Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills” and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.” Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.

And Japan’s few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.

At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian, and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales. The kindergarten students even color maps of India in the green and saffron of its flag.

Little Angels is located in this Tokyo suburb, where only one of its 45 students is Indian. Most are Japanese. [link]

Wow. Never thought I would thank my sixth standard (that’s “sixth grade” in Americanese) class teacher, the late Mrs. Sachdev, but thank you, Mrs. Sachdev for teaching me to go beyond nine times nine. I am now cool in Japan.

The first wave of slicing up services work and sending it abroad has been all about business operations. Computer programming, call centers, product design and back-office jobs like accounting and billing have to some degree migrated abroad, mainly to India. The Internet, of course, makes it possible, while lower wages in developing nations make outsourcing attractive to corporate America.

The second wave, according to some entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and offshoring veterans, will be the globalization of consumer services. People like Ms. Yamaki and Mr. Tham, they predict, are the early customers in a market that will one day include millions of households in the United States and other nations. [link]

“This just goes to show that if you whine longer and harder than the rest of your classmates, you can achieve your goals.”

Following a lengthy two-hour conversation with Wagner, Principal Ron Schroyer named him Class of 2007 valedictorian. [link]

It may be The Onion, but in my teaching experience, students are ready to say or do anything – anything – to get their grades up. Of course, when I say “anything,” I don’t include studying.

In addition to my dissonant ramblings (I am a grad student and teacher, after all), plenty of other events have occurred that involved teachers this year:

Obviously, the biggest and most public event was when this teacher and alleged paedophile owned up to killing Jon Benet Ramsey.

Then we had a spate teachers either having sex or sexually harassing their students. There was this guy in Williston, Fl. And this other guy in Van Meter, Ia. Also, this guy in Kingsport, Tenn. Then this other guy in Todd County, Ky. was accused. This guy in Ashville, Al. denies it. This guy in Waltham, Ma. convinced his students they were training as “masseuses” and ended up with a nice fashion accessory (an ankle alarm). This guy in Logan, Ut. has been doing it since the seventies, and they’re building a case against him now. This guy in Lakeland, Fl. was a band director. This guy in Nashville, however, takes the cake:

[He] faces 25 counts of felony sex crimes: three charges of rape; 13 counts of statutory rape; and nine counts of sexual battery by an authority figure.

To be fair, not all of them were males: This 25 year-old female teacher admitted to having sex with her 14 year-old male student. And this 39 year-old teacher had consensual sex with a 17 year-old, who was not her student, but a friend’s son. We also had this lady in Easton, Md. and this one in East Robertson, Tenn. It’s not restricted to the red states either: Shamefully, we have a desi 41 year-old woman in Manhattan.

Finally, we have this teacher on Staten Island who is accusing the principal of harassing her.

Wow. Happy Teacher’s Day, indeed. It’s no wonder kids start shooting their high school teachers here in the US.

Well, I guess if you start looking under the rocks, you shouldn’t be surprised by what you find. With this kind of stuff going on in high schools here in the US, I think I’m going to have to go to my favorite teacher: This guy.

Class dismissed.

Meanwhile, just wanted to point to Shivaji’s blog. He’s written up a post on all those pre-liberalization products that were on the market. You know, the ones those of us growing up in the 80s saw on the shelves. For instance, Camel compass boxes, Simba Chipniks, Campa Orange, Sosyo (yes, those soft drinks in bottles with ball on top that you have to push in), “Big-Bite” (those pita-bread-type things with a cutlet inside – didn’t last very long on the market, though). I could go on. Ah, the good old days…seems like another eon altogether…

Since I’m currently teaching a class of 60 (count ‘em!) undergraduate brats – and, coincidentally, giving them an exam tomorrow – this could not come at a better time.

Having received emails like:

should i come to class tomorrow?

and

what’s on da exam?

from email addresses ranging from imsosexy2362@… to snoopdawggydawgg@… I have first-hand experience of what these guys are talking about. And I’m quoting verbatim, mind you.

With an impending exam – God (if he existed) help us all. Students who don’t even bother to attend suddenly wake up and expect to learn 4-5 weeks worth of material in a 30-minute review session. And, when they don’t, they have the audacity to complain!

Just yesterday, one lacklustre student who rarely attends was complaining that I was going too fast in class. I told the same student to meet me after class, and while I’m explaining things to her, she decides to SMS a friend and converse across the classroom (no less) with another, at the same time. Why do I bother?

Like I always say: Teaching is like being a vet – you bend over backwards to help the animals, only to have them bite you back in the end. Ungrateful wretches!

Here’s a highlight from the article:

While once professors may have expected deference, their expertise seems to have become just another service that students, as consumers, are buying. So students may have no fear of giving offense, imposing on the professor’s time or even of asking a question that may reflect badly on their own judgment.

For junior faculty members, the barrage of e-mail has brought new tension into their work lives, some say, as they struggle with how to respond. Their tenure prospects, they realize, may rest in part on student evaluations of their accessibility.

And here’s the article…