Cover Story - Ideas sail over rivers...

One of the biggest rivers of north Gujarat is the Sabarmati River. Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar the commercial and political capitals of Gujarat were established on the banks of Sabarmati river. The legend is that Sultan Ahmed Shah of Gujarat, resting on the bank of Sabarmati, got inspired with the courage of a rabbit to chase a bully dog to establish Ahmedabad in 1411. History is also a witness to the fact that during India's independence struggle, Mahatma Gandhi established Sabarmati Ashram as his home on the banks of this river. On the same banks of this legendary river is the creation of a knowledge bank, a beacon that will light the minds of throngs of learners who will beam knowledge to the world from this school called Riverside. MENTOR oars its boat towards the banks of this school to share this new philosophy in education with all its readers......

“We are on the banks of the Sabarmati river as well and therefore choose to call our School Riverside School” beams this graceful and glamorous Director of Riverside school, Mrs. Kiran Bir Sethi. She continues in the same tone of excitement, “Also there has been an interesting story to this! I actually had two names that I was thinking of, one was Taksha-shila and the other was River Side. My daughter was 5 ½ when I started school and I asked her to say the name loudly and she couldn’t say the name Takshashila. It sounded like a complicated word you know like a tongue twister. She could say Riverside very easily. So I thought if a child comes to school and cannot say the name of the school clearly, you know it doesn’t make sense to call it with difficult a name.”

Academia Input - Understanding the philosophy of CCE

Well everybody is talking CCE! A Principal speaks about CCE and goes further and talks about formative and summative assessment and break up of marks and no exams and no stress and making learning HOLISTIC! Dr. Vidya Shetty, Director-Academics, Manipal School Services and Editor in chief, MENTOR writes on revisiting the classroom with readiness for CCE...

A parent listens and then talks about education being far better that what it was earlier, that children will get a lot more time to decide on their career, get a longer stretch to travel before reaching Grade XII and of course they will study in the same school upto Grade XII. Therefore the worry of selecting the right college after school for Pre-University programmes is deferred by two years. A student chooses not to understand much about the forms of assessment but is relaxed that he can push the fear of exams by a couple of years. Life skills, attitudes and values, sports and games and other co-curricular activities will come in plenty his way. The difference lies in the fact that all of these will be assessed.

The Japanese have always been envied and admired for the way in which they have come up in all aspects of life despite all odds. One would agree that this excellence and quality in all domains demands great conviction and a strong strategy. The concept of ‘Kaizen’ has no doubt contributed greatly to the success of Japan. MENTOR’s Shakuntala Patel gets more insight into this philosophy through an exclusive interview with Mr. Ashok Puri, Director, Kaizen Institute of India.

Most of us readers have probably heard a lot about ‘Kaizen’ and are also aware that ‘kaizen’ is a Japanese business term about improving things. This philosophy is not just a Japanese managerial objective, but something that most organizations across the world strive for, due to the influences and challenges forced by the intense competitive environment and continued advancement in technological environment.

Kaizen is an amalgamation of two words:

Therefore, the meaning of Kaizen is ‘change for better’. One needs to be careful to specify Kaizen as a continual process and not a continuous process. The difference between the two being that the former ensures sustenance while the latter is an ongoing process which may present the possibility of a drop from an attained performance. This means to say that in Kaizen there is no scope of retreating from the achieved standard of performance. This concept has been in Japan for over 60 years with the aim of improving and evolving for better.

In 1939, when World War II broke out, the orphanage was enforced to an extermination camp. Despite being offered a sanctuary Korczak turned it down repeatedly saying that he could not abandon his children and insisted he would go with his children. On that August day an eyewitness described the procession of Korczak and the children to the Umschlagplatz (deportation point to the death camps).

“The children were dressed in their best clothes, and each carried a blue knapsack and a favourite book or toy.... A miracle occurred. Two hundred children did not cry out. Two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep. Not one of them ran away. None tried to hide. Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, Janusz Korczak, so that he might protect and preserve them. Janusz Korczak was marching, his head bent forward, holding the hand of a child, without a hat, a leather belt around his waist and wearing high boots. On all sides the children were surrounded by Germans…. They whipped and fired shots at them. The very stones of the street wept at the sight of the procession..”

Schooling is a very important growing phase in the human life cycle. A child stays 14 years of its growing life in school. These formative years are important as the habits formed in these important years are going to be the habits formed for life. Food choices made and given at this stage of life is what will stay with them as adults. Dr. Dharini Krishnan, National president and Consultant Dietician at the Indian Dietic Association, shares with MENTOR the innovation that can be incorporated for lunch in a school cafeteria.

The span of fourteen years in a School for a child ranges from pre-school (3 to 5 years), primary school (5 to 9 years) and then middle and high school (10 to 14 years). The important milestones in food habits during these stages are when the child is around the age of 5, when the child learns to eat on its own. Then comes middle school where work load goes up and coping with faster meals and then onto high school where the adolescent nutrient emphasis has to be placed on the diet of the teenager.