Whenever the question of juxtaposing Ayurveda with modern medicine arises, it is posited by some influential commentators as a case of placing holism side-by-side reductionism. Such a view is an overstatement of facts and this essay seeks to put things in perspective.
In a partly autobiographical sketch, V Madhurima reminisces about the time she spent as a Physics Professor in Mizoram University during 2007-2012. This essay highlights some of the unique features and challenges of being a researcher in one of the North-East states of India
Confluence Series on under-represented groups in academia.
I envisage a distant, distributed mode of education which is efficient at teaching and measuring learning. It is of great advantage when applied to cases and countries where there is demand for highly quality educated people – in short, a society striving for more education with only minimal capital and financial resources to deliver them.
The fact that homeopathy thrives is not proof of efficacy. Just like the existence of tarot readers and astrologers does not prove that these practices have any scientific basis.
IASc welcomes the exciting development of a candidate vaccine and wishes that the vaccine is quickly made available for public use. However, as a body of scientists – including many who are engaged in vaccine development – IASc strongly believes that the announced timeline is unfeasible. This timeline has raised unrealistic hope and expectations in the minds of our citizens.
The gendered nature of domestic work, most of which falls on women and girls at home, may affect the chances of women students to access their online classes and prepare for assessments and examinations. They may also be negotiating with other family members to access shared gadgets and internet connection and would be affected in case there is selective preference for their elder siblings or male members of the family.
There is a need to broaden the vision – for a theological education without borders – keeping and developing the interconnectedness between nations and cultures. This may point towards finding new ways to merge various world-views, new ways to serve, especially those in needy situations, new ways to even up an increasingly unequal and uneven world. The higher education system for religion studies will have to be more tolerant and inclusive, and this may mean rewriting staunch doctrines.
Education is not merely about completing the syllabus in time, or about lecturing on a topic for hours to convey profound bookish knowledge. Gaining experience for life through social interaction and communication is a major component, and this nuanced art of living can only be achieved through classroom learning.
It is important to realize that education at all stages is inherently a political process but much more so at higher education stage, where values and ideas are discussed and debated, and the very choice of a course, a research problem or how these are chosen, framed and delivered, is reflective of these ideas and values.
The lack of robust science behind the current social distancing rules contributes to uncertainty and raises legitimate questions about expert advice.
In broad strokes, online education teaches what you could learn from a book, without any of the subtlety involved in learning. It imparts knowledge, but not a way of thinking. It does not readily permit the formation of learning communities, ones that can critique and prevent people from going way off course. The face-to-face generational transmission of experience and learning is also not the focus of this model – this was what was valued in India as the guru-kula system.
… we are possibly going to have to move entirely online in many cases—at least in the short term. In public universities, this has multiple implications. What we might gain in sterile efficiency, we will lose in the rich messiness of exposure that our campuses provide….. in moving online, we lose that space of social, political and cultural discovery.
