Krishna Kumar

Capturing curriculum to sculpt young minds

All schools are passionate about shaping young minds. Popular ideas and ideologies actively use schools to intellectually sculpt young minds

Educating the ladies, an update from Bollywood

Not many film scripts have shown a village girl opting to walk away from her marriage in less than a week.

Kota machine exposes underbelly of education

The stigma of failure and the loss of precious years of early youth take their invisible toll — both on individual lives and on the nation.

Opinion | Our education system needs to be rewritten

Public universities and colleges across all three states, where new governments have taken over, need immediate attention on several fronts, starting with faculty appointments and revamping of admission procedures and pedagogic routines.

How education can affect our socio-cultural milieu

Schools must train students to critique cultural issues and practices. Our education system is weak in this respect

Let the Kathua rape victim be called by her name

A Scheduled Tribe girl’s right to grow up with dignity and receive education has been violated. The least we can do now is to remember her by name rather than call her the eight-year old gang-rape victim of Kathua as the NCPCR desires

Science learning must not remain a memory drill

A basic change in science teaching in schools is required to improve the dismal situation where ‘theoretical practicals’ is becoming the norm. One way for this is to make provision for hands-on experiments at the elementary stage itself

What ails India’s higher education establishment

The only education policy we have is the 1986 document approved during Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministership. Three decades have passed, but the reluctance to discuss the implications of economic liberalisation in education continues. At the same time, the educational space has fully opened up for private investors of all shapes and sizes. Under the circumstances, we can reasonably ask: ‘Who needs a policy in education?’ People surely do, but it is not clear whether the government does.

Why I fled Delhi — a city I called home for 45 years

The tipping point reached in the winter of 2014. One morning, the smog was so dense and visibility so poor that during my morning walk I bumped into a tree I had known for years

Ryan student murder: Why installing more CCTVs cannot protect our children

Technophiliacs claim to have both immediate and long-term solutions to offer. So, while more CCTVs is being offered as an immediate step to improve children’s safety and security at school, a long-term policy is also being pushed. It consists of police verification of all school staff—including guards, peons, ayahs, even teachers.

Why exams like JEE, NEET are not good enough to test students’ aptitude

S. Anitha, who committed suicide because she did not make it through NEET reminds us how exhausting and irrational our selection procedures are. In principle, NEET and JEE are good ideas as they make multiple state-wise tests unnecessary. But conducting a professionally competent standardised exam is nothing less than a fantasy today.

Children should not be made into activists to fix the failings of the system

Quick acceptance of a demand voiced by children also distracts attention from the deeper crisis the system is facing. Children’s civic awareness and activism can hardly compensate for the absence of a sense of responsibility among authorities.

AAP’s midsummer night’s dream has failed, especially in Delhi’s schools

AAP’s first attempt at running Delhi lasted 49 days. In mid-February, 2014, when Arvind Kejriwal resigned, many were disappointed but few were disillusioned. This is why the dream mustered a second run, a year later. Political circumstances were tougher this time, but the AAP dream came back with stunning passion. Two years on, the memory of that victory fills the mind with a sense of loss – of time and faith.

Many universities neither encourage divergent views nor permit dissent

Both society and State have adopted a cynical attitude towards liberal ideals like institutional autonomy and freedom to think. In this situation, we are tempted to isolate the violence that erupted in a college in Delhi or the gagging of opinion that occurred in another.

Don’t make the Class 10 boards compulsory once again

If the Class 10 board exam becomes compulsory once again and the ‘pass-fail’ system returns to the elementary classes, we should not feel surprised, but we have every reason to feel sorry. This will not be the first time that the attempt to soften India’s exam culture would have failed.

HTLS Column by Krishna Kumar: Our education system must address our needs, not of others

By aggregating a diverse country such as ours, we lose sight of the problem our system of education faces

Taking a great leap backward

The new child labour law will pull children out of classrooms

The new child labour law will make the RTE a pleasant memory and the plan of extending it to Class 10 a silly dream. It will also take the last shred of substance out of the rhetoric of India’s demographic dividend. India’s vast population of adolescents and youth will now serve as an army of semi-educated workers available at low wages for low-tech industries

Through Dalai Lama, one rediscovers Buddhism

The Dalai Lama’s presence in India has shown the way for the Tibetans to live without strife, writes Krishna Kumar

India’s ivory towers: Why our universities are so vulnerable

University administrators cultivate political kinship and forget that progress in knowledge depends on questions the young ask

Modern pedagogy the way forward: Inclusive schooling makes the grade

Sanskriti School’s goal of excellence by having mostly children of senior government officers is a pre-modern idea.

A common schooling system would bring us together as a society

The idea of having a common school system as a socially cohesive move is just as significant as its reformist assumption, writes Krishna Kumar.

Slow erasing of the teacher: Higher education is being undermined

Our higher education system is being undermined at many levels by steps that are misconstrued as reform, writes Krishna Kumar.

End war against teachers

Teaching is the heart of education, and that is where the crisis has hit India hardest. Teachers find no place in India's modern economy and urban landscape, writes Krishna Kumar.

A fine line to tread for the law in juvenile crime and punishment

The most glaring deficiency of the Juvenile Justice Act (JJA) is that it is gender-blind. The law on juvenile justice must be redrawn so that petty and serious crimes could be differentiated, writes Krishna Kumar.

Female employee sues Yahoo exec for sexual harassment

The complaint alleges that Zhang coerced Nan Shi to have oral and digital sex with her on multiple occasions in California and told her she would have a 'bright future' at Yahoo if she had sex with Zhang.

It’s primary evidence

Delhi University will award aspiring elementary school teachers a diploma in two years. This move undermines the Right to Education Act, writes Krishna Kumar.