first experience of a tremor

The time of night(Tuesday,11/8/09,1.40 am) was no different from the many gone by.I was on my bed,legs outstretched,enjoying a episode of "sach ka samna"(an off track reality soap paying u for spilling the darkest secrets of life).The weather was pleasant and night was still.Occasional humming of trawlers,sporadic activity at the cop station beside my house were the only audible phenomenon.Then suddenly the ground shook below me.My bed trembled like it had never before.I was shocked to the core.Was I one of the victims of Tulsi Ramsay's horror flicks.Were hands going to emerge out from under my bed and the stifle the life force out of me.These were some of the weird thoughts that clouded my imagination before a inner force urged me to jump out of the bed before the worse happens.I looked out of the window.Everything was as calm as before.There wasn't any sign of activity.Probably people in my colony were in deep slumber and so least bothered.As I stood holding the railings of my bedroom window it happened again.The iron bars were trembling in my hands and so was my heart.The horror of realization forced me out of my room.As I knocked at my parents' bedroom door,mom opened it.Both Dad and mom were wide awake.We were preparing to come out of the house lest another rumbling should raze the roof to the ground.But ,fortunately no more such tremors occured for another hour.With the hope that we won't go through the experience again we retired to our beds.By the grace of God,the last two days have been calm and may the tranquility prevail.

will educational reforms hamper learning

The latest among a slew of reforms suggested by the new,energetic HRD minister shri Kapil Sibal is making the Xth boards optional.Further a committee of NCERT recommended that the final examiner of a student at 10th level should be his school teacher so that the warm teacher student relationship is maintained,a far from practical argument in favour of doing away with the 10th board exams.Mr.Sibal further goes on and argues that an all india examination with central evaluation traumatises the candidate and hence a percentile system should be the parameter to assess his knowledge.I highly admire the minister's efforts to take some load off the shoulders of thousands of youngsters .But i would like to put forth a simple question.After more than 10 years of schooling and intellectual grooming under the watchful eyes of parents and teachers if the child isn't ready to face a national level competition then probably his school education should be questioned.A national level competition in 10th standard challenges,the mental faculties of a student and gears him up for the greater challenges ahead.Further,during 10+2 every student opts for some particular stream (arts,science,commerce...) where the number of subjects come down but each one becomes more intensive and complicated.Hence a proper marks based assessment in matriculation will help a student to discover his strengths and accordingly choose a particular discipline.I would like to stress that a percentile system as suggested by the honorable minister doesn't solve the purpose.This is because,percentile gives you relative evaluation of your performance,which may be apt for an entrance examination where candidates are tested for speed and analytical ability.But board exams are different .They measure the knowledge of a student as well as his preparedness to carry out further studies in any particular subject.They are rightly called qualifying examination as they assess whether a candidate qualifies to learn further.Awarding grades is again insufficient as it projects a range of marks and not the exact score of the candidate.What can be done is making provisions for selection of subjects during the academic year.This has to be done keeping in mind the requirements of pre university.Many students face difficulty in the sciences while some find language papers difficult to tackle,so here they can clearly go with their choice.Hence i strongly oppose scraping of the board exams which are an essential means of merit based evaluation in our country.