EDUCATION

Guest post by MAYA JOHN Given the rampant social and economic inequalities in our society, education has been seen by majority of the common masses as a tool for moving up the social ladder. Their aspirations for higher segment jobs and status constitute the largest component of the growing demand for higher education.Nevertheless, the opinion … Continue reading Online Education, the Latest Stage of Educational Apartheid: Maya John →

It is the anxiety-inducing nightmare for the studious: A dream where you find yourself in an exam hall, which might, on ordinary days, be a gym or some other facility.  It is repurposed for that most cruel of blood sports: sorting out the learned from the dolts, the prize winners from the dunces.  The stern invigilators gaze as you like vermin to liquidate.  You are seated on a firm stool, rarely comfortable. You have been checked to see if you have any cheating accoutrements.  Permitted items: scrap paper, a pencil, an eraser.

As I had last month, I’d wanted in my three reads this month to start addressing the alarming bellicosity of Washington in respect of several nations, but most frighteningly with China. For all those with some inkling of the material factors placing the West and Eurasia on a collision course, such beating of war dreams – aided as ever by the ‘liberal’ Guardian – is wholly to be expected, but its predictability makes the warmongering no less worrying.

Emmett Street Simon Jenkins recent piece in Thursday’s Guardian is worth reading. Jenkins, a right-wing commentator, also happens to be one of the few genuine journalists left on that particular paper. In this rather bizarre piece, he opines that the cancellation of this year’s GCSE`s and A level exams provides a template for future educational …

The coronavirus pandemic is seen as a ‘useful crisis’ in which to transform the economy. Yet the university system has not received any such ‘stimulus’ of fresh ways of thinking about education. While exams do play a role, they are being fetishized as the return of ‘normalcy’ even as many students have been left to themselves in the face of[Read More...]

Guest post by MAYA JOHN Under the condition of lockdown while we are confronted with images and accounts of the suffering of the labouring poor, and all around us there appears to be a pervasive social chaos, in our universities students and teachers are supposed to return to an atomized life condition, and essentially pursue … Continue reading Fears and Furies of Online (Mis)education – Lockdown and Beyond: Maya John →

This tribute to Prof HARI VASUDEVAN by Prof SOBHANLAL DATTA GUPTA, who passed away in Kolkata recently, is being reproduced here, courtesy Mainstream Weekly. Thereafter, as we proceeded in our work on the publication of the texts of the documents, we began to face insurmountable resistance, quite surprisingly, from a section of the Left establishment … Continue reading Hari Vasudevan, the Soviet Archives and the Left Establishment: Sobhanlal Datta Gupta →

India has started Lockdown 4.0 with dismal numbers. We are already over 1 lakh cases, and as much as NITI Aayog would predict otherwise, the slump in cases is yet to come. A large part of the country’s 1.3 billion population has been at home since over 50 days now; I say a large part because it excludes the homeless[Read More...]

The unprecedented situation that the global community faces in the wake of Corona induced pandemic and the fear, panic, isolation and uncertainty that it has brought with it, has left many wondering about the future of the world in general and their lives in particular. We, and I am sure I can say this for almost the entire world population,[Read More...]

Practically speaking, government might do well to maintain a more vigorous countermisinformation establishment.
— Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule