Christmas celebrations At the Epiphany Church, Gurgaon

 

In this picture we can see the Sunday School children acting a Nativity Skit.

In the photograph above we can see Pastor Samuel Ashis Jacob and Subashish Nag.

In the photograph above we have an assembly of the Sunday School Children .

Subashish and Rohit Mathew.

Rohit, Pastor Samuel and Subashish

In this picture we can see from left, Mr.D.D.Lal, Mr.S.S.Hughes, and Pastor Samuel.

In the above picture we can see the bon fire celebration

During the advent week, the Epiphany Church of Gurgaon, civil Lines organised various activities to celebrate the Christmas season. On the 19th., the sunday school children presented a skit based on the birth of Jesus Christ. This was followed by a bon fire in the Church grounds. The tiny tots presented a beautiful skit which left everyone applauding!

Schools are Battlefields of Violence in Delhi!

The incident that took place in the Govt.School in Nehru Vihar, Timarpur, Delhi  on the second of December 2009is an eye opener for the policy makers of Education in  India! It was an unfortunate incident that speaks volumes about a system of Education that has gone badly wrong! The Hindustan Times reported that, “A school turned into a virtual battleground when two groups of students got into a fight allegedly over a girl in Timarpur in North Delhi on Wednesday morning.”

I feel that there are a few reasons why there is so much violence in our schools today. First and foremost, the hounding of teachers as culprits and sadists and by the Indian Media is an important contributor to this problem! Today, our students do not respect their teachers, this is because they have become totally fearless of their teachers, thanks to  the media. The media has insulted the dignified role of a teacher, the Guru Shishya relationship has been insulted by the media who are out to sensationalise stray incidents of students being punished by an already overstressed teacher! Students are not afraid of their teachers because the media has portrayed teachers as powerless organisms who can’t scold you, or reprimand you because corporal punishment is banned.  If students have no fear of teachers, then how do you expect them to remain disciplined? Today, a teacher is not allowed to discipline students.

The media doesn’t realise how difficult it is for a teacher to handle a class of fifty to seventy students in each class room. Parents are not able to handle two children, so how do you expect a teacher to handle seventy students? How does a teacher make students stick to disciplined behaviour unless there is a degree of fear for the teacher in the student?

Our policy makers should draft a policy on how to handle problems of discipline in schools of Delhi. Are they aware that discipline has become a major problem in Delhi today? Today students and teachers are a confused lot, thanks to the policies of the autocrats who are running our education departments. The recently introduced changes in the system of education for ninth and tenth class has left students and teachers baffled! Today students are not afraid of failing in their classes, so they don’t care about studies because they know that they will not be detained in class. The changes in the system of education have been too rapid for the students and their teachers. The reforms introduced in the system of education makes it virtually impossible for a student to fail in classes sixth, seventh and ninth.

The policymakers seem bent on experimenting with the system of education. Why are they playing with the lives of students? Why are they making board exams at the class tenth level optional? If students are not afraid of being detained, why will they be disciplined?

Today our schools have become virtual battlegrounds where students literally battle it out to prove their supremacy. A few months back unruly students went on a rampage in a school in Khajuri Khas in Delhi which resulted in the death of some students.

 

Government schools are overcrowded today , what with seventy to eighty students in each class. Today we are going for mass education.We are not bothered about quality! Overcrowding of classrooms is one of the reasons why our students have become unruly. It is very difficult to maintain discipline in a class of seventy students! Why then doesn’t our Government build new schools?

If discipline is an important issue why then is the government turning a blind eye to this problem?

The stories carried in newspapers today prove that students have become uncontrollable today, and that our system of education is defective, and that we need to do some serious thinking before it is too late. We can’t afford leniency in matters of discipline!

Dear policy makers, start thinking about why our students are more uncontrollable today! Don’t think introducing  grading or abolishing Board exams, think  about discipline! Today the issue of Discipline is a major issue! Don’t go for mass education, go for quality education,think about maintaining the dignity of the teacher.Do all this and I am sure you will get better discipline in the schools of Delhi! Don’t attempt to ape the systems of education in other countries, our traditional system of education was better than their system of education. Please ensure that your policies protect the guru shishya tradition of India!

Epiphany Church, Gurgaon Garden Fete 2009

 

 

The parishioners of the Epiphany Church, Gurgaon celebrated their Annual Garden Fete today, on the 22nd of November.The Rt.Reverend Bishop Sunil Singh Graced the occasion. The coordinator of the Fete was Captain Joshi.

The fete was a grand success thanks to the cooperation of all the members of the parish. There were food stalls, game stalls, stalls which sold Christmas Carol C.Ds., the white elephant stall was a great success. Besides there was tambola which was organised by Mr.and Mrs. Kumar.There were auctions for various hampers, and of course the crowning stroke was the lucky draw for the winners of the raffle draw.

The Army band did a wonderful job by playing some lively numbers.Given below are a couple of photographs of them while playing some lively tunes.

Given below are some more glimpses of the gathering at the Fete and the stalls.
 

Problems with the Communicative Approach in Teaching English

During the course of teaching English for fifteen years I have seen a steady veering away from the teaching of essentials of Grammar in classes leading to class eleventh.The amount of grammar taught in our syllabus is being steadily being Diluted by the framers of the curriculum and the syllabus. Grammar is the Maths of any language and you cannot teach the language without teaching Grammar! A student who doesn’t have a firm knowledge of Grammar can never be expected to frame sentences which are correct in syntax! So what is the teacher supposed to do while teaching English to students of classes sixth to eleventh of the C.B.S.E Board? Well, pat the answer comes, “Teach him to communicate!”  Which means, “How r u?” should be as good as, “How are you?” The C.B.S.E’s. Communicative and Interactive syllabus doesn’t do justice to the teaching of English in the schools of India! I feel dumbfounded by the expectations of the curriculum framers who think you can teach a student English without teaching him Grammar! Poor Chomsky would be confounded to see such a travesty in the teaching of this language! Chomsky believs that every child is born with a basic mental program, or circuit which responds to principles of Grammar, semantics, and syntax. So are we playing with Nature or the way the human brain is wired by neglecting the teaching of the principles of Grammar? I believe the answer is yes!

In class eleventh, the total marks awarded to the Grammar section in the Annual Question paper is ten-fifteen marks - that too in a paper of hundred marks! Forget about teaching formal Grammar! Editing and Omitting type of exercises can be effective only after the student is well versed in syntax and semantics of the subject! So now it seems our objective of teaching is only  to make  the student functionally aware about the language! It is no wonder therefore that a student may make as many mistakes as possible, he is not to be penalized for Grammatical errors, the only thing that matters is that he should “Communicate !”

I very strongly feel that when English is being taught as a second language then there should teaching of formal rules of grammar otherwise students are going to think in their mother tongue and then write a translation in English. One example how in Hindi read can also mean study, so a student who translates from Hindi would respond with the answer, 'I am reading in class ten,' to the question, 'What class are you in?'

Internal Assessment, a Boon or a Bane?

The recent decision of introducing internal assessment at the ninth class level by C.B.S.E. is a positive approach towards reducing stress in students.However the internal assessment should be made as objective as possible so that the teacher's personal prejudices don’t affect the marks he gives to the student. It is often seen that assessments which are subjective in nature lack validity and the variation in marks allotted by different examiners to the same answer script is too great! There is a plan to award 40 marks to internal assessment, and 60 marks to the traditional written exam in each session.Of the 40 marks, from April to September, 20 marks will be awarded, and the next 20 will be awarded from October to March. Sixty marks will be awarded for the written exams. Looking at the scenario, I believe that this system is more suited to schools where there are only 35-40 students in each class. Assessing 70-80 students in a class(which is the standard for many government School) would be a Herculean task!

Everyone knows that “favourite” students get better marks in assessments. Bias and prejudice creep into the teacher who is a human being after all! Mr.Koch, Einstein’s History teacher considered Einstein to be a misfit, a poor students.The teacher’s misconception was because Einstein was not able to mug up the date of the battle of waterloo and how many soldiers died as a result! Einstein’s unthinking honesty made the History teacher think that he was being rude and impudent towards him. Einstein told the History teacher that he he was more interested in the learning of ideas and why the soldiers were trying to kill each other.He was not interested in the statistics and the data, because these can in any case be found in books!

If Einstein could be a victim of prejudice, why not others? The idea behind these radical changes in assessment of students is reduction of stress. However if the students are to be given an internal assessment which is subjective in nature, then it will worsen the problem of stress. The teacher will have to be pleased and kept happy so that he might give more marks in internal assessment.

Objectivity in internal assessment can be ensured only through multiple choice question papers where there is only one answer. These answer sheets can then be scanned and there can be less interference by the teacher as the marks would be awarded by the scanning machine, or computer! However, this objective tool of assessment should be introduced in a phased manner! For Languages preparing an objective tool for assessment is going to be difficult. Imagine grading students for fluency in spoken English! Few of us can pronounce English words properly so I wonder how equipped English teachers are for assessing students in spoken English! Added to this the fact that most of our students do not live in an environment where English is spoken so an internal assessment in spoken English would be utterly Insane! Government School students will be at a great disadvantage!

Somehow or the other, I feel that because of the continuous evaluation, there will be more stress in the students, there will be more workload for teachers (what with maintaining records) and of course there will be little or no teaching in classes. Imagine the confusion chaos which will be created in Government schools where you have seventy to eighty students in each class!

Somehow, students today are more stressed than not because of the system of continuous evaluations! The policy makers had thought about doing away with one board paper, a pen and paper exam because of the stress factor. What is really happening today is that instead of one pen and paper exam per subject at the end of the year, a student has to face four formative assessments per subject per term ( which makes it eight formative assessments in a session) and add to this two summative assessments which really stress out the students. A common complaint made by parents of students studying in classes ninth to tenth is that the projects and assessments are more of a task for parents than their children. This slew of internal assessments has added to the burden of parents who, of course are partners in education.