Two more well written edited articles written by my students on subjects that are not in the prescribed syllabus

I need to explain why I'm posting my students' work.

For one thing , I edit what they write and put it in. Secondly, it is a reward. Their thoughts , when well expressed , need recognition on various counts.

The third thing is this:
This blog was started with the decision to make it a professional record and I hope some of my colleagues at least will join in the work of evaluating each other's blogs.

Student records can be online samples too.

The two articles I'm posting here are both individual efforts and I felt that, after my having spruced them up, they are interesting enough to make good reading for anyone who wants to visit and read my blog. The process would really become intersting if they also comment so that the students and I are benefited.

The last and most important reason is the fact that education has to move towards description and not assessment while dealing with student specimens of writing. This , as far as i am concerned , helps more than marks or grades. The criteria for such descriptions needs , of course, to be decided. Prescriptions would then come from the students themselves and not form the teacher.

Article I

Where does the road of today's youth lead?

Why is there this great need to conform in today's society? When I talk about society, I mean the life and social circle of a Teen living in Bangalore City! Of late, a person who comes to Bangalore will not be struck by its beauty, the horrendous traffic, the disparity between the poor and the rich or any of the other supposedly wonderful attractive or unattaractive qualities that Bangalore has to offer. Instead he or she can't help but be “shocked”, yes, I think that’s the mildest word possible which I can use, and shocked at the way the children of this metropolis are behaving! Drinking alcohol at 5 in the evening, doing drugs in the presence of an elder brother or with friends, watching blue films on cell phones, smoking and trying out new methods to test the limits of CLEAN fun...the list is endless. What happened to innocent gaiety? Where have Sunday picnics or an outing to a park or friendly get togethers gone? Instead, at the drop of a hat today's adolescents; i.e., the young men and women of Bangalore are quite keen to do-nothing; and I literally mean absolutely zilch. They sit about at popular coffee cafe's ( and maybe by sheer chance or by mistake they might actually order a coffee!) meeting up with friends who they have met but an hour back in school, smoking or doing hookah or trying to guzzle as many beers as they can lay their hands upon. However, the minute they catch sight of a policeman some instinct in them tells them to hastily stash their Bacardi Breezers and Bottles of Beer aside or quickly get on their bikes and go for a quick zip in case these " nosey, pesky, annoying cops" have a sudden fit of moral duty to check these teenagers "borrowed" licenses. With the influx of Western culture, Bangalore seems to have absorbed the darker side of it all. Be it the music or the fashion statements, barely there skirts and tops and garish jerseys and baggy jeans the boys and girls of today are eager to test how far they can go, physically with each other and emotionally with their parents. The minute you hit thirteen and above, it’s the norm to be seen out, late at night, wrapped around your current date, and be seen with the latest Bling i.e. your ipod, the latest cell phone, a cigarette drooping from flaccid lips and with red bloodshot eyes. With not a care in the world these young adults see no problems in trying to push the edge of reason.

What do you think of this state of affairs? I am however glad that there does exist certain people who don’t give a damn about fitting in. Sure, we all have the desire to experiment but the difference between stupidity and smartness is that the latter recognizes the need and essentiality to stop.
The road of today’s youth leads somewhere….. but where?!

by Kruthika Chittiappa

Book Review of Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

11/29/05

I can definitely say that “Memoirs Of A Geisha” has joined my list of favorites when it comes to literature. Having just completed reading the book yesterday, in the wee hours of the morning, I would like to share my experience of the book with you while it is still fresh in my mind. And believe you me, reading this book was not like the sometimes-mundane task of reading a text you are not interested in, but was truly an experience.

The book starts off with the protagonist Nitta Sayuri as a little girl, when her name was Chiyo-Chan, living in a tiny village on the coast of the Japanese island of Kyoto. She is a girl born to a family living in poverty in a tiny wind-blown house she fondly calls “tipsy-house”. The story tells us how Chiyo was never an ordinary girl, from her prominent intelligence to her startlingly rare eyes, an exquisite shade of grey-blue.
Chiyo’s mother lies in bed, continuously battling fatal bone cancer, while her emotionless father sits around the house wordlessly expressing his sorrow.
Then one day Chiyo and her sister are taken away by Mr.Tanaka, a man they mistake for a kind human being, who buys them from their father and sells them in Gion, for one to be trained as a geisha, and the other as a prostitute.
Chiyo is sent to an Okiya to be trained as a geisha because of her startling beauty, evident in her even as a child, but conditions are harsh and her outspokenness and desire to escape the Okiya lead her to be removed from training and she spends her days as a maid, abused by the resident geisha, Hatsumomo.
Everyone is unkind to her and the only act of kindness she is shown is by a man on the banks of the river who she remembers only as “the chairman”.
Every day passes with her clutching onto the meager hope that she will see him again, some day and it keeps her alive.
One day however her luck changes and Mameha, one of the city’s most prominent geishas decides to adopt Chiyo as her “younger sister” or geisha in training and then the story follows Chiyo, now Sayuri(her geisha name) as she experiences the luxurious illusion-filled world of the geisha, not without its share of emotional hardships thatshe has to endure in trying to secure the affections of “the chairman” who does not remember her as the girl he was once kind to.

In the end Sayuri is reunited with him, the only man who had truly seen her soul.

The book is written well and it is evident that a lot of research has gone into its writing because it is written so realistically that the scenes of the book almost flash before our eyes, and we are enveloped in the world of the geisha.

I would recommend this book to everyone.

by Ahalya Alvares