Archives September 2007

Of late, many students who could not get admission in the medical courses in India were making a bee-line for foreign universities. Among them, Central Asian republics and China were the main countries. The fact that education in socialist countries is not costly was also one of the reasons. Recently, China has limited the admission of Indian students to thirty. The reason given was that the foreign students dilute the standard. Even if other countries advertise that a pre-knowledge of their language - French, German or Chinese is not compulsory, it should be impressed upon the students that unless one knows the language of the country, they cannot make full use of their visit. The result is bound to be bad because it will not be very wise to expect teachers and professors in other countries to know English, Hindi or Tamil and be able to teach in these languages. more...

Long time back, there was a trend in school education. To raise the level of standard in high schools, the set theory, calculus, PERT, optimization etc. were introduced right in the 8th standard classes. Later, they were shifted to higher classes. By comparison with other developed countries, our +2 education is as good as or even better than that in many countries. However, we have to give more importance for clear concepts. This is what is being wanted now by CBSE and IIT's. Yet, when we compare the eleventh and twelfth chemistry text books with the twelfth physics text, there is a glaring difference between the two. While Bohr Atom Model is treated in the twelfth class in physics, right in the eleventh class, quantum mechanical model, hybridization and chemical bonding are studied in chemistry. When one talks of atomic wave functions, atomic and molecular orbitals and probability densities, there more...