Hindu schools and management. Schools run by Hindus will be subject to quotas, fee regulation and what not while none of the RTE nonsense applies to “minority” schools. What exactly is the cause for discrimination in something like education? ModiSarkar has so far shown no willingness to act on repealing or modifying the CRIMINAL RTE. Such Hindu-haters are also filing PILs in SC over prayers being recited in KV schools:

The prayer just happens to be in Sanskrit. A line like “Take me from darkness to light” has nothing to do with religion. It simply means the quest for truth and knowledge. Our history books have completely negated the contributions of Hindu scholars and sages of centuries who have enlightened the world. Instead, they have barbarians like Babar, Aurangzeb or Akbar being glorified.

Although history books are a different matter, you have to wonder what idiotic ideology guides someone like Prakash Javdekar when he considers a mass-murderer, serial women-exploiter like Fidel Castro a revolutionary. Cubans have suffered badly under his regime. And worse, this “Lump of Maida” Javdekar considers a mercenary, killer-for-hire thug like Che Guevara also a revolutionary. With such filth inside a person in a “Hindutva” govt, it is not surprising that this guy was such a terrible horror as HRD minister. Why Modi still persists with him can have only one explanation – A diktat by the Marathi-dominated RSS.

I have been in the school-education domain for nearly two decades to know what ails our schools and what stupidities and absurdities our schools indulge in or are FORCED to indulge in. Very frequently, Principals would ask if I knew a good Math or Biology or Physics teacher they can recruit. It seems around 2003-2004 CBSE introduced a subject called “Thinking Skills”. A Principal once asked me if I knew any teacher to teach “Thinking Skills”. I was a bit amused. There are, of course, specialists like Edward De Bono who have written tomes on the topic. I asked the Principal “Don’t your teachers possess thinking skills”? She was indeed taken aback.

How can you be a teacher without thinking skills? And even if teachers weren’t conscious about it, they can surely all be trained on it. It does not need a specialist. Thinking is a skill, not a talent and can definitely be taught and transferred. In absence of such a skill, you get a moronic tweet like the one on the left where the person is unable to tell the difference between Partition and the forced exodus of KPs. That’s the rotten problem with our schools that have little teaching of skills. The other problem is, unlike 2-3 decades ago, today’s Principal faces a huge set of tasks and challenges – students, teachers, parents, public, society, police, politicians, media and what not. She is not trained for all this. There is no specific Principal-certification course for Principals. The senior most teachers either get promoted or become a Vice-Principal or Principal by changing schools. It is only experience and not a certified training that makes one a school Principal currently. No one is even talking about this serious issue.

PM Modi cannot play a psychologist or counsellor to school kids forever. Much as he has good intentions at heart, this is not the role he should be playing. I strongly believe that school-education can be dramatically changed to be positive, without taking away any learning-goals and making it stress-free and enjoyable for students, teachers, parents and society in general. All we have seen from his dreadful HRD ministers are lipstick nonsense like turning schools into “Anger-free zones”. I am also absolutely sure such a change can be planned and proposed in a single year for implementation in the next academic year. You cannot permanently treat children as “victims of stress” like SC cases that go on for years. And Modi has the absolute power to change it all. If not, the next PM may not be a student-counsellor. Think about that.

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