Modern living has become so complex that it requires formal Education for basic Human feeling that are supposed to be spontaneous ans natural.
Degree Course in Presidency University Kolkata.
Presidency University,Kolkat, India has taken the step of introducing a Degree Course in ‘Love.
Now Girls, Boys and parets of these might insist on a Degree as a minimum qualification for Loving/marriage!
“”The new course on love will deal with its sociological implications and will begin from the next semester in January,” Malabika Sarkar, vice-chancellor of Presidency University told IANS. “The course will be taught by the university’s sociology department. It will basically deal with the theoretical aspects of love,” Sarkar said. The varsity began an initiative July to introduce students to a variety of topics, irrespective of their major subject, becoming the first university in the country to offer interdisciplinary courses. Under this programme, science students can get a taste of liberal arts, and those delving into humanities can take up a science subject. “This is the first such initiative in the country. In the traditional Indian university education system, honours students are required to take up two pass subjects. We have replaced the pass subjects,” professor Somak Raychaudhury, head of the varsity’s physics department had said earlier. Raychaudhury said the decision to juxtapose the two branches was taken as students do not take pass subjects seriously. “So, instead of forcing pass subjects on students, we decided to break them up and have a list of 10 papers. All the honours students are required to take up 10 papers. While the science students are needed to take at least two arts papers, it is vice versa for students of humanities,” the professor explained. For example, the physics department has introduced a course, “Physics of Everyday Life”, under which students, irrespective of the stream they are majoring in, are taught how things like a camera work. “The course is open to everybody. An English literature student can take it up. Similarly, the sociology department is offering a subject called ‘Love’ that students from other departments can study,” the professor said. IANS
I read an interesting article in The Telegraph on the Value of A Degree which I am reproducing . after my comments.
At the age of 62, as I look upon my Academic qualification , my job and present status, I am shocked that what I did through out my adult Life had no relevance to what I had studied.
I hold a Degree in Philosophy/Psychology.( that too University First Rank!)
I could not get any job and hence I took up the job of a Sale Representative.
I had absolutely no idea as to what Sales was all about,( even now I hold the same view)
I had been successful in my career ans served MNCs in Senior capacity and Retired as a General Manager-marketing.
My Degree of Philosophy had no relevance to my profession.
Till my degree , I studied Algebra, Trigonometry,Organic and Inorganic Chemistry,Calculus!
My Daughter is B.Com.Till recently she was in Marketing Yahoo.
I can quote a number of instances,
By and large the present Education System neither qualifies you for where you land nor enhances Character.
One reason ,I surmise . is that we can not or do not plan our career.
Even in a planned career, you do not land where you want to, unless you become an Entrepreneur.
In that case the skill needed is that of Entrepreneurship .
When I look at Discoveries in Science or Arts it seems to have been enriched by people with passion for a subject and generally with no formal education to speak about!
Quote:
Last year the Government released a research paper that spelt it out. For doctors and dentists, a degree is a prerequisite. They will earn £400,000 more over a lifetime, as you might expect, having been fully trained for a well-paid profession. But for students admitted to less rigorous degrees, the premium quickly diminishes – especially for men. Those who graduate in the subjects I studied, history and philosophy, can expect to earn a paltry £35 a year more than non-graduates. For graduates in “mass communication” the premium is just £120 a year. But both are better value than a degree in “creative arts”, where graduates can actually expect to earn £15,000 less, over a lifetime, than those who start work aged 18.
With employment, it’s not much better. The old joke – “What do you say to an arts graduate? ‘Big Mac and fries, please’ ”– has all too much resonance now. Of recent graduates, almost a third are in jobs that don’t require anything more than GCSEs. One in 10 recent graduates is now on the dole. All youth unemployment is tragic, but there is something especially scandalous about young people who have been sold a vision of graduate life, only to find it was a piece of spin to sweeten the bitter pill of student loans. The mis-selling of higher education is one of the least remarked-upon scandals of our time.
The simplistic argument – that the brightest get the best grades and go to the best universities – would be more convincing if Britain had a meritocratic education system. But here, perhaps more than any other country, the quality of exam results are linked to background. For all the egalitarian aims of the comprehensive school system, it has produced the opposite: a system where a direct relationship can be drawn between pupils’ exam results and their families’ wealth. Scandalously few of those who live in our sink estates will have done much celebrating after their A-levels yesterday.
The league tables, showing the best state schools, bear a suspicious resemblance to prosperity indices. And this is not, to paraphrase Neil Kinnock, because British children from poor backgrounds are thick. It is strange how, after each set of A-level results, there is a uproar about how many pupils who qualified for free school meals are admitted into Oxford University – but less interest in how these children do so much worse at school, from primary years onwards. Employers have learnt that bright children don’t necessarily have the best GCSEs.
The ministerial focus of education as an economic tool risks missing the larger point. David Cameron’s Government is doing much to make the system work better. The most pernicious equation in public life, between wealth and GCSE results, cannot be found in the new breed of Academy schools. The Harris Academy group, which runs 13 schools in deprived inner-city boroughs, announced yesterday that it is sending pupils to Bristol University for maths, Warwick University for law and Imperial College for medicine. These sixth-formers would have enrolled at the school when it was a fledgling New Labour project; now there are hundreds of Academy schools. It is perhaps the most rapidly vindicated social experiment of modern times.
Even for undergraduates, things may be on the turn. Tuition at Britain’s best universities has always ranked among the best in the world; it is the lower-ranking colleges that have tended to short-change students. Mr Willetts’s decision to remove the cap on places for students with AAB at A-level should soon have universities competing for pupils with such grades. Next year, this will hold true for pupils with ABB results. Having introduced the bad side of a market system (fees), the proper side (competition for custom) will finally get under way.
By next year, all universities will be forced to release information on graduate employment rates for each course. This will help students work out if they are being conned. If all goes well, the number of good courses will expand, and the courses that serve neither students nor society will be exposed. And while there has been a dip in university applications, it has come from wealthier students. The offer of bursaries for students from the lowest-income families seems to be having the desired effect.”
“In a Room for Debate forum in June on the value of liberal arts master’s degrees, one group of readers — teachers and education administrators — generally agreed a higher degree was well worth the investment. They pointed out that pay and promotion in public schools were tied to the accumulation of such credentials and credits, specifically from colleges of education.
But current teacher training has a large chorus of critics, including prominent professors in education schools themselves. For example, the director of teacher education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Katherine Merseth, told a conference in March that of the nation’s 1,300 graduate teacher training programs, only about 100 were doing a competent job and “the others could be shut down tomorrow.” And Obama administration officials support a shift away from using master’s degrees for pay raises, and a shift toward compensating teachers based on children’s performance.”
NYT 16/09/09
It is one thing to be proficient academically ,which certifies that you know your subject.Teaching involves, not only your understanding of the subject but your ability to transfer that knowledge to others.Hence, mere academic qualification alone will not do.Other para meters are.
1.Communication skills
2.Planning the class.
3.Understanding of teaching methodologies and implementing them
4.Interactive teaching
5.Personal interest in students.
6.Regular updating of knowledge on the subject.
7.Adoption of different methodologies of teaching to students of different caliber in the same class.
8.Regular follow up of students.
9.Personal counseling for each student academic and non academic. Teaching is not a profession;but a vocation that calls for dedication, commitment and a passion to impart knowledge and a love for children.
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