Worried by spate of suicides, govt seeks to cut pressure, to allow kids to drop one ‘tough’ subject in Boards

- SANTOSH ANDHALE

In the backdrop of the spate of suicides by students aross the state and the growing concern among parents about coping with the pressure of studies, the Maharashtra Government is working out a new ‘best of five’ scheme of examination for the SSC. The scheme, being worked by the School Education Department in association with the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, aims to relieve the pressure on students considerably by allowing them to choose five best subjects among the six which they can study and for which they can appear for the examination.

At present, students of the state board have to compulsorily appear for all six subjects, namely three languages – English, Marathi and Hindi – besides Mathematics, Social Sciences and Science.

The state has witnessed suicides by 13 students in the past 8 days and parents of the victims have attributed it to the pressure of studies as one of the compelling reasons for their suicides. The new concept is expected to be implemented in this year’s SSC board examination to be held in March 2010 and authorities said the decision will be taken shortly. The ‘best of five’ system is already in place in the CBSE and ICSE examinations and the idea to introduce this in the state was to reduce the pressure of exams from students at the same time bring parity between the state and other systems. Under the new ‘best of five’ concept, students will have a choice to drop any subject which they fear or about whom they are not confident of scoring in the examination. While, the languages – Marathi and English will be compulsory, students can choose three subjects out of four, namely Mathematics, Social Sciences, Science and Hindi.

The only difference between the best of five subjects pattern in CBSE exams and the state will be that, here in the state, students will have to compulsory appear for two languages, while in CBSE and ICSE only English is compulsory.

Students usually fear Mathematics or Science and the state board authorities said majority students fare badly in these two subjects.

“If a student were to drop Mathematics or Science, he would not qualify for admission in the science stream, but he can certainly seek admission in the Arts and Commerce stream,” a state education department official said.

State Education Minister, Balasaheb Thorat said, “The spate of suicides in the state has exposed the
fear students harbour about the board examinations and the subjects. We want to make the examinations as student-friendly as possible. We intend to take a decision on the ‘best of five’ scheme shortly. However, before we introduce the new system for the coming examination, we intend to hold meetings of parents all over the state to bring in consensus on the issue.”

State education Board chief, Vijaysheela Sardesai, confirmed that the state education department has asked the board to work out the ‘best of five’ subjects scheme for the coming March SSC examination.

Students will, however, compulsorily have to appear for two languages

Ten tech products for 2010

We took out our crystal ball to see which gadgets make the cut

Nimish Dubey

In terms of tech wizardry, 2009 was a rather busy year. Products such as iPod Nano (with video recording), Sony PSP Go, Microsoft Windows 7, Nokia N97 and Amazon Kindle grabbed the headlines at different times of the year. Some succeeded, some didn’t. But they definitely kept the tech-savvy segment of the society busy.

If the tech grapevine is any indication, 2010 is going to be even better, with stacks of gadgets and software that will claim to change your life. So, without further ado, here are ten products that we think are going to be a techie’s delight.

Google phone
The Nexus One is among the early birds of 2010. On board is the increasingly popular mobile operating system, Android, and stacks of hardware goodies, such as a large touchscreen, a powerful camera, and plenty of storage space to go around.

Apple ‘tablet’
Has there ever been a product more talked about without any official confirmation of its existence? Not for a while, there hasn’t. The so-called tablet from Apple has amused and irritated techies in equal measure, but all indications are that the device — which is supposed to be halfway between the iPod touch and a Macbook, running a version of the iPhone OS — will finally see the light of the sun in 2010.

Xbox (with Project Natal)
The Xbox 360 might slowly be coming to the forefront of the third0generation console war with Wii’s sales beginning to tail off. But, it is the next edition of Microsoft’s gaming console that is expected to take it surging ahead of its rivals. The next Xbox will come with motion-sensing gaming without the need of a controller (the much-hyped Project Natal), support for real HD and a significant processor boost.

Samsung CL80
A digital camera with a 3.7- inch AMOLED, capacitive (like the iPhone) touchscreen? With haptic feedback letting you know when you hit a button or an icon? WiFi? The option to upload pictures directly to social networking sites without a computer? Samsung CL80 promises to serve all that on top of a 14-megapixel lens.

Microsoft Windows Mobile 7
There is a legend about Microsoft — the company inevitably gets it right on the second try. So, there’s every reason to believe the next version of Microsoft’s mobile operating system, Windows Mobile (or Windows Phone, as the company prefers to call it) will be the real McCoy. We are expecting to finally bid goodbye to the stylus, welcome multi-touch support and see an interface that matches iPhone in looks and Symbian Series 60 in functionality.

Asus Eee Keyboard
Basically, this is a tablet in reverse — instead of being all screen, it is all keyboard. It has its own operating system, storage space, RAM... In short, it is a computer in a keyboard. All you need to do is plug it into a display (there is an HDMI port, we hear) for a full computing experience. And if you want to do something in a hurry, there is a 5-inch capacitive touchscreen display.

Apple iPhone 4
No, we are not sure that’s what it will be called, but what we are sure of is that the next version of the iPhone will represent the most significant upgrade to what fanboys call the Godphone. It is reasonable to assume that the device’s camera will have reached 5-megapixel territory and stacks of functionalities added.

Google Chrome OS
With its extremely fast functionality and its near-total dependency on the cloud with applications running off the web rather than a hard drive, Chrome could well be what computer OS will become.

Halo: Reach
Halo: Reach promises jawdropping graphics, a great story line and non-stop action. It would be unfair to ask more of a game.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
Will Android administer a kiss of life to stuttering Sony Ericsson, just like it did to Motorola? Well, it might, if the Xperia X10 is any indication of what Sony E will do with it. A 4-inch touchscreen display, a 8.1-megapixel camera, and stacks of applications from the Android Market... We just hope they get the pricing right.

FULL MARKS - Special KIDS, extra-special GURU

Archana Rodrigues is the only academic from Maharashtra to have won a Guruvar award for her commitment to inclusive education

Sharmila Ganesan-Ram | TNN

Kids don’t have to tell a carrot from a radish in order to be able to join this small school tucked away in a leafy residential colony of Dombivli. Unlike those institutions, which grill teething infants and nervous parents alike in the hope of a hundred per cent SSC success rate, St Joseph’s does not subject its toddler applicants to interviews before admissions. “After all, everyone has the right to education,’’ says Archana Rodrigues, the principal, who calls the hype around SSC an “overplayed aura’’ and given a choice, would rather encourage the weak, slow learners—the kind who score 37 per cent with grace marks and then grow up to perhaps shine in unexpected ways.

It’s this instinct that, years ago, made Rodrigues opt for the arts stream despite scoring well in her tenth-standard exams and also induced her to replace her longstanding dream of ‘being a magistrate and changing the world’ with that of ‘being a teacher and changing a classroom’, instead. “It’s child’s play to teach an intelligent student; the true challenge of the educator is to teach the kid who cannot easily follow what you want him to learn,’’ discovered this champion of inclusive education in the course of her career. Last month, for her decade-long efforts in this field, Rodrigues received a surprise call summoning her to Delhi, where she was directed to a premium Club suite at the Taj. After all, she had been chosen from among 15,728 candidates as the Outstanding Teacher for children with special needs, at the Guruvar awards, recently instituted to recognise the critical role of teachers in shaping the community. Rodrigues is the only teacher from Maharashtra to have won the award, for which the nominations came from students, ex-students, parents and colleagues all over India.

The trophy, which was handed over by Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal, stands tall on her office table. For the past few days, in the glow of this trophy, Rodrigues has been attending incessant calls. She’s also been contemplating ways to invest her cash prize of Rs 10 lakh in the revamp of the school, perhaps another new yellow school bus. But the most important reassurance that she finds in the award is that “more and more teachers will be motivated to join the profession which is otherwise associated with bad payscales and poor working conditions’’.

“A teacher has to emit positive energy, harbour love for kids and believe in oneself,’’ says Rodrigues, who, during her post-graduation in counselling, realised the need for counselling kids with special needs. As there were very few professionals working in this field, she decided to enroll for SNDT’s Master’s degree in special education. Here, as part of her research thesis she developed a training module to impart sex education to mentally challenged children, which was selected for presentation at the National Conference at Dehradun.

Sensitising the special kids’ parents (who tend to be in denial mode) and society towards their needs ranks high in her list of priorities. Rodrigues cites the instance of one woman who was extremely unhappy with the treatment meted out to her Down’s syndrome-affected, hyperactive son by his special school—the teacher would lock him up and beat him. So the woman decided to enrol herself in a teachers’ training session and now confidently takes care of her son, who studies in St Joseph’s. “She even donated part of her first paycheck to our school,’’ recalls Rodrigues, who has always championed the cause of “breaking down institutions for special kids and going in for an inclusive set-up where both regular and special kids can mingle and learn from each other’’.

But turning a regular school into one that advocates an inclusive education system in 2006 was not without its share of teething troubles. When her school started enrolling special kids, many of the regular students dropped out. Parents of ‘regular’ kids raised apprehensions, the most popular one (“and the most irrational one’’) being that this inclusion would be detrimental to the progress of their wards. During a PTA meeting when parents raised the usual fears, Rodrigues recalls a parent of a regular child challenging the argument by citing the example of her own ward. “The mother said that the kind of understanding and maturity her child had developed over the past few years in the company of special kids was exemplary,’’ recalls Rodrigues.

Within the school, which banks chiefly on parental references to get more students, Rodrigues has observed a very healthy mutual learning relationship between both the groups. “During picnics the special kids, who are slightly older than regular students of their batch, are very protective of them. Also, they volunteer at various sports events and this interaction boosts their confidence,’’ she says. The special kids are acquainted with the ways of the outside world through weekly visits to public places; they are even taught cooking and elementary finance. Special kids, Rodrigues concludes, are “non-judgmental’’ unlike the regular ones who “expect you to go out of your way.’’

The 36-year-old teacher sounds a bit like Aamir Khan of Taare Zameen Par when she says the need is not to evolve the curriculum but to evolve better teaching methods. When the movie was released, she received a lot of calls from students telling her that it reminded them of her. Rodrigues takes it as a compliment. “In fact, I want to invite Aamir to my school and share his suggestions,’’ she says. That, for now, qualifies as the school’s own special need.

CLASS ACT Rodrigues is planning to invest her cash prize in a new yellow school bus