Scones and such like things

I watch the Great British Bake-off regularly. The range of bakes that the participants are required to know is just amazing and as for their showstopper bakes- I know I can never get to that level.  I love to cook and bake but I do not have the patience to work on  decorating cakes for  hours together. 
The thing about watching this show is that I too itch to bake so for the past few months I have been baking cookies and brownies and learnt to bake scones.
Scones are my new favourite because they hardly have any sugar.  And I found a low-fat version that I made today.  Instead of using maida, I used a mix of Ragi flour, atta, oats, and maida in equal measure.  I added cranberries, orange peel, and chocolate pieces.  I had it with orange marmalade that I made yesterday. 

The chrysanthemums are the last of the season.  They were the only bright spot in the garden this year.  The rest of the winter stuff- vegetables and flowers- were pulverized and eaten up by various birds and animals. No amount of fence was proof against their determination. For the first time I purchased dahlia plants for the garden for after all a garden must have some colour before the summer drains them out totally.

The urge to do something

Site visits always teach me something new.  In the last post I mentioned how attendance will not improve performance of a student unless the student wants to learn.  Today's post is somewhat a continuation of the point.
I went to visit one of our projects in Noida.  This project is supported by a Swiss funding organization and a member of the organization was visiting.  I accompanied her to the project.  One of the innovative things that this project has done is to select about 20 children and support their education through school.  The great thing about this is that we can track the progress of the children.  Three of them are now in Class (grade) 11.  One of them has joined the Arts/humanities section, another has joined commerce, and the third has joined the science stream.  All of them want to go to college/university.  Needless to say they come from economically underprivileged section and in fact the student studying in the Arts/Humanities works with his father in the evening to augment the family income.  And it is this student who floored me.
The Swiss representative introduced herself and after a round of introduction and looking at their report cards, she asked them whether they have any question for her.  After a slight hesitation, this boy stood up and said in perfect English that he is interested in Graphic Arts/Design and he wants to a pursue a course in this area.  Ultimately he wants to go to abroad but he does not how to go about to fulfill his ambition.  Can she help him?
As we further talked with him, it turned out that he knows Corel Draw and Photoshop but of course, these are obsolete because the field prefers Illustrator, a software he does not have.  His NGO had taught him photoshop but he had forgotten it because he did not have a computer/PC.  Now he has PC and he has WiFi connection.  So he has found You Tube Tutorials for Photoshop and he is learning it through that.  The only problem is that he used to have Photoshop (it came with the computer) but it has got corrupted now.
The entire conversation took place in English, something that I did not expect.  But what amazed more was the fire he had in him to do something with his life.  He knew what he wanted, he had explored the options, and now he wants is some guidance so that he could achieve his dream.
I know IGNOU has graphic design course and I left that information with the coordinator. I do hope he gets what he wants.

On mandatory attendance

Yesterday onwards we implemented mandatory attendance even for Ph.D. students.  The logic provided is that mandatory attendance will improve student's performance. 

I do not understand how it will.  If a student does come to the class because attendance is mandatory, what guarantee is there, as my neigbour put it, that he/she will be receptive to the ideas discussed in the class? If the student is not interested, attending a class will not necessarily improve his/her performance in the exam.  And many of us would prefer not to have a disinterested student in the class because they distract us.  The performance of a student in a given course depends on many factors of which attendance is but one.  It depends whether the student is interested in the subject, what teaching methodology is being adopted, did the teacher make the subject interesting, did the teacher take classes regularly, was the course properly organized, course materials that are available....there are so many parameters.  So by focusing on only  one parameter, how does the administration hope to fix the problem of failing grades is beyond me.

The logic completely fails when it comes to Ph.D. students. What if a student is disinterested?  In India, over the years, I have seen many students enter Ph.D. course simply to avail the fellowship. Since there is no mechanism to throw them out, they remain in the system and often leave with the Ph.D degree. I do not know what they will do with it but the degree is awarded to them.  Mandatory attendance will ensure that the student signs in the attendance register in the morning but does not ensure that he/she will work on their Ph.D.  So what is it going to achieve? 

I decided to do a little research on this subject. Most of the research has focussed on undergraduate students and the view is split. There are many papers showing that the attendance does not improve the performance while there are few that says that it does.

In our case we do have to wait and see.