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Koichi Tanaka, born in Toyama, Japan (1959). When he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry, he was one of the youngest science laureates ever, and the 2002 Nobel Prize that he received was actually for a discovery that he made when he was only 25 years old. In 1985, he found a new and better way to analyze biological macromolecules such as proteins. His contribution has been integral to drug research and development; to early detection of ovarian, breast, and prostate cancers; to diagnosing and studying the spread of malaria; and to finding out which substances made during mass food production may be harmful.

Though a good student in high school, he slacked off some in college, and after failing German class, he had to repeat an entire year. He majored in electrical engineering because he thought it would be easy to get a job with the degree, but he failed the entrance examination for the electronics company he wanted to work for. His college mentor suggested he consider working for Shimadzu Corporation, a manufacturer of scientific instruments and medical equipment such as X-ray devices. He hoped to work in the medical equipment area and easily passed the employment examination. But rather than putting him in the medical manufacturing section, the company sent him to work in research and development in the analytical instruments division.

His specific task there, he said, was "to search for a matrix that would enable nondestructive ionization of macromolecules by efficiently absorbing the laser energy." In other words, they were looking for a way to analyze macromolecules (such as proteins) with a scientific instrument called a mass spectrometer — but the twist was to do it such a way as to leave the protein intact. The problem with a macromolecule such as protein was that the process of ionizing (giving them an electrical charge) caused the macromolecule to fragment into tiny pieces, destroying its structure. So Tanaka's task was to come up with the right combination of chemicals that would allow the protein's structure to remain intact.

The laboratory where he worked stocked hundreds of substances that were possible solutions for the matrix, and the options were multiplied many times over by the possible combinations. Since he'd majored in electrical engineering and had a limited background in chemistry, there was a big gap in his knowledge level compared to other researchers in this area. He worked his way by trial and error through the seemingly endless list of possible solutions, repeating the process so often that he said he'd "become one with these substances and the instrument."

Then, on a February day in 1985, he mistakenly used a glycerin-Ultra Fine Metal Powder mixed matrix instead of the cobalt one he'd intended. He realized right away what he'd done, but his grandmother's words "what a waste" floated through his mind, and he set aside the mistaken mixture instead of throwing it away. He put it in the vacuum chamber of the mass spectrometer to dry it out and evaporate the unwanted glycerin, hoping that he could salvage the part of the mixture that he had intended to use in the first place. Wanting to hurry the process, he turned on the laser beam and irradiated the mixture.

He kept his instrument, the mass spectrometer, running and he kept glancing at the results because he wanted to make sure that all of the glycerin had disappeared, at which point he'd be able to use the mixture as first intended. As he monitored the results he noticed a signal peak he'd never seen before. It was mixed in with noise peaks on the machine, which always annoyed him, and so it caught his attention. He repeated his experiment, confirmed his findings, and refined his experiments. After the patent application had been completed, the process, called soft laser desorption-mass spectrometry (SLD-MS) was reported to the scientific community in 1987.

Tanaka later said that because he was not a specialist, he might have been at a disadvantage in looking for the correct matrix, but that it turned out that common knowledge was an obstacle. At the time, most chemists thought that it was impossible to ionize big molecules like proteins. But because he wasn't aware of many of the commonly held rules of chemistry, he tried things that everyone else knew would not work. Tanaka has noted that it was a "monumental blunder" that led to the discovery of Soft Laser Desorption. The improved method of analysis has led to huge advances in chemistry, medical and veterinary science, pharmaceuticals, and food science in the past two decades.

courtesy:Writers Almanac
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Literary works & Orations shape cognition

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I was quite thrilled to read what Mayilsamy Annadurai had to say in The Hindu. He is the Project Director of Chandrayan I & II.

According to him Literary works and orations have the potential to shape the cognitive elements of a scientist and the way he/she reacts to challenging problems. They also strengthen the scientists beleif in extraordinary and out-of-the box solutions.

According to him communication among Indian scientists should improve. This skill has to be gained as a student...

Original article in The Hindu link
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The TEDx conversations II

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Sociologists have been speculating about larger participation in political decision making process. Last Saturday as 6 of us sat down for the 3rd TEDx Conversations, it was Seth Godin who came on to talk about ‘Tribes’. The talk was delightful as he sprinkled wit on some serious talk capturing us for the whole length.

Nathan was part of a team that was given the task of cleaning up San Francisco of stray dogs/animals…. The job was done in great speed but Nathan and his boss were not pleased. What did Nathan do? He wanted to make San Francisco a ‘No Kill City’. He went to the community, garnered support and then went to the next and the next and so on.

The key is to ‘Smash the Light Bulb’ (a jewish wedding ceremony) to user in change. For average ideas need high advertising working an hypnotic spell. New Ideas work a lot differently… they can energize the community and glue them together. Tribes are what matters now. The church tribe, work tribe, community tribe and now with the internet tribes are everywhere (include the TEDx Chennai tribe)

Tribes can change the world. I saw this incredible Video of Estonians cleaning up their country of more than 10 000 tons of illegal waste lying around in nature. They developed a special software and geomapped more than 10 000 dumping sites all over the country. And on 3rd of May 2008, engaging hundreds of organizations and more than 50 000 volunteers, they cleaned it all up in just 5 hours! Phenomenal cost and time savings.

Post this vide we discussed and each of us were given an opportunity to express – the tribe we would like to start and the tribe we would be involved in. Six different positions, and if we were to nurture even 3 of those the society will feel the impact.

Siftables, the video that used the traditional blocks children play with but with some awesome interfaces. To a large extent it takes into consideration the natural proclivity of the brains method of learning – not structured but a bit randomized. If siftables were to hit the market, I think it should, then the way we learn, communicate, interact will be a lot different.

The discussion went on and on… A splendid time of learning.. to close the session we had Eve Ensler talking about Vagina Warriors.

We left with a strong urge to do. Let that seed grow
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Butchering a brand

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When I first heard about this day care centre that goes by the name - Kanchana Paati, I was excited. Actually what a name??? Then I got closer, visited their website ... surprise, surprise more..the designs were so appropriate, the colors the fonts captured it all. The bigger surprise... I know the guy behind this - Suri.

I caught up with him, even worked closely with him for 3 days and I realised that he was Butchering the Brand and not trying to create it... The anxiety of make more money sometimes can make you disregard the neccessity to nurture the brand and build on it, well if it naturally ages its probably okay.. but when ones orientation to 'numbers' becomes an obsession design and class rushes out.

This is exactly what happend to Kanchana Paati. Roots & Wings a excellent brand ( nowhere near Kanchana Paati as a brand name) launches its centre in Annanagar and the person heading the centre is an ex-Kanchana Paati employee. The reaction to this is some small boards put up around Annanagar ...ugly eyesore.

This my dear, is the end of the brand Kanchana Paati.

Education and Creativity

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Sir Ken Robinson is author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, and a leading expert on innovation and human resources. In this talk, he makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it.

Good morning. How are you? It's been great, hasn't it? I've been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I'm leaving.

There have been three themes, haven't there, running through the conference, which are relevant to what I want to talk about.

One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity in all of the presentations that we've had and in all of the people here. Just the variety of it and the range of it.

The second is, that it's put us in a place where we have no idea what's going to happen, in terms of the future, no idea how this may play out.

I have an interest in education -- actually, what I find is, everybody has an interest in education; don't you? I find this very interesting. If you're at a dinner party, and you say you work in education -- actually, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly, if you work in education, you're not asked. And you're never asked back, curiously. That's strange to me. But if you are, and you say to somebody, you know, they say, "What do you do," and you say you work in education, you can see the blood run from their face. They're like, "Oh my god," you know, "why me? My one night out all week." But if you ask people about their education, they pin you to the wall. Because it's one of those things that goes deep with people, am I right?, like religion, and money, and other things.

I have a big interest in education, and I think we all do, we have a huge vested interest in it, partly because it's education that's meant to take us into this future that we can't grasp.

If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise that's been on parade for the past four days, what the world will look like in five years' time. And yet we're meant to be educating them for it.
So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary.

And the third part of this is that we've all agreed nonetheless on the really extraordinary capacity that children have, their capacities for innovation. I mean, Sirena last night was a marvel, wasn't she, just seeing what she could do. And she's exceptional, but I think she's not, so to speak, exceptional in the whole of childhood. What you have there is a person of extraordinary dedication who found a talent.

And my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.

So I want to talk about education and I want to talk about creativity. My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status. [applause] Thank you.

That was it, by the way, thank you very much. Soooo, 15 minutes left. Well, I was born ...

I heard a great story recently, I love telling it, of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson, she was 6 and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this little girl hardly paid attention, and in this drawing lesson she did. The teacher was fascinated and she went over to her and she said, "What are you drawing?" and the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the girl said, "They will in a minute."

When my son was 4 in England -- actually he was 4 everywhere, to be honest; if we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was 4 that year -- he was in the nativity play. Do you remember the story? No, it was big, it was a big story. Mel Gibson did the sequel, you may have seen it, "Nativity II." But James got the part of Joseph, which we were thrilled about. We considered this to be one of the lead parts. We had the place crammed full of agents in T-shirts: "James Robinson IS Joseph!" He didn't have to speak, but you know the bit where the three kings come in. They come in bearing gifts, and they bring gold, frankincense and myrhh. This really happened -- we were sitting there and we think they just went out of sequence, we talked to the little boy afterward and we said, "You OK with that" and he said "Yeah, why, was that wrong?" -- they just switched, I think that was it. Anyway, the three boys came in, little 4-year-olds with tea towels on their heads, and they put these boxes down, and the first boy said, "I bring you gold." The second boy said, "I bring you myrhh." And the third boy said, "Frank sent this."

What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong.

Now, I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. If you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong.

And we run our companies like this, by the way, we stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.

And the result is, we are educating people out of their creative capacities.

Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather we get educated out of it. So why is this?

I lived in Stratford-on-Avon until about five years ago, in fact we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, so you can imagine what a seamless transition this was. Actually we lived in a place called Snitterfield, just outside Stratford, which is where Shakespeare's father was born. Were you struck by a new thought? I was. You don't think of Shakespeare having a father, do you? Do you? Because you don't think of Shakespeare being a child, do you? Shakespeare being 7? I never thought of it. I mean, he was 7 at some point; he was in somebody's English class, wasn't he? How annoying would that be? "Must try harder."

Being sent to bed by his dad, you know, to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now," to William Shakespeare, "and put the pencil down. And stop speaking like that. It's confusing everybody."

Anyway, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, and I just want to say a word about the transition, actually. My son didn't want to come. I've got two kids, he's 21 now, my daughter's 16; he didn't want to come to Los Angeles. He loved it, but he had a girlfriend in England. This was the love of his life, Sarah. He'd known her for a month. Mind you, they'd had their fourth anniversary, because it's a long time when you're 16. Anyway, he was really upset on the plane, and he said, "I'll never find another girl like Sarah." And we were rather pleased about that, frankly, because she was the main reason we were leaving the country.

But something strikes you when you move to America and when you travel around the world: every education system on earth has the same heirarchy of subjects. Every one, doesn't matter where you go, you'd think it would be otherwise but it isn't. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on earth.

And in pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are nomally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think maths is very important but so is dance. Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do. We all have bodies, don't we? Did I miss a meeting?

Truthfully what happens is, as children grow up we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads. And slightly to one side.

If you were to visit education as an alien and say what's it for, public education, I think you'd have to conclude, if you look at the output, who really succeeds by this, who does everything they should, who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners, I think you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors. Isn't it. They're the people who come out the top. And I used to be one, so there. And I like university professors, but you know, we shouldn't hold them up as the high-water mark of all human achievement. They're just a form of life, another form of life. but they're rather curious and I say this out of affection for them, there's something curious about them, not all of them but typically, they live in their heads, they live up there, and slightly to one side. They're disembodied. They look upon their bodies as a form of transport for their heads, don't they? It's a way of getting their head to meetings.

If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, by the way, get yourself along to a residential conference of senior academics, and pop into the discotheque on the final night, and there you will see it, grown men and women writhing uncontrollably, off the beat, waiting until it ends so they can go home and write a paper about it.

Now our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there's a reason. The whole system was invented round the world there were no public systems of education really before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism.

So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas: Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician; don't do art, you're not going to be an artist. Benign advice -- now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution.

And the second is, academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can't afford to go on that way.

In the next 30 years. according to Unesco, more people worldwide will be graduating through education than since the beginning of history. [12:27] More people, and it's the combination of all the things we've talked about -- technology and its transformation effect on work, and demography and the huge explosion in population.

Suddenly degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job it's because you didn't want one. And I didn't want one, frankly.

But now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other. It's a process of academic inflation. And it indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.

We know three things about intelligence: One, it's diverse, we think about the world in all the ways we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically. We think in abstract terms, we think in movement. Secondly, intelligence is dynamic. If you look at the interactions of a human brain, as we heard yesterday from a number of presentations, intelligence is wonderfully interactive. The brain isn't divided into compartments. In fact, creativity, which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value, more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things. The brain is intentionally -- by the way, there's a shaft of nerves that joins the two halves of the brain called the corpus collosum, and it's thicker in women. Following on from Helen yesterday, I think this is probably why women are better at multitasking, because you are, aren't you, there's a raft of research, but I know it from my personal life.

If my wife is cooking a meal at home, which is not often, thankfully, but you know, she's doing (oh, she's good at some things) but if she's cooking, you know, she's dealing with people on the phone, she's talking to the kids, she's painting the ceiling, she's doing open-heart surgery over here; if I'm cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out, the phone's on the hook, if she comes in I get annoyed, I say "Terry, please, I'm trying to fry an egg in here, give me a break." (You know that old philosophical thing, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it happen, remember that old chestnut, I saw a great T-shirt recently that said, "If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?")

And the third thing about intelligence is, it's distinct. I'm doing a new book at the moment called Epiphany which is based on a series of interviews with people about how they discovered their talent. I'm fascinated by how people got to be there. It's really prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman who maybe most people have never heard of, she's called Gillian Lynne, have you heard of her? Some have. She's a choreographer and everybody knows her work. She did Cats, and Phantom of the Opera, she's wonderful. I used to be on the board of the Royal Ballet, in England, as you can see, and Gillian and I had lunch one day and I said Gillian, how'd you get to be a dancer? And she said it was interesting, when she was at school, she was really hopeless. And the school, in the 30s, wrote her parents and said, "We think Gillian has a learning disorder." She couldn't concentrate, she was fidgeting. I think now they'd say she had ADHD. Wouldn't you? But this was the 1930s and ADHD hadn't been invented at this point. It wasn't an available condition. People weren't aware they could have that.

Anyway she went to see this specialist, in this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother and she was led and sat on a chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this doctor talked to her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school. And at the end of it -- because she was disturbing people, her homework was always late, and so on, little kid of 8 -- in the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian and said, "Gillian I've listened to all these things that your mother's told me, and I need to speak to her privately." He said, "Wait here, we'll be back, we won't be very long," and they went and left her.

But as they went out the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk, and when they got out the room, he said to her mother, "Just stand and watch her." And the minute they left the room, she said, she was on her feet, moving to the music. And they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, "Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick; she's a dancer. Take her to a dance school."

I said, "What happened?"

She said, "She did. I can't tell you how wonderful it was. We walked in this room and it was full of people like me, people who couldn't sit still. People who had to move to think." Who had to move to think. They did ballet, they did tap, they did jazz, they did modern, they did contemporary. She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School, she became a soloist, she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet, she eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School and founded her own company, the Gillian Lynne Dance Company, and met Andrew Lloyd Weber.

She's been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history, she's given pleasure to millions, and she's a multimillionaire.

Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

Now, I think -- [applause] What I think it comes to is this: Al Gore spoke the other night about ecology and the revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson. I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth, for a particular commodity, and for the future, it won't serve us.

We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children. There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said, "If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." And he's right.

What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination. We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely, and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked about. And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are, and seeing our children for the hope that they are. And our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future -- by the way, we may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them make something of it. Thank you very much.
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Yashpal Committe report on Higher education

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The Yashpal Committee Report - for the rejuvenation of Higher Education in India has come out.

To move it toward more active and creative form. Now this a true confession of the education system today. Can we say the ones who have successfully traversed this not imaginative? Oh Yes I agree.

We were struck by the fact that over the years we have followed policies of
fragmenting our educational enterprise into cubicles. We have overlooked
that new knowledge and new insights have often originated at the
boundaries of disciplines. We have tended to imprison disciplinary studies in opaque walls. This has restricted flights of imagination and limited our
creativity. This character of our education has restrained and restricted our
young right from the school age and continues that way into college and
university stages. Most instrumentalities of our education harm the potential
of human mind for constructing and creating new knowledge. We have
emphasized delivery of information and rewarded capability of storing
information. This does not help in creating a knowledge society.

Look what it has to say on Engineering and Management institutions that have mushroomed

Mushrooming engineering and management colleges, with some notable
exceptions, have largely become, mere business entities dispensing very poor
quality education.

Contents

1. THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY (blah blah blah )

2. CHALLENGES OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR

The Indian system of higher education has also kept itself aloof
from the local knowledge base of the worker, the artisan and the
peasant. Over the years, there has been an increasing tendency to treat
teaching and research as separate activities, although for very
different reasons, with some wishing to preserve research as élite
activity. This distinction is being reinforced by separate policies,
programmes and structures.
We can then look forward to the day
when IITs and IIMs would be producing scholars in literature,
linguistics and politics along with engineering and management
wizards who would have substantial motivation for engagement
with the local community, and the opportunity to use and
enhance learning by solving real-life problems in their immediate
environment.

The issue of geo-cultural diversities is another critical area
where our universities have increasingly failed to act as spaces
where students would learn to respect diversity as a value. In a
world where boundaries are blurring, it is important that we
learn to acknowledge and appreciate differences and not try to
homogenize everything.

Total pages 94 (reviwed 1-16)

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NCLB - No Child Left to Bleed???

Shanno — a 11-year-old in class II of a municipal school in Delhi died on April on 17. Her teacher made her crouch like a chicken, with bricks on her back, in the hot sun for 2 days for being “just average”? Not good enough to sit inside the school with the other children, because she was a dyslexic, and she could not recite the full English alphabet string? In a society like this NCLB should take on a meaning perhaps "No Child Left to Bleed" is more appropriate.
News paper report : http://tinyurl.com/ccrfky

Fast ForWord and India

Had not been for my exposure to Fast ForWord I would have never in my life time understood what a child is going through and that the solution for learning problems are as simple as playing games. This is exactly what excited me, and as a business man I saw the money, but as a human being I saw the changes one can bring about in the Indian society with the Fast ForWord interventions.

If Fast ForWord is used as reading intervention program in the West I believed that it could be used to transform people and families in India. As a student I have first hand knowledge on the trauma of an 'average' student, the low performing student is dead. Fortunately my children have performed well academically but as they relate the gory stories in school, the teaching standards and the ignorance - I am appalled.

Now look at what happened with three children recently as reported in The Hindu
... I have reproduced the case of Akriti below, but I sincerely hope you would read the main story in The Hindu.

Goldy Malhotra, the artist-educationist principal of Modern School in Delhi was in the middle of a disciplinarian’s nightmare. Reduced to impotent gesticulation and loud protestations of innocence, she was being harangued by the enraged classmates of 17-year-old Akriti, who died of an asthma attack. That elite school had no first-aid facilities, no doctor on call, and no arrangements to rush her in time to hospital. Instead of offering an unconditional and complete apology Ms. Malhotra came out with a memorial statement: “Akriti hamaari bachchi thi,” she announced mournfully to the assembled media. The very next moment (as yet unrecorded by the print media) she put Akriti in an all too predictable slot: “Academically she was just average.”

Average… A damning word, in our democracy! Pardon me, Ms. Malhotra, your slip is showing. The word “average” does not begin to approach the utter intellectual mediocrity of the methods by which children are branded in our schools. The common people are all just average! Akriti’s grade point average was used to put her down in life, and is now used as a shroud to wrap up her very memory. That she was not a school topper defines her! Do only the so-called “best” and “brightest” ( judged by our abysmally mediocre educationists) deserve to live?

And Shanno — why did that 11-year-old in class II of a municipal school in Delhi die on April on 17? For being “just average”? Not good enough to sit inside the school with the other children, because she was irregular, because she failed to recite the full English alphabet string? An expert took a look at her handwriting in her notebook, announced that she was dyslexic and observed loftily that teachers in government schools don’t know how to deal with it. Does this imply that private schools are staffed with certified B.Eds who know all about learning disabilities? Should we hand over even more of our government schools (and their prime real estate) to the private school lobby?

Shanno’s autopsy, they say, does not rule out epilepsy. Her classmates have said that she was made to crouch like a chicken, with bricks on her back, in the hot sun. It’s entirely possible for anybody to throw a fit, in such circumstances. Maybe it didn’t happen like that…but what did happen?


Now if we do not have a solution and if we are content with shedding a tear, I guess its okay.

Plot, Prediction and Studying

Providing an environment of study can be a challenge. Its better to study in a noisy and predictable environment than in a quite threatening atmosphere.

As human beings we are endowed with a complex time space movement system. It remembers the past, can respond to the present and wants to predict the future. The key is to reduce prediction errors.

The home environment for the child to study needs to be predictable. If there are many surprises happening at home it will make the prediction mechanism of the child to work over time, thereby affecting the concentration of the child?

To help the child make better predictions and focus on the subject the child must be equipped with various experiences of the environment that are easily predictable. Limited relevant information and/or experience often lead to unsuccessful response as much as new experiences.

While reading a book within a short time we will have an idea of the plot, provided we have read such novels. But we carry on with the reading since our problem solving system, with prior experiences, is trying to unravel and predict the plot. I continue to read because of the limited information available and don’t have confidence in my prediction. I am trying to match my wits with that of the author and the author in turn takes me through complicated twists and turns and makes it challenging for me. The more I read the more I unravel the mystery and get pleasure in proving my predictions.

This complex predictive process can be in a novel but it needs to be simplified as you build a learning environment at home. The child must be familiar with every sound or movement that happens as he/she is studying. This familiarity will help the child resolve the challenges or threats of the environment in a short time and actually make the child feel good about the right prediction (just the way you will feel good if you can predict a novel accurately by reading 3o pages). This feel good will actually help the child in study by setting the mind on problem solving mode and help in handling the challenges of the lessons with ease. Surely it’s far better than studying in a very quite or silent environment.

There must be discipline or a system that needs to be followed. If the child reads in an easily predictive environment both at school and at home the chances are the attentional focus will be completely devoted to study and the rapid solving the inconsistencies or insecurities in the environment will actually help the child while studying provided the child is familiar with it. Its better than studying in an very quite environment the child is not familiar with.

Why should you expose your children to literature?

He was fat and plumpy, quite dull looks, and cried endless the first day I met him. He refused to talk and acted so freaky. I get along well with kids, but this kid would not budge. It was very easy for me to say he needed help. His mom agreed, in fact she was actually moved to tears thinking about her son.

Day one, day two and day three were very frustrating but on day four his crying stopped and then we became friends he started playing with me. By the 8th day I realised that he was not a bozo but a smart kid - a bonzer

This child did not perform well in academics and in life, well what was the problem? He was smarter than the average dude, life with low challenge actually killed his enthusiasm and his spirit. I realised that the genius in a child can get get lost with the ones with learning difficulties if measure with the academic yardstick.

The solution would be to expose children to literature and thought. Complicated subjects can be handled by child. For instance, Krishnas plea to Arjuna to do his duty and Arjuna reluctance to do his duty considering the consequence (of war). . This cannot be resolved easily but if you expose these conflicts to the child in an early age you are feeding his brain with challenges, and the brain loves it.

These concepts will constantly resonate in the childs mind and will occupy and keeps his neurons firing always. The child will search all over to resolve conflicts, the chances of the child gravitating to higher levels of reading is very high.

Go on dont underestimate the child.

India must look at exporting education

Philip G Attbach sounds a note of caution with the article titled BEWARE OF THE TROJAN HORSE in the Hindu dated 18.07.08. The article encapsulates very interesting insights of the ‘education markets’, ‘education products’ and the motives. I pray that our policy makers make studied decisions and preserve our academic sovereignty. The honorable stakeholders in India should also abstain from selling products in demand and invest in sustaining research, seminal work and view academics as preparation for citizenship. While Goldman Sachs and the McKinsey Global Institute predict India’s future prospects with optimism predicting that by 2050 India’s GDP would surpass that of the US. India should look at building its own system of higher education by collaborating with global players and not selling out and look at aggressively exporting education in the years to come. Indian education must participate actively in open source curriculum offered online by companies like Curriki, MIT and benefit from such opportunities. NIIT, foray into China and other countries, is truly a harbinger of sorts to export high quality Indian education. We need to engage our minds in devising very stiff quality parameters for import and export of education.

Outsourcing or Abdicating

The other day I saw a program in National Geography, on how families with single child, particularly the rebellious sort are sent to a correction school (???) which is a heady mix of a military school and torture chambers. I could see the children crying and bleeding at times. I beleive that this method is an outcome of a leftist world view and I have no judgement to pass.For a humanistic level this is tragic. That children are being treated this way, be it in Tirupur or Beijing or in every single ambitious home.How does ambition come it? In a free market economy - hard/smart work equals money or riches. This is a clear equation that is finding its way into peoples life. And Riches is only measure with the physical investments. The root of the problem lies some where here.Is important that we do not bite into this western world view and hold on to our own. Our joint family, our social structure, the most prominant place for elders, etc are our riches not the gold under our feet, or the shares in the DP account.Its important for the Indian families to get rooted on our culture and heritage. Speak to children regularly, teach them the stories and the history of our land, root them on the culture, expose them to different world views with out getting them begotted., nurture them with values. PLEASE DO NOT OUTSOURCE EDUCATION WTIH TUTIONS AND DISCILINE BY SENDING THEM TO RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLSThat is the greatest damage you can do to the next generation

curriculum audit

check this link
Ms. Mallika Mani

Yoga in schools

Downward Dog Is Cat's Meow For At-Risk Kids
Boston Herald
MARGERY EAGAN By MARGERY EAGAN

Courtesy www.brainconnection.com

January 30, 2007

Dennis Winn is principal of a hardscrabble New Bedford elementary school where three-quarters of the children qualify for free lunch. It's not the sort of place where you expect to hear success stories involving . . . yoga.

But Hathaway School's Dennis Winn has them.

One time during MCAS testing, he saw a student in the back of the classroom who looked like he was deep in thought, maybe even asleep. "What's happening?" Winn asked the child. "He told me he was `finding his center,' " Winn said, a technique the boy learned in a Hathaway yoga class.

"This is beautiful," Winn said he thought to himself. "I just had to smile."

Tim Donahue grew up in New Bedford in a troubled home. He lost a brother to a drug overdose. Yet he has yoga stories, too. That's because he's the yoga instructor in a half-dozen New Bedford schools and runs the nonprofit Yoga Kids (yogakids.inc.com) out of his Marion home.

There was the third-grade girl who suffered panic attacks whenever the fire alarm rang. Yet with yoga breathing techniques, she learned to calm herself, he said.

There was the child born to a crack-addicted mother who likewise learned to calm himself, to sit up straight and stop shaking. And there have been many children, Donahue says, who've begun doing yoga breathing meditation at home. They tell him it helps so much they're able to cut down on medication for attention deficit disorder, other anxiety-based ailments, and cope better with difficult families.

"I led a meditation to settle your heart down," Donahue says, "to let it beat nice and slow. The class got so incredibly quiet, when I ended it, no one moved, as if they felt so calm they wanted to stay there. And these were fourth-graders, some from pretty rough situations.

"This is why I love coming here, to teach these skills to kids at an early age."

OK, you grown-up yogis who've made yoga the rage across America: Feel vindicated. What's happening in New Bedford - yoga kids, says Winn, who are "more reflective, who focus better, solve problems better and pay closer attention" in class, thus getting better grades - is part of a national trend.

Increasing numbers of public and private schools from here to California are getting grants or public money to begin yoga classes in lower grades. They're finding what Winn and Donahue have: calmer students, help with the national epidemic - obesity - and fewer discipline problems.

One California report found that test scores and fitness levels at an inner-city Los Angeles charter school went up while behavior problems went down.

In the West and Midwest, yoga's Eastern mystical Hindu roots - its lotus and down dog position and chanting "om" - has caused backlash among certian fundamenalist Christian parents. They fret that yoga conflicts not only with separation of church and state, but underminds Christianity itself.

To avoid any uproar, one yoga teacher changed the names of certian yoga practives to kid-friendly, nonreligious terms. Yoga panting became "bunny breathing," and "meditation" became "time in."

Donahue, who's been teaching yoga in schools for six years now, said in all the classes he's taught, "only a few kids had said `I can't do this' because of religion.

"But meditation basically is about calming your mind down. It's about positions that strengthen and stretch. There isn't any religion involved in my classes."

What's involved, he says, is teaching them skills to handle stress, "and finding a little inner focus as opposed to what they're used to, everything coming at them from the outside, so fast," like video games and TV and computers and iPods, everything else wired.

"It takes them a little while to understand," he said, "but once they get it, they learn how to have some time in their lives that is quiet, and peaceful.