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Dated : Sunday, July 25, 2010 |
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Need to sensitize teachers
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Sunita Vakil
Our educational institutions are fast becoming new breeding grounds of heinous crimes. “The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil,” says Emerson. But sadly, there are some educators who, despite the Supreme Court ban on the administration on corporal punishment derive sadistic pleasure in meting out corporal and other humiliating punishment to children.
Callous teachers continue to treat students like punching bags and indulge in canning, slapping, kicking and beating the children mercilessly, often for frivolous reasons. If seems as if the cane is being used as a tool of communication in adherence to the philosophy of “spare the rod and spoil the child”. Indeed, punishment, both physical and mental, has become an integral part of our education system. There have been hundreds of cases from schools across the country where defenceless pupils have received grievous physical injuries or have been driven to suicide due to the inhumane corporal punishment. This is a reflection of a deep rooted mindset in our education system that sees corporal punishment as effective and acceptable method of disciplining children.
But in reality, all it does is send a dangerous message that violence and physical aggression are legitimate means of eliminating unwanted behaviour. The recent case of Sahil Sachdeva once again highlights this point. A class 6 student, Sahil was allegedly slapped and humiliated by his teacher for coming late. Unable to cope with and interiosise the humiliation, he tried to commit suicide by jumping from the third floor of his school. This is a tragic story that could have eminated from any of the millions of schools in the country.
What is particularly disturbing is that Sahil’s case is not an isolated incident. A recent study has shown that two out of every three children in India suffer physical abuse at the hands of their teachers. The shocking death of Rouvanjit Rawla, a student of Kolkata’s well known La Marteniere School, who reportedly committed suicide after being caned by the principal has jolted the conscience of the nation. Corporal punishment in India seems to be illegal only on paper as it continues to raise its ugly head from time to time.
Last year, the heart rending death of Shanno Khan, an 11-year-old Delhi school girl, following a brutal punishment by her teacher for failing to recite the full alphabet string proves that court orders are not enough to curb such heinous crimes. The very fact that the child was made to stand in the scorching sun for two hours speaks volumes about the teacher’s inhuman nature. It needs no reiteration that violence against students in schools is on the increase. After all, there have been equally tragic instances where children had harrowing experiences due to the brutal tendency of their teachers.
In one incident that occurred in Tiruchi in 2009, a six-year-old girl was hit by a teacher, locked up in a steel cupboard and later thrown into a water tank. In Lucknow, a five-year-old boy was tied with rope and dragged for 50 metres for not attending school regularly by his teacher. It was again in 2009 that 10 students were beaten up with a nail ridden cane in an MCD school in Delhi.
Teachers who resort to such servere punishment are no less than criminals and need to be treated as such. They need to understand that learning can take place only in an environment of love, understanding and protection. More importantly, teachers should be given lessons that knowledge can not be imparted through third degree methods.
Longfellow once remarked “a torn jacket is soon mended but hard words bruise the heart of a child.” It cannot be gainsaid that humiliation and abuse can cause serious damage during the formative years to a child’s psychology, besides hurting him physically. The inhuman practice of corporal punishment fails to create a positive environment for children to unleash their creativity and innate talent. On the contrary, it does every thing to shatter them psychologically so much so that they resort to suicides. This has been corroborated by Health Ministry documents which reported 16,000 student suicides between 2004 and 2006, though the actual number may be much higher.
Inhuman acts of teachers against students leads to an increased dropout rate, low self esteem and depression. Many little ones also develop school phobia. Many parents, especially from poor background, are also discouraged from sending their children to school. Thus their future is affected adversely. Besides, all efforts made by the government to ensure compulsory primary education will be rendered futile if teachers continue resorting to brutal punishments.
Even though the supreme court ordered a ban on the administration of corporal punishment to children almost a decade ago, it has not stopped teachers from brutalizing children. But more often than not incidents of corporal punishment go unchecked and those perpetrating them go scot free. Many teachers have been arrested but none of them has been punished worse, teachers remain unfazed by the consequences because either it is tacitly condoned or they are protected by virtue of their political affiliations. A show-cause notice or temporary suspension is too feeble a response to counter the menace.
Just framing laws will not help. Rules are useless until implemented fully. It is important to bring the perpetrators to book if such atrocities are to be prevented. Teachers should also be counselled against resorting to harsh punishment which on the rebound promotes a culture of violence.
The shocking incidents point to the urgent need to sensitize teachers to the dangers of resorting to such brutal punishments. It is very well to express horror and shock. But the simple truth is that a strong message needs to be sent across the country that the abuse of a child’s rights and dignity can not be tolerated in any way. The job of a teacher is to prepare a child to face the world.
The whole object of education is to develop the mind of the children with care, protection and opportunities so that they grow and develop as good citizens. They need a positive environment to develop their intelligence creativity and skills. On the contrary, we are doing everything to push them towards humiliating and dehumanizing them, in the process stifling their talents. How can we play with the lives of our nation’s children?
The time has come to re-examine the saying “spare the rod and spoil the child.” Stern laws need to be enacted as well as implemented to do away with corporal punishment. What we need today is far reaching reforms in our education system. There is an urgent need to change our mindset. Education reforms do not mean only doing away with the present pattern of exams or tinkering with the syllabi. We need better teachers and quality schools which implement the law in letter and spirit.
There is a need to save our education system from becoming profit earning ventures rather than centres for knowledge. Only then can India hope to meet the twin challenge of literacy and quality education. |
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Triceratops, Torsaurus same dino at different stages of growth
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A new American study has debunked over a 100 years of thought regarding the dinosaurs known as Triceratops and Torosaurus. Both the reptiles are actually the same dinosaur at different stages of growth, according to the research.
Since the late 1,800s, scientists have believed that Triceratops and Torosaurus were two different types of dinosaurs. Triceratops had a three-horned skull with a rather short frill, whereas Torosaurus had a much bigger frill with two large holes through it.
Writing in the July 14 issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Montana State University paleontologists John Scannella and Jack Horner, say their discovery contributes to an unfolding theory that dinosaur diversity was extremely depleted at the end of the dinosaur age.
The confusion over Triceratops and Torosaurus was easy to understand, Scannella said, because juvenile dinosaurs weren’t just miniature versions of adults. They looked very different, and their skulls changed radically as they matured. Recent studies have revealed extreme changes in the skulls of pachycephalosaurs, tyrannosaurs and other dinosaurs that died out about 65 million years ago in North America.
Scannella, a doctoral student in earth sciences, said: “Paleontologists are at a disadvantage because we can’t go out into the field and observe a living Triceratops grow up from a baby to an adult. We have to put together the story based on fossils. In order to get the complete story, you need to have a large sample of fossils from many individuals representing different growth stages.”
The Triceratops study suggests that it is critical that paleontologists consider ontogeny (growth from a juvenile to an adult) as a source of major morphological variations before naming new species of dinosaurs to account for variation between specimens, Scannella added.
Scannella said: “Without considering changes in shape throughout ontogeny, we overestimate dinosaur diversity and hence produce an unrealistic view of the paleoecology of these animals.”
Scannella and Horner, Regents Professor of Paleontology at MSU's Museum of the Rockies, examined more than 50 Triceratops specimens for their study. They measured the length, width and thickness of the skulls, and examined the microstructure, surface textures and shape changes of the frills. Microscope studies revealed that the tissues of Torosaurus specimens are more heavily remodelled than those of even the largest Triceratops, strongly suggesting that Torosaurus specimens are in fact adult Triceratops, Scannella said. Even in Triceratops that were previously considered to be adults, the skull was still undergoing dramatic changes.
Scannella said he and Horner tried for three years to look for alternative explanations for their findings. They finally agreed that the Triceratops and Torosaurus were the same dinosaur.
Scannella said: “Every avenue of investigation we took in attempts to falsify the hypothesis only supported the idea further.” (Agencies) |
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Massive stars are born the same way as their smaller counterparts
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Researchers have managed to obtain the first infrared image of a compact disc closely encircling a massive young star-a strong evidence that massive stars form in the same way as their smaller brothers.
The international research team led by Stefan Kraus with team members from two research groups of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, made the discovery using a combination of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer, the APEX telescope and the New Technology Telescope.
The team of astronomers looked at an object, known by the cryptic name of IRAS 13481-6124. About 20 times the mass of our Sun and five times its radius, the young central star, which is still surrounded by a disk, its pre-natal cocoon, is located in the constellation of Centaurus, about 10,000 light-years away.
Disks of gas and dust around young stars are the material reservoir from which also planets can form. “Our observations show a disc surrounding an embryonic young, massive star, which is now fully formed. One can say that the baby is about to hatch!” Nature quoted Stefan Kraus, who led the study, as saying.
From archival images obtained by the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope as well as from observations done with the APEX 12-meter submillimeter telescope, astronomers discovered the presence of a jet.
“Such jets ejected from young stars, generally indicate the presence of a circumstellar disc,” said Karl Menten. “Radio telescopes like the APEX sub-mm telescope allow us, for the first time, to study outflows at short radio wavelengths in the submillimeter range. The present project brings together the expertise of two research groups at MPIfR, infrared interferometry in order to investigate the structure of the disk and submillimeter astronomy showing the structure of the bipolar outflow,” he added.
Circumstellar discs are an essential ingredient in the formation process of low-mass stars such as our Sun. However, it has been proposed that massive stars might form when smaller stars merge.
In order to discover and understand the properties of this disc, astronomers employed ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). By combining light from three of the VLTI's 1.8-meter Auxiliary Telescopes with the AMBER instrument, this facility allows astronomers to see details equivalent to those a telescope with a mirror of 85 meters in diameter would see.
The resulting resolution is about 2.4 milliarcseconds, which is equivalent to picking out the head of a screw on the International Space Station. With this unique capability, complemented by observations done with another of ESO's telescopes, the 3.58-meter New Technology Telescope at La Silla, the team was able to detect a disc around IRAS 13481-6124.
“This is the first high-resolution image of the inner disk around a young star, and the combination of infrared interferometry and observations at radio wavelengths allows us to study the important physical connection between discs and outflows. The new observations suggest that disks play a similar role in the formation process of both low- and high-mass stars,” said Gerd Weigelt from the infrared interferometry team at MPIfR.
The astronomers conclude that the system is about 60,000 years old, and that the star has reached its final mass. The disc will soon start to evaporate and eventually form a planetary system.
The flared disc extends to about 130 times the Earth-Sun distance or 130 astronomical units (AU) -- and has a mass similar to that of the star, roughly twenty times the Sun. The study has been published in the latest issue of Nature. (Agencies) |
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What makes a bee grow up to be a queen?
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Putting a new piece into the puzzle of what makes a bee grow up to be a queen, researchers have found that a key protein in the insulin signaling pathway plays a strong role in caste development among bees.
The study by researchers in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University not only adds to understanding about bees, but also adds insights into our own development and aging.
A female bee can become either a worker or a queen. Queen bees are larger and live longer than workers. Queen bees are also fertile while workers are essentially sterile. A queen has only one role-to lay eggs-while workers tend the hive, care for the queen and larvae, and forage for food.
“The incredible thing is that both of these types of female honeybees emerge from the same genome. So how does that happen?” said Florian Wolschin, lead author of the study. Workers determine the fate of the larvae by what they feed them.
The amount and composition of food that the larvae receive determine whether they become workers or queens. People have known this for many years, but exactly what happens inside the cells to create this split isn’t completely clear.
The researchers found that the insulin signalling pathway plays a role in caste development. Insulin is a hormone found in humans and many other animals, and insulin-like peptides have been discovered in bees.
Insulin moves glucose-sugar-from the bloodstream into the body’s cells where it can be used. The researchers suppressed one of the key proteins in this pathway in honeybee larvae.
The protein, called the insulin receptor substrate (IRS), has been linked to growth, development and reproduction in mice. The researchers fed the altered larvae a queen’s diet, but they developed into workers, not queens.
IRS is only one component of the process that decides a bee’s ultimate fate. Wolschin says several other molecules are known to play a role, including DNA methyltransferase, juvenile hormone and a protein called TOR. “Those are all very important and fundamental mechanisms. One single part cannot alone be responsible. It has to be the interplay between different mechanisms that finally results in the divergence of queens and workers,” said Wolschin. (Agencies) |
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