Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Illustration by Copilot Designer India’s New Education Policy [NEP 2020] lays much emphasis on what it calls Indian Knowledge Systems [IKS]. It refers to the integration of traditional Indian wisdom, including Vedic mathematics, Ayurveda, and ancient science and arts, into modern education. While some of that ‘ancient’ wisdom may be relevant today and some may be innocuous, much of that won’t do any good other than give us a hollow sense of pride in the antiqueness of our history. That sort of pride is as useful as one’s hope to have calluses in his backside because his great-great grandfather used to ride on an elephant’s back. The most striking irony about NEP 2020 is the emphasis laid on Sanskrit . Sanskrit was deemed to be the divine language in ancient India and only the upper caste people were allowed to study it. If a lower caste person even happens to hear Sanskrit literature being recited, that person’s ears were to be damaged forever by pouring molten lead into them. Now,...

  I’m retiring from teaching for the third time now. 28 Feb 2025 will be my last day at the present school from where I retired twice earlier. The first time was just a formality because when I completed the official age for retirement the school gave me a formal farewell and then shifted my name to another ledger in the account books. Nothing changed really other than the remuneration method. My second retirement was at the end of the last academic session in March 2024 when I decided that I was growing too grotesque for the contemporary teenagers. My young students called it ‘generation gap.’ They assumed that I belonged to the library shelf of the musty volumes of Britannica Encyclopaedia while they belonged to YouTube . They didn’t know that I had a YouTube video in which my cat was an emergent hero. And that there were a few more serious videos too which didn’t get much traction because the youngsters for whom it was meant thought that I belonged to the generation which ...

I met Ms Dhanya Ramachandran a few years ago at one of the centralised evaluation camps of CBSE. Then we met again every year for the same purpose until I retired from teaching officially. I’m not sure whether it’s her Mona Lisa smile or her commendable efficiency with the job that drew my attention more to her. Last week I came to know that Dhanya (let me take the liberty of calling her so) received an award for her contributions to the cause of education. I wished to bring her to a wider audience for the cause of education and hence requested an interview. What follows is the result. Since it is an email interview, it has its limitations. Nevertheless, Dhanya comes alive here. Over to the interview.  Tomichan : Hi Ms Dhanya Ramachandran, please introduce yourself for the sake of the readers of this blog. Dhanya : Hello. I am Dhanya Ramachandran, a passionate educator with diverse background. My career journey began in journalism, but life took me on a different path, lead...

  Quadratic Formula You must have studied the quadratic formula in high school and used it for solving umpteen quadratic equations. Have you ever used it at any time after your school education? How much of what you learnt in school or college has been useful or relevant in your practical life so far? The answer to the first question must be No unless you are a math teacher or in some profession related to math. The answer to the second question must be: Not much. I’m currently a reading a book on education written by Vardan Kabra, cofounder of a reputed school in Gujarat. The book, Reimagining Indian Education , begins with the following pop quiz.  Well, I’m sure you flunked that test. I did too. The only question I could answer correctly was the last one. I could do that because I began my teaching career as a math teacher and I was in love with quadratic equations. Why did we learn what we did at school if 90% of all that stuff never came in handy in our practical lif...

With two students Today [Sep 5] is Teacher’s Day in India. India is a country whose cultural tradition placed the teacher on a par with none less than god. “Acharya devobhava,” said Dattatreya Upanishad. The time has changed. Covid-19 changed it, I must say. Before the pandemic placed the omnipotent smartphone in the hands of students for online classes, the teacher commanded much respect from students. Not anymore. Now the student may know more than the teacher. I may speak about Dostoevsky eloquently but my student will teach me even more eloquently about Korean movies. I belong to an old world whose value systems were entirely different from today’s. Value systems. There lies the point. Is there any value system left anymore? We live in a country whose government seems to have legalised all kinds of violence [e.g., from Gujarat 2002 to Manipur 2023], frauds [e.g., innumerable sublime slogans and the opposite reality – Beti bachao beti padhao , etc], blatant misuse of religion ...

Dear Mr R K Chaturvedi, It is very heartening to know that under your leadership CBSE is planning to make certain vital policy changes . As a teacher with a fairly long experience with CBSE schools, I am immensely happy to know that you have decided to review the policies regarding the class 10 exams and the Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE). Source First of all, please make the Board exams compulsory in class ten as it used to be earlier.  But make the exams more meaningful.  Assessment is not merely a process for providing a certificate of merit to every student.  It is to identify the skills and strengths of students in the various subjects she has been learning for ten or more years.  It is not very difficult to initiate an assessment system that evaluates the knowledge and skills as well as creativity of the students instead of merely checking bookish knowledge or rote learning.  In the last few years, CBSE had made the whole ass...

In all probability, most of the richest people in the world today were not exceptional academicians at school.  Most of the powerful political leaders might not have scored very high marks at school.  Conversely, the top scorers at school need not become highly successful in life.  In short, academic brilliance particularly at school seems to have little to do with success in life if we associate success with conquering certain quanta of wealth or power (or both).  More scandalising is the possibility that many of the best scholars at school did not achieve anything much in life by way of what is normally meant by success.  I don’t know if any detailed research has been done on this recently.  I know that psychologist Lewis Terman (1877-1956) carried out a very detailed research on a large number of highly gifted students and found out that a good many of the highly gifted students did not really make it big in life.  He realised that apar...

CBSE has decided to do away with Board exams in class 10.  This is what the latest decision is: I Scheme 1–   there shall be no Board Examination at Secondary (Class X) level for students studying in the schools affiliated to the Board who do not wish to move out of the CBSE system after Class X. Every School, Sahodaya Cluster or City may design its own date sheet for classes IX and X School Based Examination accordingly. II Scheme 2 –   is applicable to those students from affiliated schools who wish to move out of the CBSE system after Class X (Pre-University, Vocational course, Change of Board etc). Such students are required to take the Board’s External Examination at Secondary (Class X) level. Question papers and Marking Scheme will be prepared by the CBSE and evaluation will be carried out by the Board through External Examiners. Wow!  Don’t have to study anymore. I have been teaching in a CBSE school for the last 14 years.  I have w...

“What is a participial phrase?” asked a teacher who was preparing for an interview because her school was being shut down by vested interests. “No clue,” I said.  “Never heard of such a thing.” She wondered how I had mastered the art of lying so quickly.  She refused to believe that I had not heard of such a thing as participial phrase.  She opened the grammar book she had brought (a fraction of which is here in the picture) and showed me the phrase.  It was a grammar textbook for grade 8.  I flipped through the pages and realised how ineffective English language teaching is in our country.  My memory went back to my childhood when they taught me things like Vocative Case and other Cases all of which disappeared without a trace from English grammar eventually. “See, dear,” I told the teacher, “I didn’t learn English by learning the grammar.  Did you learn your mother tongue by learning its grammar?” She pondered a while and ...

A friend who wished to start a school of his own approached me the other day with a request: “Please draft a vision and a mission for the school.”  “The vision: Earn profit,” I said; “The mission: Earn more profit.” Being familiar with my cynicism, he said without batting an eyelid or even smiling, “Of course, you’re absolutely right...  I’m here to get a vision and a mission that’s different from the ones we usually see on websites...” I drafted something which I can’t recollect now!  [You can guess how serious I was about what I wrote.] Education today is another commercial enterprise.  Students as well as their parents want it that way too; they have been “schooled” to want it that way! In 1971, in his book, Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich blamed the education system for institutionalising values.  He argued that the schools put undue emphasis on process rather than substance .  “Once these become blurred,” wrote Illich, “a ...

The first thing that Rohan noticed when he entered the campus of New India Public School was a network of cables and wires.  Telephone wires, Internet cables, TV cables and intercom wires dangled in the air mingling effortlessly with one another.  Above them all lay stretched tight and rather majestically the electric wires.  Wires played a vital role in New India Public School. In the hostel they did play an undeniably vital role as Rohan realised within a few days. As soon as the Supervisor, Mr Rathode, left after making a perfunctory but imperious announcement through the PA system that it was the lights-off time, all lights would go off, for some time at least, and then the wires would come alive. There was a frantic rush to the switchboard by the students who wanted to charge their mobile phones.  Mobile phones were forbidden to the students in New India Public School, “a fully residential school for boys for overall development of your child’s personality.”...