Make Sense of the world
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Every publication has a worldview. Each cultivates a style of thought, ideology or philosophy designed to comfort the expectations of its readers and to confirm a shared way of perceiving the world around them. Even Fair Observer has a worldview, in which, thanks to the diversity of its...
It was instructive that probably the most consequential event in the life of the Indian Republic merited nothing more than three pro-forma single-sentence references to “epidemics and pandemics” in the recently-adopted National Education Policy 2020. The policy must have been discussed and...
The union cabinet of the government of India recently announced its 2020 National Education Policy (NEP). This is the first education policy developed by a non-Congress party government since independence. Coming 34 years after the last formulation of a fully-fledged education policy, Indians...
In 2015, world leaders attending the United Nations General Assembly agreed to 17 goals for a better world. Known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the aim is to meet these objectives by the year 2030 in a bid to end poverty, achieve gender equality, ensure access to quality education,...
In 2020, exams for the 10th grade conducted by India’s Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) led to impressive results. Of the 1.8 million students who took the exam, 10% scored over 90% and 2.23% scored over 95%. In 2019, a similar number wrote the exam with 13% scoring above 90% and...
In a matter of months, the novel coronavirus has swept across the globe and entirely up-ended our understanding of normality. Now, as the virus continues to rage and signs of a second surge are emerging even before the first has ended, we’re rethinking everything we’d assumed and hoped for at...
In an article on Al Jazeera published on September 1, Kathleen Siddell, a freelance writer and former teacher who lives in Southern California, made a compelling case concerning the question that many parents on the West Coast (and elsewhere) were concerned about at that moment of history. She...
Every good citizen should understand that education is the bedrock of civilization. At the very least, it keeps the children occupied while their parents are outside earning a living. Politicians claim that education is a top priority. But when cornered, they usually admit that budgeting education...
The Advanced Level Certificate (A-level), together with the General Certificate of Education (GCSE), is one of two sets of exams students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland has its own system) sit in the summer. The GCSE is a ticket to spending two years studying for A-levels,...
Fair Observer’s Atul Singh told me of his own friend, Pankaj, a father of three daughters. Pankaj was concerned that his daughters have been subjected to around three to seven hours a day of online classes, and he felt it was deeply wrong. I was invited by Fair Observer to write an article...
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools closed their doors this spring, impacting the lives of 1.5 billion students around the world and sending teachers and school administrators scrambling to keep students connected to learning opportunities. To do this they deployed a range of old and new...
