Transparent Chennai was recently invited to participate in the Center for Environment Education’s (CEE) annual coastal carnival for kids, which was held at the Bharat Scouts and Guide’s campus on Marina beach. Our focus? To try and provide an interactive display that in the end would highlight the importance of the beach. How did we do this? Through maps of course!

First we pinned down tiled google images of Chennai’s coastline and we asked students to answer in not more than a couple of sentences either one or all of the following questions:

After students had done this they were asked to pin their blurb on the paper map based on where they wanted it to be.

As the day progressed the display built itself and at the end we were left with a collage of blurbs pinned by the students that visited our stall. This resulted in a rich and varied perception map about the coastline.

Parallel to this, we also had students try to locate where they lived on a big map of Chennai city (using TC’s boundary data no less). What we wanted to know was how far have students traveled to be at this event?

This map also built itself as well as the day went on…

The final map looked something like this. It serves as an important indication to the importance of the coastline with students coming from as far as Thirunindravur to attend CEE’s event.

New layer coming up!

- Siddharth Hande

A scheme aiming to make the currently multi streamed Tamilnadu education system more ‘equitable’ has stirred up a great deal of controversy recently.

The SamacheerKalviThittam, which translates into the Uniform System of School Education (USSE), has come under greater scrutiny in the past few months, especially during the switch of power in the state from DravidaMunetraKazhagam (DMK) to the All India Anna DravidaMunnetraKazhagam (AIADMK) as the Jayalalitha government began the rejection of pet schemes implemented by the DMK[1].

The basic structure of education in Tamilnadu consists of 8 years of primary school education, and 2 years of Secondary and HigherSecondary Education each, with 2 years of preprimary education. Under the Tamilnadu Secondary Education Board, students can be in any one of the 4 streams up until class 10: the Matriculation stream, the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) stream, the Anglo Indian stream or the Oriental stream. After this, students are placed in a single stream at the end of which they are awarded the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC).Schools can also choose to follow other examination boards, such as the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) or Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE).

At present, around 1.2crore students study in the four streams, in 11 000 matriculation schools, 45 000 state board schools, 50 Anglo Indian Schools and 23 Oriental Schools, using different syllabi, textbooks and examination formats[2]. Proponents of the USSE claim that these distinct boards cater to a different set of people each, and themselves create and perpetuate increased social divide. The USSE, a political promise made by the DMK during the Assembly elections 5 years ago[3], aims toreduce this divide and bring this vast number of students under a single unified system, in a move‘to ensure social justice and provide quality education in the schools in the state’[4].

The scheme, which was implemented in classes 1 and 6 last year, and was supposed to have been expanded to other classesthis academic year, has faced numerous critiques about the quality and content of the unified syllabus since the introduction of the idea.  It then hit its most recent roadblock when the scheme was put on hold by the newly ascended AIADMK government early this year, on the basis that the syllabus lacked the quality needed forimprovement of the education system.

In the midst of these arguments, schools were forced to open almost 10 days later this year, and have experienced major hindrances for teaching and examinations to be run in the interim, with students attending classes without official textbooks for nearly 2 months after the start of term, with the issue having greater repercussions in government aided schools.Meanwhile, orders were alsoissued to censor and remove objectionable sections of the USSE textbooks, which have already been released to the class 1 and 6 students. Pictures of a red and black bar magnet and an apple outlined in black have been accused of being part of DMK political propaganda, as aiming to inculcate party loyalty through the use of its party colors. Other parts, such as sections promoting the DMK patriarch and detailing the health and social schemes they implemented, were also ordered to be removed or to have government issued stickers pasted over. [5]

However, amidst all this cacophony about streams of education, the ultimate issue of creating equality in education seems to have taken a lower rung in the ladder of priorities. A single examination board and single syllabus may not be as effective a step in providing equitable education to all as improving infrastructure and support facilities in all schools. But nobody is talking about infrastructure or teacher capacity, only syllabi.

As of now, the verdict on the validity of the AIADMK’s Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education (Amendment) Act 2011, which was supposed to have been delivered by the Supreme Court on the 5th of August, has again been postponed to the 10th of August[6]. The case, which had moved from the Madras high court to the Supreme Court as the state government had challenged the high court’s decision to reject the amendment postponing the implementation of the USSE, is fast stretching the public’s limits of patience.

Nearly 2 months after the start of the academic year, 6.5 crore textbooks printed at the total cost of 200 crore[7] for this academic year remain undistributed at the Tamil Nadu Textbook Society godown, waiting, like the educationists, parents and students of the state for the greatly overduedecision.

– Charumathi Raja, summer intern for Transparent Chennai, 2nd year Economics student at the University of Warwick

[1]http://ibnlive.in.com/news/tn-defends-deferment-of-education-act/172801-60.html

[2]http://ibnlive.in.com/news/tn-defends-deferment-of-education-act/172801-60.html

[3]http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-05-22/chennai/29571047_1_samacheer-kalvi-cabinet-meeting- common-school

[4]http://www.samacheerkalvi.in/pdf/307-Ex-IV-2.pdf

[5]http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-03/coimbatore/29846256_1_samacheer-kalvi-social-science-tamil-textbooks

[6]http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-05/chennai/29853980_1_textbooks-samacheer-kalvi-tamil-nadu-uniform-system

[7]http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-06-09/chennai/29637787_1_uniform-syllabus-common-syllabus-samacheer-kalvi