When I saw the video for the 1st time, what amazed me is the lucid way Javed Akhtar explained the 'cupboard' (?); part' (let's ignore the intelligence part)...sort of an article many times...words from there...:(more so such issues were never a matter of policy/academic debates in Indian societies, per se...and this man could think about the puzzle and come out with a possible explanation)
"Sending everyone under the sun to college is a noble initiative. Academia is all for it, naturally. Industry is all for it; some companies even help with tuition costs. Government is all for it; the truly needy have lots of opportunities for financial aid. The media applauds it—try to imagine someone speaking out against the idea. To oppose such a scheme of inclusion would be positively churlish. But one piece of the puzzle hasn’t been figured into the equation, to use the sort of phrase I encounter in the papers submitted by my English 101 students. The zeitgeist of academic possibility is a great inverted pyramid, and its rather sharp point is poking, uncomfortably, a spot just about midway between my shoulder blades.
For I, who teach these low-level, must-pass, no-multiple-choice-test classes, am the one who ultimately delivers the news to those unfit for college: that they lack the most-basic skills and have no sense of the volume of work required; that they are in some cases barely literate; that they are so bereft of schemata, so dispossessed of contexts in which to place newly acquired knowledge, that every bit of information simply raises more questions. They are not ready for high school, some of them, much less for college.
I am the man who has to lower the hammer.
We may look mild-mannered, we adjunct instructors, but we are academic button men. I roam the halls of academe like a modern Coriolanus bearing sword and grade book, “a thing of blood, whose every motion / Was timed with dying cries.”
Basement of Ivory Tower, Prof. X, Atlantic
Prof. X was talking about basic college degree...in India, it now pervades the PhD too. Often thought - is Olympics for everyone, as a way of '...To oppose such a scheme ...of inclusion would be positively churlish' too?'
https://lnkd.in/d7ZxYwrK
Over the years, whatever little I could sense or comprehend, I have increasingly been a believer that our film-industries are at par with the global best.
That's probably not yet true for our for-profit business organizations, our academia, or our quality of governance. Journalusm media better be not mentioned at all.
Experts claim that Southern movie industry is one-step ahead (or miles?) than Bollywood. Gokhale once observed: What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow. May be high time we replace 'Bengal' with 'South India' now.
Any general obswrvations are bound to fail at certain levels of scrutiny, and we academicians, learn in early years of our academic life, to keep escape route.
Probably, generally, mostly...comes handy in building the escape route.
Interesting and fun to watch two-key veterans here, which reinforce that belief.
https://lnkd.in/gnfP4ucE
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3moEvery time I hear this song, no matter who is singing it, I think of you and our high school days. Beautiful song and beautiful voice you have, Sharon!