1.
“In fact, the whole novel is intended to hold up a mirror to our urban society and to show its noise, its uncertitudes, its sense of crisis and despair, its standardization of pleasures. And the city is a universal for almost everyone in America.”
2.
Ahmedabad: Their office is not air-conditioned, the stairways are betel-stained and lunch amounts to a Rs60 a thali. But as entrepreneurs Sridhar Rajagopalan and Sudhir Ghodke know all too well from their work with private schools across the country that looks can be deceiving.
They, for example, are graduates of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. And their company turned profitable by its second year.
That company, Educational Initiatives Pvt. Ltd, is holding the hands of hundreds of stressed-out students — ironically, by testing them — and using results to help schools move away from a system of rote learning.
Though experts in education wonder how long it will take before such efforts overhaul an assembly-line education system that encourages mugging, the company has grown to assess half-a-million children, and one government school examination board has contacted it to begin discussions on how to improve quality of learning in middle school.
“We want to create a system where children are learning with understanding. Can we show schools and parents that what children are learning is something they cannot be happy about?” said Rajagopalan, 39, the more talkative of the two.
A third partner, Venkat Krishnan, also an alumnus of IIM-A, is based in Mumbai.
To hold up a mirror to schools, the firm devises tests and sends them to schools. Once students complete tests, the data is collected and sent back to schools, showing teachers exactly where students are going wrong.
The findings are not surprising — students can memorize, but don’t comprehend. Nine-year-olds had trouble calculating the length of a pencil whose starting point is 1cm on a ruler, with the end point at 6cm.
The most common answer is that the length of the pencil is 6cm, instead of 5cm, which is the correct answer. Interviews with children yield why they made this mistake. Most thought that 1cm was the point on the ruler showing the 1cm mark and not the length between zero and 1.
It is this lack of understanding of basic concepts that lays bare the problem in India’s schools. This problem is spoken about anecdotally — often by the time students enter colleges or even the workplace. But Educational Initiatives, because of its tests, has hard data at its disposal, and intends to do something about it before it’s too late.
Driven by data
The tests use multiple choice questions to test a student’s understanding of concepts. A thin, inverted triangle, a cone, a figure with four points, and an open, three-sided maze-like figure are among the multiple choices to the question — which of these is a triangle. Of the 3,811 students tested, only 40% got the right answer. That’s because most students think the inverted, and thin triangle does not look like a triangle at all.
... http://www.livemint.com/2007/06/28000111/2008/07/07001406/Their-tests-hold-up-a-mirror-t.html?d=2
3. Mark Holm: Our photos hold up a mirror to the world and share the responsibility of reporting the news
By Mark Holm, Saturday, February 23, 2008
The contrast presented itself at my first weekly planning meeting as The Trib's director of photography.
Having previously worked at four newspapers — which tended to handle their photo departments more as quick-serve operations, with resulting pictures simply breaking up large bodies of gray type, often falling short of adding content to the story — I learned things worked differently at The Tribune.
All departments stood shoulder to shoulder in their effort to bring readers the best of their collective efforts. The professionals here — whether armed with cameras or notepads, pica poles or purse strings — had a sense of ownership about their craft and a sense of partnership with their colleagues.
In my first week on the job, one of our photo interns, Jennah Ward, captured pictures in southeastern New Mexico oil fields to accompany a story by Ollie Reed Jr. The photo department felt it would be appropriate, for a number of reasons, to present the pictures in black and white — in an era when color dominates.
Ward's photos were striking, full of a gritty, steel-and-dirt quality that put the viewer into this stark environment. Why not run with that quality, rather than complicate it with color?
My pitch was hesitant, but I'll never forget Managing Editor Kelly Brewer reminding me: "You're the photo editor."
As if to explain to the rookie that this decision wasn't something that required much negotiating or hand wringing.
As if to explain that I was trusted to do the right thing.
I pursed my lips and nodded my thanks. Inside, I felt like I had just been handed the keys to a really fine sports car.
So why wasn't I doing handsprings? Why, instead, did I have a knot in my stomach? I was struck by the gravity of my responsibility to uphold the tradition of excellence at The Tribune — a small newspaper with a huge national reputation for its use of photography.
If it was that easy to take those keys, start up the engine and ease that baby out onto the road, it would be just as easy to wrap it around a tree.
I couldn't let that happen — not on my watch.
The Trib's emphasis on photography is not just lip service. The newspaper has produced people who have worked for National Geographic; won Pulitzer Prizes at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver; directed the White House photo office; won countless journalism awards from coast to coast.
That success is the result of a choice — a mandate, really — by the newspaper's management over the years. The directive: Photography shares the responsibility in reporting to the readers. It's a massive change from the news-conference-and-portrait style of photography that dominated U.S. journalism for decades.
Our approach to telling stories has remained fairly constant over the years. It's a documentary approach that calls for honest images of real people, artfully portrayed living their lives, reveling in their joys or coping with their misfortunes.
We've tried to hold up a mirror to the community and not spin what we find in one direction or another.
The Trib's approach allowed it to regularly appear with some of the big dogs in the business in competitions that rate newspapers' use of photography. In the past 20 years, it's been common for The Trib to place among newspapers such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News and Hartford Courant.
In my nearly seven years at The Trib, the photography staff members have been my friends, colleagues, teammates. In some cases they've been like my own kids. In others, my mentors. It's been indescribably satisfying to be able to step out of their way and watch so much good work happen — just like punching the gas pedal on that sports car.
4. Who will hold up a mirror to the media?
Jayati Ghosh
They say the media holds up a mirror to society. If so, then this must be most true of the electronic media which, unlike the print media, is so instantaneous in their response and presentation that there is no time for sober consideration and adjustment. But that also means that many weaknesses of our society may well be not just reflected in but even reinforced and sometimes worsened by the media. This thought came while watching television coverage of the horrifying terrorist attacks in Mumbai last week.
There is no point repeating all the clichés. In any case, even the commonly used words — shock, fury, anguish, anxiety — do not suffice to describe all the emotions that most of us have been through while watching the horrific events in Mumbai. But while people across the country were glued to television sets to find out what was happening as the grim and tragic drama unfolded, the role of newscasters inevitably also came under scrutiny. And sadly, the electronic media too has been found wanting on this occasion.
The most shocking aspect may have been the fact that so many news channels persisted in the urge to be sensational and to come with scoops over other channels, over the most elementary sense of responsibility in coverage. It should be obvious to the meanest intelligence that if the enemy — in this case a handful of highly-armed terrorists — is provided with any information during an encounter, it is bound to give them an advantage and make the task of the authorities much more difficult. This is clearly even more the case in prolonged operations in urban locations when only the official side is hampered by the need to prevent civilian casualties.
This means that those covering such actions must be particularly careful not to provide any information that could be relayed back to terrorists and provide them with any advantage. Yet, during the extremely sensitive and fraught military-style operations in the three Mumbai locations, competitive journalism obviously trumped such considerations, even though it was suspected that the terrorists had satellite phones and could, therefore, access and use information that was being relayed on television.
At least one television channel openly bragged about the special information it had obtained from members of the forces brought in for the rescue operation. Some provided detailed descriptions of the ongoing anti-terror operations, down to details such as which rooms and which floors of specific hotels the National Security Guard commandos would enter. Most of the channels kept their cameras directed at the areas identified as "trouble spots" or areas where the militants were suspected to be hiding. And every time there was some movement on the part of the commandos, or even the police outside, the newspersons would be rushing to train their cameras on such movement and speculate on what it was for. We can only guess how much help this provided to the militants. But the prolonged nature of the operations in all three locations suggests that such media hyperactivity certainly could not have helped the brave men who were risking their lives in a very complex and difficult operation against deadly enemies.
On several occasions, jostling and confusion among the crowd of assembled journalists created such commotion that police had to step in to control them. At times when they were asked to step back behind cordons for their own protection as the possibility of crossfire grew, or to allow the military action to proceed, there was resistance and several tried to sneak back when they thought they could get away with it.
And then, once again because of the continuous presence of the cameras, we were treated to the sorry spectacle of complete lack of sensitivity of the TV journalists when they rushed to surround and interrogate the exhausted and traumatised survivors as they were brought out from the hotel buildings. Even when they begged for restraint and respect, microphones kept getting shoved in front of their faces and questions poured down on them, until finally they could manage to push their way through the melee of journalists into waiting vehicles. Those who had suffered personal tragedy, losing family members or close friends and themselves still in shock, were not spared media scrutiny as the cameras panned in on their tears and watched their agony.
Is this the sign of media gone crazy, an explosion of competitive journalism that is so obsessed with sensationalism and being the first or the most able to come out with certain news that it has lost sight of essential humanity? Or is it that we as a society are now so degraded that even something as ghastly, tragic and horrifying as these incidents of terror and their awful personal aftermath for the victims can be treated like a TV reality show?
It is common in such situations to call for introspection. But maybe introspection is no longer enough, especially if there is no subsequent change in behaviour. Since the prolonged encounters finally ended, we have had to suffer the main presenters, especially on the English language channels, hold forth pompously and at length on the need to change many things in polity, society and the nature of governance. "Enough is enough!" they announced, and said that citizens would not tolerate any more.
Unfortunately, none of them recognised any problems with the media’s own behaviour, or acknowledged that there was any need to change. Is it possible for society to now hold up a mirror for the media?
5.
Every organisation has a unique mix of culture, business processes, history, technology and strategic directions (to name but a few factors).
When it comes to intranets, it can then be said that they hold up a mirror to the organisation. To put it another way: the most successful intranets are those that directly reflect the unique nature of the organisations they serve.
One of the most immediate consequences of this is that we need to abandon the naive idea of the ‘best’ intranet.
There can be no absolute measure of intranet quality and effectiveness, and the success of the intranet is only meaningfully measured within the local environment.
6. More on the Occupation
In his letter to the Mirror [Sept. 11], Ralph Hajj raises once more the issue of what he considers the illegitimate Israeli Law of Return and the flawed moral foundations of Zionism.
Zionism is the nationalist movement of the Jewish people. It is no less exclusive or racist than any other ethnic nationalism, be it Slovenian, Chechen, Catalan, Corsican, Kurdish, Palestinian or Québécois. From nation to nationality to bestiality, all ethnic nationalisms, including Palestinian and Israeli nationalisms, lead to the exclusion and dispossession of the “other.”
Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority refuse to silence the vile rhetoric of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to “kill the Jews.” Islamic extremists stand unchallenged at the forefront of the Palestinian nationalist movement. Is their intent any less racist or repulsive than the extremist elements within Zionism?
Balancing the right of return of Palestinians, there is also a Jewish counter-claim. Well over two-million Israeli Jews base their origins in the Arab world. From Casablanca to Basra, Jews lived in Arab society for well over 1,000 years, if not prior to the rise of Islam. While their role as a dhimmi, relegated them legally to second-class social status, they were active and contributing members of society in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Syria Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.
The rise of Arab nationalism and the creation of the Jewish state put an end to all of that. More than a million Jews of the Arab world were forced into exile, abandoning forever their homes, their businesses and their graveyards. Do they and their descendants also have a right of return and a restoration of their property, or does that right belong exclusively to Palestinians?
Let me be perfectly clear. I am against the Occupation and for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, with just compensation for the Palestinian refugees. But it is pointless to argue the legitimacy or the existence of either Israeli or Palestinian nationalism. This will get us nowhere.
As a filmmaker, I have chosen to hold up a mirror to the ugly face of Israel and tell the stories of Israelis opposed to the Occupation and Israeli crimes resulting from the Occupation. I would respectfully suggest to Mr. Hajj that instead of wasting his time lambasting the morality of Zionism and the Law of Return, he and his supporters ought to try to make a documentary film that holds up a mirror to the underbelly of Palestinian nationalism, exposing its racist rhetoric, its flawed democratic structure, its appalling financial corruption and its choice of violent over non-violent tactics.
The solutions to the hell in which we have found ourselves reside within us, Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs. Let us first try to look deeply within ourselves before we point fingers at each other.
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