Mom, did you read this?

When my son waved a news paper in his hand asking the question, I was in a sullen mood.

“Yes, I saw it too. The sensex slipped by 300 points, so what”? I retorted.

The US$ declined, a barrel of oil became more dearer, more engineering colleges are likely to be opened in our state, IT engineers recruitment is stopped- so what son?

We will continue to eat well, see tearials in the television (aptly coined word-eh? my invention) (Smile), watch international cricket players in the Chennai team play like Tamilnadu players in T20 competition-right?

When my son saw my ‘not so favorable’ mood, he left the paper he was waving at me on my bed and left. The issue was named “Scholar’, a supplementary issue on education brought by “The Hindu’-a leading news paper in India.

On it, I saw a man with the same ‘so what ‘question on his face and beside him, in

bold letters were these words, “Myth or reality?”.

I decided, “This must be a rare coincidence of moods” and let me in on the article that was about the availability of quality education in India. The man in picture was Dr. N. Ramasubramanyan, an academician.

Wait, the name rings a bell. Oh yes, now I recall. My friend Kasturirangan, a top advertisement executive in ‘The Hindu’, called me and asked me to read the ‘Scholar’ for which he said he contributed.

I knew (or I thought I knew) exactly what is going to be inside; one more concerned educationist is going to vent his views and opinions on the present education that is sure to be sarcastic at the bureaucracy.

Brushing away the inner protest, I read the article but after the first page, I decided that there is no more than statistical figures and I could not fathom what the author was driving at.

Again after a few hours, my son raised the topic. He said the article was of course full of statistics that few would be interested in but Dr. Ramasubramanyan took the pain to cite those statistics only to reveal that the availability of quality education is a myth.

So I read the article again after mentally apologizing to the educationist. Being an academician myself since 1987, I have some strong views on what is lacking in the present education system but I also have concrete ideas to remedy the malady.

Yes, Dr. Ramasubramanyan, I am with you so far on your conclusion but then…

Oh well, that’s alright. Who is John Galt after all?

Acknowledgement: ‘The Hindu’, S.K. Kasturirangan and Dr. Ramasubramanyan

Image courtesy: Google Images