Glimpse of reading

National Skill Development Corporation's CEO says “.....vouchers for trainees may become the big government innovation of this decade.”

The chairman of Teamlease Services Mr.Manish Sabharwal says “Unfortunately, 2010 saw the activation of the poisonous Right to Education Act that will lower school capacity, increase corruption, raise costs, lower competition and increase confusion. It represents a license raj of the 1980s, while education needs a deregulation of the 1991 kind. A bad school is better than no school. The most expensive school is no school. The good is not the enemy of great. An education and training system that does not produce employable children amplifies to low productivity informal employment because it produces low productivity people.”

Bihar Chief Minister Mr.Nitish Kumar says “I believe that direct cash transfers are the way forward. Give money to the people and give them the choice to buy what they want from the market…. My policy will be to provide mostly cash transfers in state schemes in the future as well.”

Mr.Soli J. Sorabjee writes Chinese sex education: The Chinese have hit upon an innovative way of sex education which allows boys and girls to peep into each other’s bathroom in order to understand gender roles and observe what behavioural differences there are between the two sexes. According to Zhang Meimei, a sex education expert, the bathroom of the opposite sex can be a mysterious place. “I have known a lot of third and fourth grade boys who would sneak into the lady’s room just to see what it is like. Therefore, visiting the bathroom can be a good technique in teaching gender codes to students.” One wonders what is the take of our dynamic Education Minister Kapil Sibal on the Chinese method.

Prof Mehta writes “R-squared variances will replace the close reading of the Mahabharata and Montaigne as the only way to understand human psychology and it is not clear this will be for the better. The kids will be smarter, but perhaps none the wiser.”

Mr.Subroto Bagchi writes “What are the chances that you are an 11-year-old reading this article right now? I would give it one in a billion. And if you are not an 11-year-old, you would not know what it would mean to be 20 in, 2020. As you try and decipher the many strands of thought I have presented in this article, the 11-year-old is stalking the enemy on his device. What he is using will vary from a Nokia cellphone to the X-Box,