Fight the apartheid

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Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal's education reforms, particularly for schools, have electrified students, teachers and parents. The 10th standard Board exam will now be optional for CBSE schools, grades will be introduced instead of marks, and there will be continuous evaluation in schools. These reforms were urgently necessary and Sibal is certainly one of the UPA's best performing ministers Yet reactions so far have been mixed. A group of parents told me recently that Sibal's advisers on school reforms are "idealistic jhollawallahs" who are far removed from Indian realities. Is the emphasis on "de-stressing" the Indian student, "de-traumatising" the education system, making a child free from the "pressures of competition", an overly romantic rather idealistic vision where children of elite schools are to be pampered into believing that underachievement, indiscipline and sloth are actually signs of a child's own "individual creative genius'? Recently a member of the Central....