Net stupidity?

Got to this story, via Alootechie (a site I'm partial to only cos it's name is so geekily silly:))
Apparently this was in response to "limited participation in social and cultural activity" by the students of (and because of a recent suicide at) IIT Bombay (incidentally why isn't it calling itself IIT Mumbai now that the city has been renamed? And why isn't there a IIT Chennai? Think they're concerned about losing brand value? or will there be just too much work involved in changing web addresses?:))

Argh..I digress a lot.

Anyway, the Dean of the School decided to ban Internet access in the hostel rooms from 11pm to 12:30pm. That's right: for more than half the day. I have a simple question. How can people in charge of the education of some of the smartest kids in a country (and arguably the world) do something so incredibly boneheaded? And how are they getting away with it? Seriously?:)
What's next? Banning access to all books because some students at one of India's leading schools are bookworms busy with "reading"?

This is a quick, knee-jerk easy way to react to a problem., and maybe a sign that in India the value of the Internet just isn't as apparent to some educators yet, and this is a really scary thought. Imagine someone trying to pull a stunt like this at any leading University in the US. Not only would there be a huge outcry, the administrator in charge would be mocked for his/her boneheadedness for the rest of his/her career.

One can convince themselves (and maybe some others) that they're taking action by taking draconian steps like this, but that's it! If you think there is a problem (and I don't know enough to even know if there is) the right (and maybe lower profile) and harder thing to do, would be to acknowledge there was a problem and start initiatives to improve the social life on your campus.
Am I missing something?

Comments

shmoo said…
Did you mix up one of the am's and pm's there, because right now it looks like the net is off for an hour and a half...
salgar said…
Whoops. You're right. Fixed now.
Andrew said…
interesting. this would appear to impact social life more than sports. who plays sports between 11pm and noon the next day? unless maybe your sport is partying and hunting for tail. if the effect is trading off internet-drug for booze-drug that may have dubious merit.

guessing that this isn't their intent, maybe they are really mean, "we don't want people staying up all night playing games in their rooms, then sleeping in all day and never seeing the light of day or any other humans in person." might that be it? but heck, you could turn the pipes back on at like 7am or something. after all, aren't industrious social people supposed to work on the morning? how can you do that without the internet?
Rags said…
this is about something else entirely ... porn! i think they want kids to actually engage in human interaction, even if it means walking to someone else's room to get their magazines :)
shmoo said…
Salman Rushdie today likened the renaming of Bombay to Mumbai to renaming Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City. As he said "nobody calls it Ho Chi Minh City"! He still refers to it as Bombay.

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