The River Runs Through
Shalini Balagopal
Yet another World Water Day went by on March 22, with politicians making the usual statements on the need to conserve this irreplaceable natural resource.
Shalini Balagopal
Yet another World Water Day went by on March 22, with politicians making the usual statements on the need to conserve this irreplaceable natural resource.
S. Upendran Hey, why are you reading this article, you dunce? Don’t you have anything better to do, you blockhead? Listen, if you don’t like what I’m saying, just turn the page, idiot. Did the words ‘dunce’, ‘idiot’ and ‘blockhead’ make you wince? It’s strange, isn’t it, that three words which we use liberally in our everyday conversation – especially, when the topic revolves around our students or administrators – should get us worked up when they are directed against us? Stranger still is the fact that when these words began to be used in the language, they didn’t have anything negative associated with them. The words ‘idiot’ and ‘blockhead’ were neutral words to begin with; ‘dunce’, on the other hand, was complimentary!Let’s take a ‘dekho’ at how the meanings of these words changed. Let’s begin with something nobody likes to be called: ‘idiot’. The word comes from the Greek ‘idios’ meaning ‘peculiar’ or ‘private’, and in ancient Greece anyone who did not hold public office was considered a ‘private person’. Since only a small percentage of the population held public office, ancient Greece was teeming with idiots! Some of the well-known ‘idiots’ of the time were Plato, Aristotle and Socrates! With the passage of time, however, the meaning of ‘idios’ gradually changed. From a person who did not hold public office, it evolved to mean a person who was incapable of holding one. From this, the word came to mean ‘mentally deficient’. You may be interested to know that the word ‘idiom’ is also derived from ‘idios’. Unlike ‘idiot’, the word ‘idiom’ retains its original meaning – ‘peculiar’. An idiom is very peculiar because there is no connection between the meanings of the words that make up the idiom and the meaning of the idiom itself. For example, when we say that someone has kicked the bucket, we don’t mean that the person has literally kicked a container used for storing water. We mean that he is dead. Now let’s move on to the second neutral word on our list: ‘blockhead’. Man has found a cure for many things: malaria, chicken pox, polio, etc. One thing that he hasn’t yet found a cure for is baldness. What did kings and queens do when they were confronted with a receding hairline? They began sporting wigs. Julius Caesar is believed to have worn one to cover his bald pate. His ladylove Cleopatra sported wigs which were adorned with gold and silver. In 16th and 17th century
The school year is well under way and our calendars are already set, with the build-up toward unit tests and examinations, school days and sports events. And in the middle of all this are those debatable things called training programmes. In government schools, they are a part of the regimented year for teachers; promotions and increments do not happen without a requisite number of ‘refresher’ courses at recognised training institutes. Such courses are offered by institutions like SCERTs and NCERT, as well as specialized institutes like the Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages and the Regional Institutes of English. And then of course there are the growing number of courses and workshops offered by private organisations designated as ‘education consultants’, publishing houses and non-governmental organisations trying to effect change in teaching/learning systems. There is as yet no clarity on what exactly is the long-term (or even short-term) impact of such training on the individual teacher, on the school, and ultimately, on the context of classroom learning for the child. In the absence of any external standard or regulatory authority for teacher ‘retraining’, schools need to think carefully about whether and how they should use these programmes, and what they really want their teachers to gain from them – and also whether the school is willing to follow through on the expectations emerging from such re-training. While individual professional excellence is achieved and maintained through continuous learning, it is important that the contexts in which this learning is applied are also friendly to change. All too often teachers go through training programmes with enthusiasm and come back to school bursting with ideas for change, only to find that the rigidity of the school structure does not allow for the exercise of these new ideas. Just as schools expect teachers to be open to learning and growth, so must they be willing to offer environments in which this can happen. Otherwise, the training becomes no more than a brief holiday away from the classroom (sometimes not even that) and one more certificate on the road to continued mediocrity.
Usha Raman Plagiarism – the intentional or unintentional use of material from another source without acknowledgment – has become a “rot” that has set into Indian society, especially into the educational system. While this happens more often than not because of the ease of the process of copy-pasting from the Internet, or due to lack to time, or because it is just easier to use someone else’s work than spend time and energy creating your own, it is also because children often just don’t realise that it is not the right thing to do. We consider how teachers can deal with his culture of plagiarism. You open the first project file, slick and sharp in its clear plastic cover and blue spine, with a beautifully illustrated cover. “This child has certainly taken a lot of trouble over her work!” you think. You sit back and begin to read, expecting the content to live up to the promise of the packaging. And indeed it does. The sentences indicate a fluency that amazes you, the ideas expressed with clarity and elegance. You’re impressed. Paragraph after paragraph of perfectly formed ideas, building an argument that wins the day. You give the project top marks, then turn to check the name on the cover as you enter the marks into your register. Hmm…strange, this child never showed this much potential before. On a hunch, you type a random paragraph from this project into the Google search bar on your computer screen and voila! an entire paper on precisely the topic you had assigned. With a few changes here and there, this is the project you had just graded, word for word. Such a scenario is becoming increasingly common, with a number of children in urban schools having easy access to readily packaged information on the Internet. It’s easy to copy and paste text, often images as well, and simply turn it as your own work, most often, with no acknowledgments made. Sometimes, a sloppily put together list of web sites (with incomplete addresses) serves as a reference list but it is never clear what extent of information was just lifted straight off those sites and how much of the paper is the student’s own analysis or insight. Of course, copying is not restricted to material off the Net; it can just as easily (though with slightly more labour) be done from a book in the library, a report taken from a family member or friend, or a project submitted
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