Sujit Kumar Chakrabarti is a faculty member at IIITB, Bengaluru. Views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Confluence, its editorial board or the Academy. For the other cartoons in this series, please click here.
An appreciation of evolution enriches the mind. To delete it from the syllabus is as foolish as not teaching a language, or poetry, or history. Being exposed to evolutionary thinking should be considered an essential element of human culture, on a par with being told about the planets, stars and galaxies and where they come from.
The concept of evolution is something that all citizens should be aware of because it speaks directly to who we are, as humans, and our position within the living world. So, the concern is not so much that “evolution is removed” from curricula, inasmuch as students taking biology in Std XI-XII will get exposure to evolutionary biology. The concern specifically is that, other than basics of how the human body functions, evolution is perhaps the most important part of biology that all educated citizens should be aware of and, therefore, it should remain in the Std X curriculum which all students study before they choose different specializations in Std XI.
ChatGPT by Sujit Kumar Chakrabarti
“Online or Offline (Part 2)” by Sujit Kumar Chakrabarti
Teachers’ Day 2022: A cartoon by Sujit Kumar Chakrabarti
Virtual Socialisation: A cartoon by Sujit Kumar Chakrabarti
“Online or Offline” by Sujit Kumar Chakrabarti
Mentorship experiences of Prof. S. Sivaram
“Only when you do a PhD, you get paid for doing something you enjoy doing and you also get a degree at the end.” This is the philosophy with which I work, trying to give each student the time they need, helping them to work at their own pace. I am happy to work overnight to comment on a manuscript from a workaholic student, to allow the highly self-critical and thorough student to take months for one analysis, to discuss science and gossip with a student who is like family, to be a little formal with a student who likes to keep a distance or to wake up in the middle of the night to receive a call from student who is going through a panic attack. After all, it takes all kinds of flavours to make a dish savoury!
