Archives: Education

A bunch of cultural hawks in Jammu & Kashmir want a halt to all cultural activities in the state's schools. They have a point, you see. It is a different thing that you might not see it (I mean, their point) at all. They feel girls and being exploited, obsceneity is being promoted. The Daily News & Analysis has some details: [Link] After lying low for some time, Dukhataran-e-Milat (DeM) chief Syeda Aisiya Andrabi has suddenly sprung back to action and has threatened to launch an agitation against the “cultural aggression perpetuated by New Delhi and the state government to...

When few students of Mumbai's KJ Somaiya College of Engineering woke up to take their exams on October 23, they had no idea that they will be forced to leave the examination midway for not dressing up according to the whims and fancies of the principal. [Link] The students were asked to leave the college premises and barred from sitting for the exam. They were wearing t-shirts and polo shirts, which, according to the college principal, violated the dress code laid down by him. College guidelines bar boys from wearing t-shirts and girls from wearing figure-hugging ones. Dr Raj...

The Hyderabad blues seem to be ruling the students of an engineering college. While many colleges around the country are imposing dress codes of salwar kameez and formal shirts on students, Aurora Engineering College in Hyderabad has gone a step ahead and made blue jeans and white shirt its new uniform. [Link] The uniform has gathered mixed reaction from students. While many are taking it as an oppotunarity to flaunt what's in vogue, others are finding it a culture shock. ''I never wore jeans or trousers. So when I came to know that we have to wear jeans to college, I prayed it was...

You can find such juvenile statements only in the RSS mouthpiece The Organiser. And that too by former HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi. [Link] Former Union HRD Minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi viewed that sex education would transform the student-teacher relation into that of a man and a woman and it appears the government wants to import the western culture of sexual relations between students and teachers into India. He said introduction of sex education is what multinationals did to create the desire for sex among teenagers to sell their products. Thank heavens, this man...

This one is hard to believe — two schools in Mumbai have issued notices asking girls and boys studying there not to touch or hug members of the opposite sex. Did you just say OMG? CNN-IBN reports [Link]: Vibgyor School and Jamnabai Nursery School have specifically forbidden boys and girls from touching or hugging members of the opposite sex in the school premises. School authorities say the rule will “discipline” students, who are easily exposed to and influenced by violence and vulgarity on TV and other media. "It is our duty ki unko bataya jai kya sahi hai, kya galat hai...

It is now the turn of the Students Islamic Organisation of India to tighten the screws on whosoever talks about sex education. The organisation does not have even 10,000 members across the country, but is big enough to be a mischief-monger. Its activists have already staged demonstrations in a number of cities/towns. Listen to (I mean, read) these quotable quotes: Sex education is teaching pornography and instigating. free sex. When the Indian Constitution declares that a person is an adult only at age 18, then why should an adult subject like sex be taught to 11 and...

That's what the Madhya Pradesh government tends to think when it comes to the issue of imparting sex education in schools. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state has stopped sex education classes for high school students after it found that illustrations in an instruction manual for teachers were "obscene". The sex education classes were part of the Adolescence Education Programme (AEP) for Class IX and above, aimed at creating AIDS awareness among students. The "objectionable" illustrations were diagrams of male and female bodies in four pages of the manual. The...