The Education News report filed from Tamil Nadu (EW, March) on the increasing incidence of disruptive classroom behaviour across the state, is disturbing. It echoes the spurt of violence among adolescents in schools across the country. 

Therefore, it’s high time schools give due importance to moral science classes. As these subjects aren’t counted in the final exams, neither teachers nor students give them any importance. But it’s time to acknowledge that values education is as important as maths, science and languages.

Lata Chimalapati
ChennaI

 

Boring cover story

I found your cover story ‘Mending Indian education — 40 top principals and higher ed leaders speak up’ (EW, March) uninteresting. 

Except for a few insightful educationists like Mohandas Pai and Souvik Bhattacharyya, nobody charted a specific, practical roadmap for improving Indian education. All the other leaders gave vague suggestions which were repeated several times, making the feature boring.

This debate has been on for several decades now. The need of the hour is step by step implementation of the best suggestions. Even though your intent deserves appreciation, the responses were far from satisfactory.

Rita Dasgupta
Bangalore 

 

Catalyst cover feature

Your March cover story ‘Mending Indian education’ (EW, March) was interesting. For once, school principals and higher ed leaders expressed some concern about Union budget allocations for education. In my opinion, your cover story may help to inspire ivory tower principals, vice chancellors etc to pay greater attention to the bigger picture, set realistic goals and above all, handle criticism when it comes to their own school/ college budgets. 
Congratulations EW for showing them the way!

Tara Mittal
Mumbai

 

Vindicated editorial

Kudos for your editorial ‘Evil consequences of bank nationalisation’ (EW, March). Your edit presaged newspaper headlines on the days following: SBI reports surprise Q3 loss… NPAs at Rs.1.99 lakh crore; Syndicate Bank net loss Rs.870 crore; Central Bank loss Rs.1,664 crore; UCO Bank posts ninth straight Q3 loss of Rs.1,016 crore; Corpn. Bank standalone net loss Rs.1,240 crore; Andhra Bank loss Rs.532 crore.

Chunky Chavan
Pune

 

Deeper agenda

It is interesting that you discern an ‘indirect’ attempt by the BJP/NDA government at the Centre to impose Hindi as the country’s lingua franca (Postscript, EW, March). There’s more to it than imposing Hindi: today’s powers-that-be are clearly averse to modern education and its socio-cultural spin-offs, including what you refer to in your editorial as ‘denial of the socialisation freedoms to youth’.

There’s a campaign to idealise and romanticise the primeval Indian — unspoilt and untouched by ‘decadent’ Western mores, culture, and indeed, education — akin to the cherished “noble savage” of the English romantics. 
I guess it would be fair to conclude: uncultivated minds resist pluralism.

K. Pandiamuthu
Erode (Tamil Nadu)

 

Include skilling stories

I consider EW a true-to-its-word education magazine and especially enjoy reading its informative articles on Indian and foreign educational institutions. 

My suggestion is to also include profiles of institutions offering robotics training, drama, baking, cooking, or other such skilling programmes. I believe skilling is as important as academic education for 21st century learners.

Boney Khurana
Mumbai

Please see our new affiliated monthly ParentsWorld — Editor

 

Exotic menu

your insightful cover story (EW, March) inviting India’s most respected school principals and higher ed leaders to suggest ways and means to manage the existential crisis confronting Indian education, was a brilliant idea. 
Reading so many valuable inputs from educationists was like a buffet with an exotic menu on the table.

Congratulations on accommodating the many diverse views and interviews in one story!

Sridevi Iyer
Chennai