On to the subject – I have been thinking about this interesting idea of death for a few years now. Oh well. This is to just give the readers of the blog two links and so.

=-=-=

I have not read anything more poignant than this column written by Emily Rapp in NYT, lately.

Please read Notes from a Dragon Mom – and ponder over how fortunate the rest of us are.

Parenting, I’ve come to understand, is about loving my child today. Now. In fact, for any parent, anywhere, that’s all there is.

=-=-=

The second pointer is to that excellent and a very beautifully done up course on death offered for free by the Yale University. You would perhaps require a broadband connection to view the course and enjoy it.

=-=-=

Both links are eminently recommended.

It is true that from the day we are born, the clock starts ticking and that we are designed to move on, from day #1.

Yes, but it is also of course true that we are designed to live our lives to the fullest too. (yes, I just managed to listen to one of  them finest violinists on earth - Yoana Strateva, yesterday live – still baskin’ in the reflected glory! Oh what a magical treat it was! Apparently this Bulgarian lady visited Bangalore in 2008 – and somehow we seem to have missed her.)

But is amazing that, the volume of the ball could only be a very very very verrry small fraction of volume of the cube.

You may ask how,  you silly ol’ man?

But apparently it is so in dimensions higher than 3. Ta Da!

Brian Hayes has written a delightful essay on the subject – called ‘An adventure in the Nth Dimension’ – please savour it, if you can!

The area enclosed by a circle is πr². The volume inside a sphere is 4/3πr³. These are formulas I learned too early in life. Having committed them to memory as a schoolboy, I ceased to ask questions about their origin or meaning. In particular, it never occurred to me to wonder how the two formulas are related, or whether they could be extended beyond the familiar world of two- and three-dimensional objects to the geometry of higher-dimensional spaces. What’s the volume bounded by a four-dimensional sphere? Is there some master formula that gives the measure of a round object in n dimensions?

Some 50 years after my first exposure to the formulas for area and volume, I have finally had occasion to look into these broader questions. Finding the master formula for n-dimensional volumes was easy; a few minutes with Google and Wikipedia was all it took. But I’ve had many a brow-furrowing moment since then trying to make sense of what the formula is telling me. The relation between volume and dimension is not at all what I expected; indeed, it’s one of the zaniest things I’ve ever come upon in mathematics. I’m appalled to realize that I have passed so much of my life in ignorance of this curious phenomenon. I write about it here in case anyone else also missed school on the day the class learned n-dimensional geometry.

Go to thearticle, and become ecstatic… Really.

This is how any stuff about popularizing sciences should be.

It is amazing that – kindling our imagination and provoking the curious minds  – are still happening in spite of the best efforts of the Discovery  and National Geographic Channels – not to speak of the other unspeakable channels …

There is this usual information about some of the best creative brains that have come out of the Montessori system. Though, many of the readers of this web log would know about these logical outcomes of a canonical Montessori method – the aspect of this article that has made me point to it is its marriage of conciseness with some relevant details.

But, this supporting link  -  Evaluating Montessori Education  - a robust research article by Angeline Lillard  and Nicole Else-Quest is very scholarly; the time spent on this article is a damn good investment of anyone’s time.

Alternatively,  if you have trouble accessing the article -   you can try going to this page via this montessori science page. (referrer id/url and all that)

Enjoy!

Enjoy and reflect upon this nice presentation please!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-about-better-parents.html?_r=1

While what he is revealing is not earth shaking, I know that, sometimes we adults (I mean, Suppandis) read and agree with the opinions of only our erudite and ‘well known’ scholars. We don’t have respect for hometruths or bare facts. So.

But here’s what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents.

Being a parent and a teacher, I straddle both worlds, I feel dizzy at times…

To be sure, there is no substitute for a good teacher. There is nothing more valuable than great classroom instruction. But let’s stop putting the whole burden on teachers. We also need better parents. Better parents can make every teacher more effective.

I love it. I love it. I love it. (bold facing in the above quote is my contribution)

I have dealt with many parents (that of my biological children, my class children etc etc) but it is only on very very rare occasions that I have bumped in to reasonable parents – for a given value of reasonableness, I mean.

Incidentally,  I have narrated a few of my encounters with Suppandic parents earlier and hope to do a few more when my time permits it. oh how can I not tell you the stories of our cowardly Suppandis and Suppandinas and their bluster and their arrogant sense of entitlement and their phoniness… oh well.

Please check out the comments of Friedman column readers too…

• What Anne Murphy Paul wrote in NYTimes: The Trouble With Homework – it is nice to read something that proves your convictions (not of the Tihar kind, though)
• What LynNell Hancock scribed in the Smithsonian: Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful? (Sheesh! As the blog nanopolitan puts it  – I am afraid, by gawd,  it makes one really suffer from Finnish Envy)
• Matthew Syed at BBC: Is it wrong to note 100m winners are always black?

(all links and some text via the Nanopolitan blog of T A Abinandanan, thanks!)

Have you read the previous insltalment?

Okay. Some sloppy background here. These friendly folks had been sending their children to nammashaale a few years back – and there were always problems in collecting even the meagre fees (subsidized heavily by the Trustees of nammashaale) that nammashaale used to levy. They also could not pay for the transport.

Now, this is all understandable, we all undergo troubled times, financially lean & uncertain periods and mostly we are able to bounce back – and if and when we do, we do pay back all our debts.

It is also true in some cases that, in spite of our fundamentally good  intentions, we cannot or do not repay, but we do express our regrets, we are ashamed of ourselves, we squirm in our seats, carry tonne loads of guilt and develop all kinds of illnesses including cancer – when we do not. Oh the human condition…

However, these folks had made a habit of not paying the fees at all for a significant period – mostly it was managed by repeatedly giving the school their personal cheques that cannot be honoured. And I think, a couple of years back or so, on the day #1 of one ‘next’ academic year, they came, without any regret whatsoever and took out their children.

That they gave a cheque again for ‘all the dues’ and that it promptly bounced for the millionth time is another story.

Of course there was not even any indication of an expression of regret from the parents – the children are now going to another school. We all are happily dying everafter…

At that time, I knew about the slender financials of the school and I was aghast at this final replay of the nonpay-event. I mean, how can one do all these things with a straight face? What is the meaning of all this? Is it wrong to expect the parents to pay a little when all the fruits (and more) are being enjoyed by them, their children? Can’t the fee be paid in instalments? Can’t one do *something?*  Don’t we all know that issuing cheques fully aware that they would bounce is a cognizable crime – it is an immediately jaileable offence usually? Forget about the legal systems – is this even a fundamentally correct and moral attitude?

Having ranted as above, I am sure these parents must have had some reason or their own logic for having behaved in this bizarre manner -  but I have no way of knowing it. May be there is some rational expression that is lurking somewhere that a rabid guy like me is unable to understand.

… But, the Trustees of nammashaale were really sweet, after some discussions, they did not want to proceed against the errant parents and the issue was closed. I tried to push for discussions at least – but I suppose fundamental sanity and grace prevailed on the Trustees, in spite of my best efforts.

Now, as is usual, lots of water flows under every bridge all over the world for the next one year or so…

So, after very many months of silence etc, these folks suddenly & startlingly, send me the ‘anna’ hazare (sorry, SaviourRaj!!) ‘fwd:’ asking me to ‘please forward’ – oh the ammunition – I grit my teeth for a few days but I could not take it any more and wrote to them the following:

From: Ramjee Swaminathan <…@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 12:25 AM
…
name1, name2 – thanks for the mail forward exhorting me to act against corruption. Sorry about responding so late.

But, I do not think I am competent enough to talk about corruption. You would know the story about ‘people living in glass houses… etc etc.’ And, I do not believe in ‘mail forwarded – task accomplished’ kind of simple solutions either, to everyday issues of moral and financial corruption. I admire(!) Anna, though!

I sincerely believe that – if I am not morally & ethically bankrupt, if I have not cheated anyone wantonly, If I have not hurt anyone wantonly, that’s more than sufficient for me and the world. I do not need to preach anyone anything. I need to live it. And, it is a major personal struggle for me.

I hope your family is doing fine.”
…

(I have snipped out the other parts)

To which, I received a prompt reply:

From: name1@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 8:19 AM
Subject: Re: The decisive battle against corruption in India has begun… Please read, and circulate
To: Ramjee Swaminathan <… @gmail.com>

hey Ramji,

I agree with your sentiment.  To each his own. “

(I have snipped out the other parts)

Actually, I am okay with double standards. I have been on both ends of this double-standards businesses and gray areas. There are many reasons and no reasons for all these.

But I am NOT okay with folks who easily have triple standards and more.

I am not standing from a higher pedestal and lecturing down to the hoi polloi. I have waged long and bitter wars against financial corruption and have lost tens of lakhs of rupees, when I was a young & seriously serial entrepreneur. I have dealt with desperate situations, with irate creditors knocking at the doors and have been completely broke a couple of times because of my ‘wet behind the year’ perceptions – or call it idiocy. Honestly, I probably felt like a hero, bah! – and of course, there were financial / physical prices to be paid for all these misdemeanors of mine – I did pay dearly too – no complaints though!

Later, as a tired old man, I have also paid bribes directly / indirectly – for some specific reasons and no reasons again.

Mea Culpa – O Ramjee, what a let down!

Hmmm…

I still would like to like these friendly folks, they have been by and large gentle and *otherwise* perhaps fine folks. I even try to understand them. But I am sure, even if I understand them after much difficulty, I actually would not agree with them.

It is really sad.

I am not bitter about this. I don’t think the Trustees are either. But sometimes one really wonders…

As the Time ‘Pink Floyd’ lyric says:

“And then one day you find
ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run,
you missed the starting gun.
…
…
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I’d something more to say. “

=-=-=-=

What do you think?

It is very easy-peasy to become an activist (of social or anti-social issues) these days. Hallelujah, hallelujah!! All of us wannabe social activists never had it oh so good!

In fact, this post is about ‘social activism’ that I actually learnt from an illustrious parent (believe me!  I am telling you the unvarnished truth) – and unfortunately, for various reasons this parent (or parents) shall remain unnamed, sorry.

Well…

To help you lazy fellows (I mean you – the unfortunate reader of this pathetic weblog), I have presented four levels of social activism, after a whole lot of painstaking research and lucubration. (and I sincerely hope that you would profusely thank me and flood my mailbox & the comments area with a zillion thankyou, thankyou kind of mushy notes, oh the hope!)

Okay – onto the details:

Level I: One simple way of ‘Activism’ is to watch various TV channels dishing out instant solutions for societalrelated issues (including corruption), while munching on Lay’s chips and sipping Coca-Cola or some such product of a bladder.

Level II: A slightly tougher way of activism is explained in the following process: We hear of some social activism, some tussle, some skirmish, some fight – somewhere via, some darn & despicable source like a Friend, TV, Radio, Newspaper, Internet etc etc. The gravity of this situation demands some resolute, urgent and decisive action from us. We try to get up, we can’t, our arse has become too big for our seats, we have been sitting for a considerable time now – so instead, we slightly tilt our bodies sideways so that one of our posterior hemispheres (technically known as ‘buttocks’) just makes an angle of some 15 degrees (no more, mind you!) to the horizontal. Now what? This is our way of delicately commenting on the issue by breaking a suitably well-informed and aromatic gust of wind from our anus (complicated technical jargons for this tiresome activity are many: blogging, mailing list conversations, random facebook entries etc). Please note that, sometimes, depending on the pressure of the event, some sound effects may also accompany the noxious comment – in which case, we can happily upload a truly multimedia file ‘to the Internet!’ Moral: Everyone can happily die ever-after.

Level III: A slightly more harder way is to laboriously read ‘The Hindu’ and then to write longish ‘letters to the editor’ – but the problem here is that one should start off with ‘apropos of xyz’s artlcle…‘ and end with ‘to be concluded‘ or ‘to be continued‘ etc etc. It is all very messy hifalutin’ English and so, one is not advised to try that. Again, there are many people waiting out there with drawn pens and drying ink-nibs to give you suitable rejoinders! More of those blistering appropos-ofs! Mommeeeeee!

There is a much, much harder way though. It is also technology enabled.

Level IV: Open your mailbox with much trepidation, lo and behold, invariably you would have a slew of gory mail forwards (in fact, fwd: fwd: fwd:…fwd:s from one of your ‘following’ friends and ‘followed’ friends) in which, you would be asked to take to the battlefront of the great fight against corruption – simply by doing the daunting task of forwarding the offending ‘fwd:’ to another zillion folks in your hitlist.

Indeed it requires so much courage, conviction and commitment to religiously forward such mails – my eyes become glassy when I think of these brave email-forward-warriors. My heart goes out to them. I wish them all the best. *sniff*

Apparently, lately, a critter called ‘SaviourRaj’ (hic) – Saviour Raj <saviourraj @ gmail.com> – has been hyperactive on this ‘fwd:’ mafia business – and it so happened that, among many others, a few nammashaale parents also received this spam. The spam was about the current darling cheer leader of the unnecessarily noisy and boisterous muddle classes – Srimaan ‘Anna’ Hazare PBUH – and was titled ‘Anna Hazare fasts unto death against corruption – A mahatma announces fast unto death‘ – and oh, won’t my troubles ever end…This forward had the following (dis)content.:

• 54 exclamation marks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• 9 fwd: fwd: fwd: s
• 6 different font styles
• 4 different font sizes
• 4 colours
• 3 requests  forward the mail to as many people as possible and as ‘widely’ as one can
• 13 mistakes in the English used
• etc, etc, etc  grrrrr

All very, and bloody jarring to the eyes and to the brain… (Honestly, the moment I receive a forward like this, immediately I want to murder the spammer who meaninglessly and methodically forwards these thingies – but mor on these morons later…)

Sheesh! *&^#!#$%@

Well, perhaps, many parents kept quiet and did not send it to me, because either they were too busy forwarding it to other people or they were also tired of this frenetic email-activism or they were afraid of my silly temper. But not my friends – they sent it to me. grrr

ME!!!! (pardon my exuberant exclamation marks – at this point I was really hyper-super excited and ultra angry!!!)

Believe me, actually these friends are fundamentally very good people, very sensitive folks with a heart, or so I thought – not that my thoughts really matter…

But… there is a hidden side to the story.

Rest in the next installment please! (so stay tuned, if you must).

In the meantime, I am off to my  Level II social activism (as above).

You can also join me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

pLEaSE CIRCULATE this emil wildly!!!!!!!!!!!!

It ish a warr agunst corption.!!!!!!! Jai

Hind!   !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! shud reech ass many peeppil plz

(really, really, really sorry for all the exuberance)

But, have you read the previous three related posts to make sense of what is all this nonsense please… (in reverse chronological order)

• suppandi responds to suppandi…
• suppandi scribes…
• suppandi strikes again! (oh NO!!)

=-=-=-=-=

From: Aaaj <…@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 3:22 PM
Subject: Tsk, tsk, Ramjee !
To: Ramjee <… @gmail.com>

Tsk, tsk, Ramjee !

Out of curiosity I recently looked up the nammashale blog.  It was abruptly, unceremoniously dumped in 2009.  Just like Nammashale itself in 2011.

So very typical !

But how to cover the true stripes?  Simple, deny admission to an innocent child  after ‘thorough evaluation’  and other such ‘loyalty’ tricks.  Poor Rama will remain convinced of the bonafides, even at that last stage.

{ On my last Himalayan trek to Roopkund, I noticed a natural event above 12,000 ft. A certain worm gets in to the body of a larger worm, starts eating the innards systematically except the digestive system, finally when the big worm is all but dead eats up the digestive system and rips up the belly to come out and look out for a new worm!}

I hold you squarely and solely responsible for Arun not getting into Nammashale.  Shame on you !

But what else can one except from you whose only theme  in life is YOU.  Sloppy clothes, staccato speech, a mien of studied wise look. Dead give-aways of incurable self-absorption, only I was credulous.

I am sure it will be another school and another management to sidle up to.  But I hope there was only one gullible Rama in this world.

I request you falling on your lotus feet  please don’t bother to reply.  Consider it a sort of reply for your previous long winded mail and I will even promise to read it sometime.. I have no stomach for another eruption of  pseudo-intelligent tripe (felicity  with English language is no substitute for an intellect and a heart).

Wish you happy trampling small children until you reach your goal or , more aptly, your are tripped up.

— Aaaj

=-=-=-=

Life, I celebrate thee!

My comments (if at all)  to Srimaan Aaaj’s loving mail, would probably be in the next post and so enjoy (or regret as the case may be!) your life, in the interim.

Postscript: I have taken the feedback from Mr. Aaaj rather seriously. I have stopped wearing sloppy clothes. I have resolved to improve my spoken English – but the problem is that my darn Tamil (=idly-sambaar) accent refuses to go away, sorry. I am also cultivating an unstudied dumb look – luckily this comes naturally to me.  Dammit, I have even started shaving regularly. Oh the horror!

I have one question to Mr Aaaj: Sir, thanks to a good physique and misguided and quarter-baked martial arts training in the distant past, I have a good chest (‘cut’) that is slightly embarrassing at times. So may I start wearing a suitable brassiere too please?

Life I berate thee! (juzz kiddin’)

But, have you read the previous two related posts to get the context please?

• suppandi scribes…
• suppandi strikes again! (oh NO!!)

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Ramjee Swaminathan <… @gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 8:48 AM
Subject: by way of an explanation
To: Aaaj
Cc: rama reddy <….com>

Dear Mr Aaaj:

Thanks for calling me early in the morning today – apologies for not
calling you last night, as I came home very, very late and was tired.
I got to see your mail to Rama now. This is my personal response to
you, based on the official discussion that  Sudha and I had with you
yesterday.

Normally I would not take so much time or energy to respond, but I
feel that I have to clear the air of accusations, emotion laced words
and misunderstandings. Besides, we have known each other personally
for a few years now.

I checked up with Rama for the mail that she said she sent to you a
few weeks back – and we were not able to retrieve it – the yahoo
mailing system server for school’s id had a glitch and crash a few weeks
back and we weren’t able to recover a whole lot of sent data as also the
inbox. We did not realize that her mail did not reach you. Perhaps your
mail was lost. Knowing the Internet mail system, am not sure what
really happened. But we looked at the pending tasks last weekend  and
asked Sudha (the admin) to reconfirm with you. That’s why she called
you and you spoke to me too.

You said in the mail:

> 1.  Arun doesn’t fit in in the Nammashale system

I did not say that. I said that if he had come in at 2.5 years of age
it would have been fine. I was about to start talking about planes,
normalization and stuff – but you were not willing to listen to me -
you only wanted a review. Each child is different – that is the beauty
of it.  Anjana is different and Arun is different. So there is no
standard set of rules for them. You would know this as a teacher
yourself. But, there should be physical strength and ability (to spend
24 hours in school) in the teacher, if one has to deal with each and
every child as per the needs of the child. The school does not have
the strength now, and we are actually looking at reduced and more
handleable numbers. I said, we can’t honestly take him because we are
not equipped now. I repeatedly said that it is NOT a reflection on the
child. It has only to do with our inability to handle.

You said in the mail:

> 2. If he is admitted then he will be a drain on  teacher resources

I said, each child requires special attention. And that there is a
very reduced strength of adults in the elementary now as it is! So I
said it will be difficult for the adult to handle more new children,
especially when we are curtailing / pruning down the numbers. Indeed
it makes no sense to decrease and increase the numbers at the same time.

I said, if your child gets in because of your pleas – it will not do
justice to the child, to the adults and to the rest of the children.
The ‘drain’ is because of these three reasons – and the child Arun
will not have to be blamed for this. I said it is not AT ALL a reflection
on the child. Besides I personally know the child to be ‘smart.’

In the call you made five different observations.

1. questioning the competency of a non regular teacher to observe a child
2. nammashaale is acting like casteists (hinting at a hidden,
   despicable agendas)
3. the bad treatment meted out to a parent in respect of
   communications – not replying.
4. If it worked for Anjana, why not for Arun.
5. References for how a child admitted at 6 wont work in a montessori school

I will handle them one by one.

1. Please note that every teaching adult in nammashaale has the
requisite montessori qualification and expertise – excepting perhaps I
– and I did not observe your child. Besides, if you are questioning
the competency and the professional integrity of the teachers for a
regular thing/process such as observing the child, how can you be
comfortable in entrusting your child to them? If I were in your
position, I would not even bother, leave alone asking for a review or a rereview. I think there is a cognitive dissonance here.

2. Hmm – this really sets me thinking. If I really think that
nammashaale is casteist or showing caste like ‘narrow’  tendencies,
may be I would stay away from it and not ask for a review. But if you
had said it in the heat of the moment, I would understand you, but
definitely not agree with you. (personally, I feel that many of us
don’t understand caste at all! – we think that it is despicable, based
on some random knowledge that we have. I don’t think so. But, that’s
my opinion, not that of the school)

3. I said nammashaale mail id gets a humongous amount of mails – there
will be slippages. Besides (in our opinion) mail response was sent to
you – but there were followup calls from your side. We are really
sorry that we currently do not seem to have the energy to repeatedly
deal with issues. I would say that your point is valid. But think
about this, I said clearly about the response from school – which was
based on a previous internal discussion – you didn’t want a no and
wanted a review – so I promise to talk to Rama for a review – I did
talk to her – I then conveyed it to you – and again you want a rereview
and come up with all kinds of hints… What does one do if issues do
not get closed or the message is not clearly received (by both sides).
All of us seriously need to think. We do not seem to like ‘sorry’ as
an answer at all. Why isn’t a very considered and genuine ‘no’ is not
acceptable at all? Would you want us to be dishonest with you and
weakly accept the child and not deliver on it? Woudn’t this be a gross
injustice tp the child, to us and to you??

4. I am happy to here that you are satisfied with this aspect of
school – that it worked for Anjana. IMO, it did because there was no
major strain in the teacher resources at that point. This delicate
balance continues as of now – the next year will be difficult. So we
are not allowing ANY lateral entry now at the elementary level because
of the strained and stressed nature of teacher resources. Surely you
want all children to be as happy and as developed as Anjana?

5. There are the books written by Montessori which deal with the
concepts of normalization, sensitivity periods – there are a zillion
of them. You can go thru them at your leisure. But my point was more
from the management perspective. How does one pay individual attention
to a fresh, lateral entrant child, if there are not enough adults
likely to be available to manage the existing strength. As it is, the
adults work between 8.30 AM to 3.15 PM every day plus a minimum of 2
hours at home plus weekends plus handling parents’ calls at home,
checking emails, finding the money, dealing with haggling parents -
while drawing only a ‘basic living’ compensation.  I also agree that
all these are parts of the package. So we should find ways to deal
with this, while retaining our sanity. We are all plodding along in
our lives, voluntarily, of course.

Teaching in a small school with a heart, is not  at all like teaching
at higher levels and in other schools; I would even say that these
places are rather cushy and can put up with a lot of indifference and
incompetence from teachers, leave alone dishonesty – surely, you know
and appreciate that, being a good teacher that you are.

—-

You have a right to your opinion about 1) competency 2) narrow
mindedness and 3) irresponsible nature of the school. In fact, your
right to your opinion will be defended by me. But I would also frankly
agree that I was disgusted at some of your thoughts and hints, and am
really sorry I slammed the receiver down – I was also groggy – not
enough sleep and you called at 6AM – which does not normally happen.

I really understand your anxiety and the fact that Arun going to the
same school as his sister would have helped in terms of logistics too
– apart from your perceptions of quality education etc etc.

Again I would reiterate that the decision is NOT about a particular
Arun – but because of the school’s current inability or the bandwidth
to handle many children – with same quality and care.

I wish the very best for you, your children.

Best:

ramjee.
ps: I have copied the mail to nammashaale yahoo id, and  I consider
the matter closed, which please note.

=-=-=-=

Next:  Mr. Aaaj exposes ramjee aka suppandi… (*gasp*)