Sparked off by 's comment to my post, where he said,"don't you think it's just enough for most people to know basic things about the environment - about loving it and saving it - and leave the science part of it to the scientists?"

Indeed I agree. And I would say, this needs to be done with our academic education, too. Indian education seems to be stuck in a time-warp. It heavily accents rote-learning, and independent thinking is utterly frowned upon (See 's entry about school anecdotes , where his independent thinking or divergent answers were penalized...)

In fact, I think that Indian education needs to move from total rote-memory orientation to this…the teaching of how to access information in ways that have never before been so freely available to mankind, and to then internalize, analyze and then synthesize that information and convert it to knowledge. In India, teachers need to taught how to actually teach, and students need to learn how to learn. We have so firmly come to believe that what we learn in our academic institutions has no bearing on real life, except in the job market and entry-level salaries.

OK, enough ranting.

I went on a wonderful heritage walk today, in the centre of my city. (You will read about shortly on Citizen Matters , hopefully.) But one thing I want to know more about:

<h1></h1>

What ARE Common Beds? Who would a user share his bed with? And imagine, for the first time in Bangalore, air-cooled deluxe, too…..!