Sunday Posts

  The limits of experiential learning     Guilty as charged , we evangelised experiential learning as the most appropriate education format to meet the demands of rapidly changing workplaces.   Dismayed by over-reliance on uninteresting lectures with hundreds of slides, we emphasised practical enga gement. Our point was that the solitary content consumption, whether from books or from videos, does not allow anyone to prepare for rapid shifts in technology or workplace practices. Instead, the lear ners need to work with other people, as most work today is done in teams, and they should solve real-life problems, as only by application are thin gs really learnt.   But there must be more than this if one is  to create a learning experience in the twenty-first century. That application is a better way of learning than reading textbooks is rather well known. No one denies that experiential learning works better in preparing for practical work. Rather, it ...

I had a conversion this week. I did not fall from any horse, nor I did see a vision. But rather it was a mundane walk on a city evening, to the gym of all places, when I allowed myself to be criticised. It was painful - I had to hold back from justifying or explaining several times - but it was like looking into a mirror. My old, tired, failed self in full view, my introlocutor did not see what I was seeing (just as the mirror does not see you, only you can see yourself) - but I saw something. In fact, I saw many things, but one thing more importantly than others - the problem and the solution lie within me! It is obvious to be a big deal, this discovery, but it is still significant. To submit myself to such a brutal critique, I needed to be despondent. My entire world was falling apart around me. I was beset with doubt about what I was doing. My recent life was crumbling - all that I cared for was gone. I felt old, which I am but the feeling was new. I felt alone, which again I am but...

  For us humans, it seems to be  the best of times, and the worst of times.   It is indeed the age of having information at our fingertips, but also to let misinformation rule our sentiments.   It is a time when technology can talk back to us in a human-like manner, and yet many people struggle to read , understand and write properly.   It is a time when the OpenAI’s o1 can do complex reasoning, and yet most of our readers would find this Dickensian rendering of human  plight incomprehensible.   Our newspapers would claim that we are all going downhill , and yet we are now at the threshold of delaying ageing and death, s eeding  rain and synthetic fuel, space travel for leisure and being present everywhere at the same time through holograms.   In short, we are having a normal day, complaining that things could be better and forgetting that we have come a long way.   Of course, as Paul Virilio says: “ When you invent the ship, you also...

Like millions of my compatriots, I am watching the news coming from Calcutta (now Kolkata) with anger and a sense of shame. First, there was a horrific act of rape and murder of a Junior Doctor inside a government hospital. This showed not only how insecure women are, but also how broken down the healthcare and education systems are in the city. Then, it was apparent that this was no ordinary murder. The hospital administration, the police and the State government rushed in to destroy evidence and cover up through any means possible. After that, when people protested and took to the streets in an unprecedented way, the arrogance of the administration was plain. The Police Commissioner, despite the litany of failure (including Police Officers getting arrested for destroying evidence), would not resign; the Chief Minister would not meet the protesting doctors in a transparent way (they are demanding the meeting be recorded or live streamed); the bureaucrats from once-glorious Indian Admi...

I was in India for a week and I heard one word repeated over and over again: Scale!  India is trying to do something unique. It is trying to create a prosperous society with a huge scale. This isn't about a small proportion of a small population of a small European nation becoming rich: This is about hundreds of millions of people being pulled out of deprivation and empowered to shape their own lives. The ambition is staggering. My engagement, I should admit, is only with higher education. I am not as familiar with the workings of the other sectors of the economy. And Indian higher education is, in many ways, peculiar: While the commercial activities of the country have been 'liberalised' and faced global competition and benchmarking, Indian higher education is still very protected. It has been privatised but through a license raj where politicians called the shots. Indian higher education is, therefore, a strange beast: It has the characteristics of the pre-90s Indian busi...

Sir Keir Starmer is a man in a hurry, as he sets upon his task. He seems to know that he needs to get things done quickly, or otherwise his government may crumble under its own weight. That's what super-majorities such as these do - they allow the hangover to spoil the work-day. Britain is in decline and another decade later, when the rest of the world has fixed its financial infrastructure and the Americans have finally gone home, no one will care about this little isle. This last opportunity to reverse that fate lies with this government. Supermajorities do another thing. For example, I shall now be voting Green, as I would feel no longer threatened that my vote can give a little filip to people like Sunak. And so will do millions of others next time, as thousand parties may bloom in the aftermath. Labour's big win is obscuring the other stories - the growth of Greens - and the Reform party is being seen as a breakaway faction of the Conservatives, and not as the up-and-comin...

Despite all my worries, I woke up happy today. It seems all of the UK has finally woken up and paid back the Tories for their freak show.  We have paid them back for Brexit. It is justice that Nigel Farage spoilt their party and Reform got 14% of the votes. Conservatives let Fascists in, of course - isn't that how it always happens! No one, of course, has a clue what to do with the UK. But the labour is likely to look for a new playback, because they are not tied to any dogma. Rachel Reeves can be trusted to take some kind of Green New Deal path, which I presume the only option to get out of the morass. I also look forward to David Lamy as Foreign Secretary to end the empire hangover finally. Yvette Cooper has a brain and known to have used it, so we may have a Home Secretary who has more to offer than some flights to Rwanda as the solution to all our problems.  I am also happy that the two-track campaign of Rishi Sunak - appearing hurt when someone (one of the Fascists of Ref...