The outrageous cartoons and the outrageous response

The world is going to the dogs - some claim. Although I usually brush away such remarks as incoherent utterings of the pessimists, some recent events make me doubt my stand. The cartoons that were published in European newspapers depicting Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban and the reaction to it in the Muslim and Western countries are few such events.

Firstly, the cartoons are abhorable. What they do is to typecast all muslims of the world as terrorists and conveys an impression that violence is basis of islam. That is of course, not true and Islam does not promote violence. It stands for peace as much as any other religion in the world. The media should behave responsibly and not stereotype millions of people in this world as evil. The parallel I can find to these cartoons is depicting people of African orgin as mentally degenerate and evolutionally backward. If you can brand the latter act as racism and ban it from public discourse why can't you do the same about the former act.

For people who would not be offended, the contoversial cartoons can be found here

Secondly, the response to it in Muslim countries was unacceptably violent. Vandalizing embassies, threatening to kill innocent people, returning the insult with anti-jew remarks are all barbaric acts.

Thirdly, the justification of the cartoons in the Western countries as "freedom of speech" is despicable. All rights come with responsibilities and no person has the right to demean the faith of another person. The comments that I read in this blog on CNN website, made me bristle with anger. And I am not even Muslim.

All this reflects only one thing. The deep cleft between the Western and the middle-eastern world. Or more specifically between Muslims and Christians-Jews. Put in another way, the world is going to the dogs.

The death of TNPCEE (and along with it engineering standards)

The Tamil Nadu government has announced that the TNPCEE examination (Tamil Nadu Professional College Entrance Examination) will be abolished. In the new system for engineering admission, the students will be ranked based on their board exam scores alone. To the uninitiated it might sound like the new scheme is simpler and thus is beneficial to both the students and the administrators. Unfortunately, it might not be so. The new scheme compromises a much more important issue - selection based on merit.

I was initially shocked when I read that Jayalalitha abolished TNPCEE, a move which has been praised by all political parties alike. Then I felt a huge wave of relief that it was not done when I was in my 12th standard. To explain these feelings, I need to highlight a few points about the new system.

1. The board examination in its current form is incapable of distinguishing the aptitude and hardwork put in by different students. Since the structure of the exam is mostly essay-type, it cannot be practically used as a competitive exam.
2. Now students dont need to understand the subject, but rather memorize it blindly.
3. The uncertainities and vageries of answer-paper correction, which has always been of low standard, will unfairly influence students' choices
4. It is very likely that there are going to be 300-400 students with the same score. How is the administration going to sort it? Based on age? caste? or alphabeical order? With a name "Vivek", you can understand why I am relieved profusely. Cant you? I will remember to name my son "Aakash" and my daughter "Aarthi".Maybe I should put in another 'a', just in case.
5. This system is prejudiced against the students from other boards (CBSE etc.)
   
6. The alleged benefit of the new system is that engineering college seats will be more accessible to rural students. What the government doesn't consider is the plight of these students after they join engineering colleges. Not used to the tremendous competition that is common in these colleges, most of these students perform poorly compared to other students. This leads to more college dropouts or worse lowering the standard of education to meet these demands. This is where the old system performs admirably. More competitive students get into more competitive colleges.
   
7. The best way to improve standards of the rural students is to improve the education system itself in rural areas. A quota system for rural students could also be considered. There is already a quota system in place for rural students from SC/ST castes.This could be expanded to all castes. But since the quota system is already abused badly, this could only open a pandora's box of problems.
8. With India striving to be a developed nation, we need more colleges like IITs which conduct active research catering the needs of the Indian society in specific. Colleges that have already established a reputation of providing good engineering education are the ones that could develop the research capability. The new system will be detriment towards this development by lowering the standards.

Some positive spin offs I can think with the new system are as follows. While I welcome the fact that these problems are addressed, I strongly believe the proposed system is not the way to solve these problems.

1. Colleges will have more women students
2. The coaching classes which were extorting money from the students and spreading unnecessary fear about the exam itself are now out of business.

Hopefully the engineering education is refined before further damage happens. Many colleges are already unable to fill half their seats. Any confusion could take further toll.