An institute in North Bengal

AN INSTITUTE FOR COLLEGE physics teachers, which I helped to operate at North Bengal University last summer, was a failure. Our frustration arose from a conjunction of factors: inadequate planning, language barriers, poor facilities, shortcomings of the staff and psychological hazards germane to the teacher‐participants themselves. Had one or two of these problems been recognized in advance, the session might never have convened, and much effort would have been spared for better things. Conversations with other physicists in India, where ten similar institutes were in operation, revealed that our effort was perhaps the least successful. I suspect, however, that some of our difficulties are common to many collaborative programs of this kind, involving a wide range of disciplines and a variety of levels. If this is true, my description of the problem in Bengal may bring a larger picture into focus, and my recommendations for future activity may be generally useful.

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