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India’s Education Minister Says a Standard Admission Test Is His ‘Dream’

August 1, 2011, 10:07 am

India’s education minister said it is his “dream” that India institute a single SAT-type test for university admission by 2013, reports the Mail Today newspaper. Kapil Sibal, the minister, has been working to overhaul the admission system. He said he had set up a panel that had recommended a “one nation—one examination” policy, and that a recent public opinion poll showed that 73 percent of respondents back the National Testing Scheme, as the single-test plan is called. In addition, Mr. Sibal said he would push for the passage of the contentious Foreign Educational Institutions bill in the session of Parliament that begins today. His government, he said, has the political will for the proposed legislation, which would allow foreign universities to set up branch campuses, but the opposition parties need to come on board “to help our students access more quality education from foreign institutions.”

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  • osu49d

    Good story. Useful to encourage students.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=790660044 Gil Grimmett

    This is simply brilliant and probably the best potential uses for robots so far.

  • mbelvadi

    Thank you for pointing out that the chair problem should not be a battle between professors.  It’s the job of the administrative arm of the university to provide appropriately appointed physical space for the faculty to teach in.  If the faculty have to spend class time moving furniture around every single class period in order to support their professional pedagogical standards then the administration is failing to do its job.  Perhaps the faculty can arrange with Facilities a standing appointment to have someone re-arrange that classroom during the 15 minutes’ gap, yes, at both ends of every class period if that’s what it takes.

  • mbelvadi

    Erasing at the beginning and leaving it up at the end gives those students who can afford to linger during that 15 minute break a bit of extra time to copy a few more notes down from it.  Do you ever see that happening from the previous class or your own?

  • impendia2

    I think I’ve seen that. I also enjoy seeing what my colleagues are teaching, and sometimes I’ll point out something to my students left lingering on the blackboard just for fun.

  • bnyronsmyrd

    It is called “personal responsibility.”  Do not make me or my students pay for your social, economic, emotional, personal, or occupational problems, real as they may be.  Would you accept  such excuses/explanations  if this colleague did not obey  the speed limit when driving to the other job?  Tell that to the people iinjured  because of a highway accident caused  by his/her speeding.  .   

  • minnesotan

     This analogy doesn’t work. The rules of the road are there to save lives. If you break the speed limits, you’re darn right you could injure or kill someone as a result of your crime. The “rules” of classroom decorum, like “put desks how I want them when you’re done,” are the arbitrary desires of control freaks. You’re not endangering anyone by leaving desks out of order, and you’re not breaking any laws.

    (Unless you do something extremely irresponsible, like stacking furniture in front of the designated fire exit, of course).

    I don’t disagree that it’s rude to make a mess and leave it for the next person. I’m just saying, let’s keep this in perspective. The results of these minor inconveniences are messy whiteboards, not ten car pile-ups.

  • fullprof99

    Dear Rob, what makes you think that there is an “official” layout for desks in your classroom? I can’t imagine that it takes five minutes to rearrange the desks from the layout your predecessor prefers into the one you prefer. I also can’t imagine that it takes more than a moment to erase the whiteboard (or change the log-on of the computer). I make these things happen in almost no time when needed. You should stop complaining, get over it and get on with your job.

  • srnwood

    Twice in the past month I’ve walked in on a colleague’s open Blackboard grade book.  Even one as ethical as myself was TEMPTED to play deus ex machina, but so far, I’ve resisted the devil and just erased the whiteboard instead.

  • fullprof99

     Walk in the door, announce, “Excuse me, but it takes at least five minutes for me to set up before class, and you have run over by ten minutes.” Then go about your preparations.

  • joelcairo

    Dear Rob,

    It annoys me that you privilege arranging chairs and desks in neat little rows.  I happen to believe that particular seating arrangement stifles learning, creativity, and community-building more times than not.  Although I am bothered whenever I walk into a classroom and find seats arranged in rows, I do not publish a (snide) letter to my colleagues to be aware of my teaching style and arrange the seating in the room accordingly.  Here’s an idea:  why not have your students sit in the circle arrangement for a change and see what happens to your classroom dynamics?

  • mindnbodybuilding

    Are you serious? Really? Perhaps you’re one of those professors Rob is trying to reach. My wife and I raised 3 boys and taught them, while they were still very young, to pick up after themselves. Leaving a mess behind is disrespectful and screams “it’s all about me!” Very unprofessional.  

  • mindnbodybuilding

    In case you arrived to the party late, you should know that Professor Jenkins teaches at a 2-yr college where many (not all) classes no doubt are filled to capacity. Perhaps Professor Jenkins teaches such a class following the person he writes about in his letter. If that’s the case, sitting in a circle isn’t going to be useful…what do you think? Why do you have to say that Professor Jenkins is asking the previous instructor to “be aware” of his teaching style? Stop being so sensitive and read the letter again. It’s a plea to leave the room the way you found it. Why does it have to be more than that?  

  • anthropogeek

    What a narrow-minded and rather offensive post. Fullprof99, I happen to be a huge proponent of the circle format — pedagogically, it is far more likely to engender conversation and student participation, and I always make my seminar classes rearrange the desks. But I freely acknowledge that the “official” layout is in rows. Come on. This is the architecture of many small classrooms, and though I disagree with it, I still show respect to the faculty who prefer the row format. That said, my students know that we sit in a circle, and by the time I arrive 2 minutes before the start of class, they have always already rearranged the desks in the format I use. So we never have to waste 5 minutes of class time. Rob — you might consider getting your own students involved in helping you mitigate this problem, by asking them to be proactive in rearranging the desks as they arrive.

  • rich5964

    To all those who say that circles of chairs are superior to rows, I say it depends on your subject. I teach biology, and I like to put images up on the board of cells, or diagrams of the mitosis, or of the Krebs cycle; and I draw chemical structures on the whiteboard. If I were teaching English literature, having a Socratic discussion in a circle would be peachy, but we don’t usually have such discussions about the Krebs cycle. Not that we don’t ever have discussions: we discuss several issues where science meets society, or historical issues such as what we can learn from Watson and Crick’s mistakes and enthusiasm. But mostly, I want my students to see the projector screen, and/or the white board, where I am showing them how to draw Punnett squares.

  • sabbatical

    Why not just e-mail this person, if an e-mail account is left open, and make your requests to him?  Fretting over it seems like a waste of energy.

  • cmcclain

    Dear Rob, what makes you think that there is an “official” layout for desks in your classroom?

    The fire marshall probably has a pretty authoritative opinion on the matter.

  • http://who-will-kiss-the-pig.blogspot.com Richard Grayson

    Some days moving the chairs in  a classroom is all the exercise I get, so I’m grateful for the chance to do it as long as none of the previous class’s students are still asleep in them.

  • robjenkins

    Better response: With friends like you, who needs animus?

  • citizenship

    I’d be really curious to read that column on firing a 105 mm howitzer from a helicopter.  Presuming it was a model M101A1 or model M102 (not in service before 1966) it would have taken up a very large space in a helicopter and normally required a crew of eight to man it.  Difficult to imagine such a scenario even in a Chinook copter not to mention what effect the recoil and firing concussion a 3,300-5,000 pound weapon would have on the flight stability of the aircraft.  I know they were carried in a sling under the ‘copters for deploying as needed and that AC-130′s have been fitted with fixed cannon but never saw anything like a helicopter equipped howitzer in the Viet Nam era.

  • 99911187

    Thanks for your observation, which clarifies Steinbeck’s rather confusing comment in a report from December 31, 1966, a few days after he arrived in the war zone: “Yesterday we took a chopper out to the 23rd Artillery Group, which guards one approach to the city. These are 105-mm. howitzers and they airlift them around the way Santa Claus delivers packages. Anyway, their air spotter called in some activity and they honored me by letting me fire the first round from the No.4 tube. It was a proud moment and they gave me the shell casing to take home. That will be a logistical problem but I’ll manage it.” – pm

  • raymond_j_ritchie

    I missed Vietnam by less than two years but a psychiatrist relative of mine had to deal with Australian soldiers straight off the helicopters in a field hospital (real M.A.S.H.).  With 20/20 hindsight it is easy to see that getting involved in the Vietnamese civil war was not a good idea but it was a real dilemma at the time.  Given Soviet geopolitical activity at the time if the yanks had not lost 50,000 men in Vietnam they would have lost 50,000 men somewhere else (might even have “won” on better chosen ground).
    Even today the leftist commentariat refuse to acknowledge the nature of the regime that won in Vietnam.  It generated millions of refugees, savagely treated minority groups and shows no signs of liberalisation. 37 years later they still deny higher education to the grandchildren of those who served on the “wrong” side.  I for one will not go near the place until there is a regime change.

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