Two school drop outs

Two boys, both children of security guards. One kid is above average when it came to grasp and quite intelligent , the other one a dyslexic child.

The above average kid was sent to a CBSE English medium school, could not cope with the medium of instruction and dropped out of school for good.

The dyslexic child went to a govt school and there was no support for a special needs child, he too dropped out.

How do we convince both parents that it is not the fault of the children but it is the system at fault and they should not be blaming the kids or punishing them for dropping out of school?

Window for sports

There is a very small window for children to explore sports in a serious manner (till 16/18 years max). Still why is it that we give preference to education that has a much larger window (life long) than to sports????

Adoption

Do people spend so much time thinking and asking questions around when they have their biological children? Why cant they follow the same while considering child adoption??????

Slum dog millionaire - Lingo kid

http://www.currybear.com/wordpress/?p=2316#comments

Economic downturn

What does economic downturn to IT crowd mean - watching your kids eat rice instead of burger and pizzas ... seriously people, in a country where hunger deaths are still a reality, these software professionals are trying to garner sympathy for themselves with these ridiculous statements.

An entire generation was thrown open to the credit card culture with very poor or no money management skills. One of the IT tycoons, started this fiasco for us, where he defined wealth as a measure of success. People misread it as only wealth is the measure of success and did not bother to strenghthen their values or principles in life. They lost the skills to handle difficulties in life.

I dont know if I will be seen as insensitive when I laugh at these 25/28 year olds who just dont have the skills or the attitude or the courage to manage a mild slip in their standard of living . A worker in a textile mill (with no college/school education) had more courage than this when factories and mills were shut down and people lost their jobs. They found alternate means to earn and make a living.

Inheritance

What would happen to the society if there was a strict law against inheriting wealth from family/friends/parents, grand parents, grand uncles et al.... ?

Bubble Boy

Once again - this is about a program on Australian TV.

Its about a child born with no immunity whatsoever and from the time of his birth he is kept in a bubble. He grows inside the bubble and the doctors create a space suit kind of stuff for him, so that he will have some mobility and see the world around him. It was so heart wrenching to see him inside the suit watching the other kids cycle and play. For some reason he is scared of the suit and refuses to get into it. They just expans the bubble and he gets his school lessons etc inside it with a psychologist working with him from outside. One doctor suggests that he comes out of the bubble and cope with life. They try a treatment which fails and just before he dies, the mother gets to touch him.

The medical ethics of this case was discussed. Apparently, this boy's case provided very useful insights to the medical field.

As I am typing this, I have tears in my eyes picturing the boy walk inside the bubble touching the walls of his confinement.

What a debate - Intelligent design and evolution

Australian TV telecast a program on a school that introduced "Intelligent Design" as part of their curriculum to teach biology. The court scene and the debate on whether it should be included, was so good .... I have never enjoyed anything on TV so much.
To cut a long story short (I strongly recommend that everyone watches the two part episode), one question to the Intelligent Design proponent - was - whether it is a science, since science is empirical in nature. He said yes it is and he asked them to observe the bacteria flagellum for 10,000 generations to see if it mutates and evolves since one of its feature according to him was intelligent design. When the Darwin proponent said that is not a good answer, this gentleman said has anyone tested the evolution process .. voila ...

I am not propagating Intelligent Design, but the way the debate progressed was so good ...........and it was a great learning for me

If you have it flaunt it

When I was young it was very common to hear this word alpam.... it meant people who are greedy and will not spend on others.
I was reading an article by Kanchi Sankaracharya that there is a sin known as alpitham. It means showing off your wealth and worldly possessions in an inappropriate manner. He further went on to say that flaunting your wealth is a sin, since it equals to eating food in front of someone starved/famished.
I am wondering if the word alpam stems from alpitham?
Does alpitham have a place in our 'if you have it flaunt it' world?

Desensitization

NDTV debate on WWE and its impact on children, triggered this blog.

Desensitization as a behavior modification technique in Psychology is used to treat phobias and anxieties, in addition to a host of other neurotic problems. In this process, the person is vicariously exposed to the anxiety provoking stimuli through visual imagery and the anxiety level is brought down.

Experts talk about children being able to distinguish between real and imaginary visuals. I have seen adults watching the video showing the beheading of a journalist , twin towers crumbling down and a boy in Bihar being tied to a bike and drawn without any feelings whatsoever.

It appeared to me that adults could not distinguish between reel and real since they are desensitized to violence by watching hollywood, tollywood, bollywood - movies.

Mind, has unique capabilities and somehow we seem to simplify things taking only the conscious mind into consideration. Even the psychiatrist on the show did not bring up the point on subconsicous and unconscious minds and how they interact with the conscious brain... these shows are turning more into entertainment rather than a platform for meaningful debates.

Love

'My love for her had killed my lust for others' - Graham Greene.

Is this what everyone wishes from the other? I would even want to substitute the word lust with love.

Password

Always thought I was a technophobe, I now realize I am a technodumbo.. learnt how to use my google account to log in just now

India - i love my India

Happened to see some statistics today:

Do you know where maximum income is spent by people living in slums - toilets - if it is a five member family @ 2Rs each 10Rs a day*30 days =300 Rs.

No of schools where there is no toilet for girls - 85% of govt schools

One of the reasons for girls dropping out of schools - no toilets

Number of teacher positions not filled - more than 35000

Number of trained teachers who are unemployed - lakhs

India has defined diversity in newer ways

Sensory Overload

TV channels' efforts to optimize screen space is making it difficult to view the program.

A ticker at the bottom with information running, a scroll bar on top with information flashing, weather forecast on top right corner flickering away, sound track for a documentary that suppresses the speaker's voice, half screen images of interview and the other half showing a song or some pictures on the interviewee............

Please please pass this feeback to channels and help the likes of me

Join the dots

football - servant - landlord - daugther - son- woman- lust- love- reason - boredom - fantasy - an orgy - love - marriage - happiness - heartache - anger - pain - separation - togetherness - coming together - repel - outside - inside - reason - manipulation - sincere- loneliness - marriage - friends

There are no random acts in this world everything is connected

Whining IT

A remote village in Kerala has no bus service, people come together, organize for a bus service
- a road is in bad shape in a village, villagers do shram dhan and get it fixed.

Bangalore roads - the golden highway that connects the IT barons' nests, is in bad shape - whine, whine, whine and whine more. Is it too difficult to get all employees to give away a day's pay, get them in groups to do some shram dhan and get the road fixed. Hasnt this gone on for too long.

I am not excusing the govt of its responsibilities, it is inept in a lot of ways. Isnt it better to look for a solution rather than point to the problem for years.

It is not new for corporate houses to take care of parks and green zones in traffic junctions, why not this too?

In fact in one of the TV shows where NRN was talking about the infrastructure and particularly the roads a doctor from Narayan Hridayalaya said - I see patients from villages that have unheard for roads and therefore a bad road does not bother my patients nor me. Isnt there something to learn and see here.

Pampered IT lot should start looking at the rest of the country too and then crib about their problems.

Interviewing Skills

TV channel interviewers are turning unnecessarily aggressive these days. Arnab Goswami in his interview with Sharukh, was nauseatingly aggressive and the same seems to be the style with Rajdeep and his wife too. These interviewers are starkly different from Vir Sanghvi who is very direct, does not sugar coat his words yet at the same time protects the respect of the interviewee. Barkha Dutt is so very patronizing to people and her approach seems to be " them and her with her speakers and audience. Is it a culture thing that we know either to be servile or to disrespect only.

This aggressive style seems to be an attempt to ape some of the BBC interviewers like Steven Cole and Tim Sebastain. What seems to be missing with our interviewers is the home work and the ability to identify spots where blunt directness is warranted. Steven and Tim do not maintain their directness throughout the session.

English - someone who is an English expert please correct me -

I hear news readers saying that's the wrap on today's news - is this correct, also I heard Aishwarya using expressions like - move forth, viewers have not oft seen a mujra. Sharukh saying I put my child to sleep (my heart skipped a beat when I heard this).

While I can understand cine personalities making errors, I think news readers need to be a l0t more careful.

I always thought wrap up is the expression and also it is move forward and and often seen and getting a child to sleep.

Nakeeran community, indha postil kutram kurai irundal mannithu porutharulga.

Sweet and sour teens

Same home, same parents, same school ....

First son (sixteen) concerns - how to help him get the highest score in school finals, which subjects to choose for higher studies, which place to send him, how much will it cost ................

Second son (fifteen) concerns - will he finish his school finals, what will he do to look after himself, will he get into drugs .............

Is there a magic mantra on parenting so that the concerns are limited to the ones for the first son ????

Equality

Once as a little girl I was given a lesson on equality by my father. The conversation went like this:

What do you think of equality?
I dont know

When your teacher in the staff room offers you a seat when you enter - is that equality?
Yes - she is allowing me to do that - so yes it is equality

Freedom and equality are not given - do you know that?
Me thoroughly confused

Here let me explain - when you go the staff room and sit on a chair and when your teacher does not say anything about it - only then you can assume there is equality in that relationship.

Today I realize he had simplified the abstract concept using teacher and staff room as an example - but the lesson is so deep rooted in me that I shudder and abhor any inherent power structure - be it schools, offices or home.

Wish he had lived longer, at least for me to check if I understood the word correctly now.

Definition of knowledge

Vijay TV hosted a very heated and meaningful talk show on reservation. Gyani brought up a wonderful perspective on defining knowledge.

He said 'if we walk through the campus where this talk show is being hosted and ask the gold medalists from schools/colleges, to name the trees, they may be at a loss, but a child from a village would be able to identify them with their common names like nochi, oomathai etc. Unfortunately we are unwilling to recognize that kind of knowledge as meaningful and we have defined ability to name the capital of Scandinavia as knowledge'.

How very true and his points on pro reservation were also very scientific and rational. I know I am opening a pandoras box with this last sentence :)-