Tomichan Matheikal's blog

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 assessment absolutely ridic

Fiction The passengers were turning the air-conditioner knob of flight SW 2552 from Ahmedabad to Delhi when the announcement came.  “We regret to inform you that the air-conditioning of this flight will not function properly for a while due to a technical hitch which is being rectified.  We solicit your cooperation and regret the inconvenience caused to you in the meanwhile.” “The air-conditioning will not work till we reach Delhi,” Shiv Kumar heard the passenger sitting next to him say. “Why?” asked Shiv Kumar. “Didn’t you see the VVIP passenger for whom the flight was delayed by two hours?” “Yup. That’s Khushi Ram Baba, isn’t it?” Who did not know Khushi Ram Baba?  He was a godman who was in jail for some time for raping one of his devotees.  The news had become a notorious controversy discussed in great detail by all the news channels in the country.  The godman reportedly fell ill while in jail and needed specialised treatment.  So he was being taken to

E-tailers like Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal are doing brisk business this festival season.  According to a report in today’s Times of India , Flipkart sold half a million items within the first hour of launching its Big Billion Days event yesterday.  Amazon India sold 1.5 million units in the first 12 hours of its “Great Indian Festival” sale.  Snapdeal had 11 lakh buyers in the first 16 hours. Pakistan is trying to nibble away India with the teeth and nails of terrorists and India is celebrating consumerism.  Consumerism is certainly not as malevolent as terrorism but it isn’t a virtue anyway.  A few years back Professor Galen V. Bodenhausen of Northwestern University concluded after a psychological research that “Irrespective of personality, in situations that activate a consumer mind-set, people show the same sorts of problematic patterns in well-being, including negative affect and social disengagement.” Consumerism makes people more greedy and selfish . My own ob