Minutes of the Meeting on 07/20/02 - by Amrish In attendance at the meeting were: Anirban Hazra Himanshu Bhagat Sachin Gangrade Santanu Chakraborty Maya Yajnik Vikas Sawant Abhra Mitra Sudhakar Govindarajhala Rajesh Elayavalli Amrish Garg 1. Publicity for Work An Hour (WAH). Himanshu has volunteered to be the overall coordinator. He presented an action list consisting of following items. (a) Flyer. No need to make our own. Can use one prepared by another Chapter. Himanshu to identify. (b) Canvassing by e-mail. Amrish will send out request to people on Asha mailing list. Dipali to send to people on her database, once it is ready. Himanshu and Anirban will have ownership of sending requests to corporations and entities such as SAJA. (c) Himanshu/Vikas will investigate publicity on radio and Little India. No decision taken on the amount of money that can be spent. (d) Rajesh will help in determining how we can publicize on Sulekha. 2 Regarding the proposed closure of the HSTP by the Madhya Pradesh government, the attendees unnimously decided that Princeton Chapter endorses the protest campaign that is being orchestrated by Asha national. Attendees also signed the protest letter that will be faxed and mailed to the MP Chief Minister by me. I am attaching the letter with this. As you can see, the letter asks for the review of the HSTP by an independent committee of educationists and scientists. This is a very fair request. I urge you to print the letter and mail it to the Chief Minister under your name. Amnesty International has found that such mailing in large numbers can be very effective. Information on HSTP and what else you can do is available at http://www.cisl.columbia.edu/grads/presi/EKLAVYA and at http://www.petitiononline.com/forhstp/petition.html . 3 Rajesh presented a proposal for funding a scholarship project for needy students in Chennai in partnership with Asha-Chennai and Asha-Berkeley. He has already lined up partial support for the project through Asha Stars. The project was considered to be a very deserving one by the attendees because dedicated professionals in Chennai are administering it. At the same time, our latest cash flow situation is still in the process of being determined. Therefore, the following decisions were taken: The project is approved, in principle, but can be funded only if the Chapter has the financial resources to support it. Assuming that money is available, the project will receive $1,000/year for 3 years. Rajesh was requested to continue to mobilize project support from Asha Stars. 4. Rajesh also presented a proposal which called for Asha-Princeton and Sulekha jointly sponsoring a Bharat Natyam performance by Malavika Sarukkai in the Fall. The attendees felt that we will not have the bandwidth to do justice to such an undertaking. We requested Rajesh to politely explain the situation to Mr. Prabhakar and also mention that we would want to work with Sulekha in future projects. 5. Anirban volunteered to take ownership of the procurement and sales of Asha calendars for 2003. Regards. Amrish Att: Letter to the Chief Minister of MP ASHA for Education P.O. Box 1287 Princeton, NJ 08542 ashaprinceton@yahoo.com July 20, 2002 Shri Digvijay Singh, Honorable Chief Minister, Government of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal. Dear Shri Digvijay Singh Ji, Subject: Protest against the proposed closure of the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program. We have been following the recent developments on the HSTP with a great deal of concern. It was reported by The Hindu in it's June 30 edition that the District Planning Committee of Hoshangabad has decided that status quo will be maintained as far as it's earlier recommendation to close down HSTP is concerned. We also received information that Ms. Amita Sharma (Secretary, Elementary Education and Commisioner, State Education Centre) has issued a letter on 3rd July, 2002 informing the Collector, Hoshangabad, of a government decision to discontinue the use of HSTP books and examination system. These steps taken by the government are extremely shocking and disappointing to many educationists and intellectuals, both within and outside India. You might be aware of a previous petition to you in which many such people from across the world came out in support of HSTP unequivocally (http://www.petitiononline.com/3214/petition.html). In addition, there has been a great deal of support for HSTP from parents and children of Hoshangabad itself. We believe that the steps to shut down HSTP are extremely pre-mature because of the following reasons: 1. Ms. Sharma’s letter has preempted the process of an in-depth academic review of the program as ordered by you in the meeting convened on March 3, 2002. We demand that an independent panel of eminent scientists and educationists be involved in reviewing the program, and that any steps to discontinue this program should not be taken before such a review is completed. The State Advisory Board of Education could be asked to oversee this process. In this context, it is important to note that a prior study conducted by the NCERT, at the behest of the MHRD, has come out strongly in favor of HSTP and recommended the extension of the program to the entire country! 2. Closure of HSTP has been ordered before the process of developing a state-wide initiative for improving science education is in place. Although you have referred to such an initiative in public, there have been no steps taken by the government to formulate this. Instead you are stopping a proven and time-tested endeavour such as HSTP. 3. There were references made by Shri R. Gopalakrishnan, Secretary to the Chief Minister, to a quick data collection and analysis they had done of Class 10 examination results of one year (2002), that apparently reflected that Hoshangabad ranked about the 20th out of 45 districts in % of students getting first divisions in Science & in overall pass percentages. Shri Gopalakrishnan implied that this meant that there was no positive effect of HSTP in Hoshangabad. We feel that it is extremely unfair to assess the impact of HSTP by analyzing the results in these examinations only. HSTP encourages the learning of science by understanding topics, that too at the middle-school level. To expect that this should make an overall impact for ALL subjects at the Class X Board exam is an illogical step in evaluating HSTP. If the positive impact of HSTP on the learning of science is to be assessed as part of an overall review, it needs to be done at the middle school level itself. Besides, the present examinations at Class X level are largely confined to testing of information-recall with little or no emphasis on testing a student for problem solving, experimental or analytical skills or conceptual understanding. Since HSTP gives more emphasis to development of these skills as per the guidelines of the National Curricular Framework and discourages learning by rote, it would be unfair to assess the impact of HSTP by analyzing the results in these examinations only. We would like to add that the science-learning methodology implemented by HSTP is being accepted and followed in more and more in many parts of the world today. We strongly urge your government to organize a review for fair assessment in keeping with the times. We understand that the nature of the data that was presented by Shri Gopalakrishnan in support of his hypothesis is totally inadequate and extremely selective in nature. There have been other studies that show that HSTP students are able to cope just as well as the other students inspite of de-emphasizing rote learning. Other analysis of cross district data for three consecutive years showed that Hoshangabad district was among the better performing districts in competitive examinations. The review process should include an autonomous scrutiny of the data by educationists and scientists of high standing so that proper conclusions are arrived at. We once again strongly urge that the ordered closure of HSTP be withdrawn immediately. We urge you to appoint review of the programme by an independent committee of eminent educationists and scientists. The State Advisory Board of Education could be asked to oversee this process. We would like to emphasize that such a hasty and improper decision taken by the government agencies will only send the signal that the state is indifferent to the proper education of your children. We find it ironic that a government that claims to distinguish itself through its progressive outlook should take such a regressive step in ordering closure of HSTP. We would like to re-affirm our support and solidarity to Eklavya and other groups that are striving to improve the quality of education through programs like the HSTP, and strongly urge that the ordered closure of HSTP be withdrawn immediately. Sincerely,