Talk:The International School Bangalore

This article seems to be packed with opinion and POV on teachers, the qualities of the school, etc. It needs a good clean-up to make it neutral. TomPhil 16:42, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Examples of POV:

• The school has a very good image not only in India but around the world, especially in Great Britain and Germany.

However this image is incomplete and even untrue regarding most cases. (As is explained in the article further on.)

• The school also has an EFL department, with limited expertise in addressing students who are not proficient enough in the English language.

• The students in the school are equally committed to excellence in the sciences and mathematics.

• TISB has a varied level of teaching and professional experience. The English department has one teacher with extensive grasp over the language and a valid teaching degree for the IB English HL course. The others however do not qualify equally or even satisfactorily.

Etc. TomPhil 16:43, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've had a good go at cleaning it up, but loads of stuff still needs sources, and it's still a little POV. TomPhil 17:09, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, this is sanyasi, and i am going to attempt to add in information about TISB. I know a bit, but this is my first wikipedia edit so be nice :) and correct everything i do thats wrong! Sanyasi 15:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

hey Tom. Thanks for cleaning up the article. but unfortunately the citations will be hard to find as the school will not completely agree to all the facts that are given in the article. this is based upon information gathered from various students and teachers from TISB and it would be close to impossible to see any agreement from the administration itself. So I am not sure how exactly some of the points given can be validated. Please help me clarify this. Thank you.

Sabarinath Kumar 03:23, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I also wanted to point out that the qualifications of the teachers that i had written about in the article are true but there is no written proof as such. therefore i am not sure as to how they can be validated. Once again I would really appreciate your help

I'm sorry, but this is an encyclopedia. We cannot have content on it that cannot be backed up. If we allowed unvalidated information to be added to Wikipedia we could have people saying anything and the whole project would lose all credibility. When cleaning the article up, I tried to be generous, but a lot of it really could not stay on without sources. Some of the stuff about the teachers, for example, was potentially libellous if not true. Everything on this page must be objectively true, and must be able to be proved as such. I'm afraid that if you can't prove it, you can't put it in the article. If you would like to discuss any particular "fact" that I removed in more detail, please point out here the individuals facts that you want to discuss.

Unfortunately, unless you can provide evidence, I, sitting here in the UK, cannot tell whether or not what you are saying is true. I'm not saying that you are, but without evidence, you could be making the whole thing up. An encyclopedia has to be based on objective, verifiable, facts. TomPhil 23:45, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Insiders guide

I've removed an entire "insiders guide section for the following reasons:

1. It was totally unsourced and therefore there is no way of knowing whether any of it was true or not. 2. Much of it seemed to be point of view. 3. A lot of it was unencyclopedic. 4. Possible copyvio.

Let me give you a few examples:

• A recently conducted survey shows that even though a lot of the students get good grades and study at prestigious universities in India and abroad,most of them hate the school.

What survey? Who conducted this survey? Who was surveyed? You cannot just assert that some survey or other has shown that most students "hate the school".

• Although outside food is not allowed on campus, over 85% of the boys and 78% of the girls in the dorm claim to have "tuck" in their rooms.

Where did these figures come from? Did you just pluck these numbers from thin air?

• Even though smoking is not allowed on campus, the older students do take liberty of smoking in the wonderful atmosphere of the school, which indeed does provide a great ambience.

A great ambience? Wonderful atmosphere? Are you trying to write an encyclopedia article or sell the school? These are totally POV comments.

• Drugs are not present on campus.

Really? Says who? You cannot just make bold statements like these without backing them up.

• TISB students have been spotted rolling Joints at the Cafe Coffee Day on Brigade Road.

By who?

• "Ragging" and "misbehaviour" is not allowed on campus.

Did you really need to go to the trouble of pointing this out? How many schools encourage misbehaviour?!

I apologise if this seems harsh, but the whole section was total assertion. It could easily be total fiction. Please do contribute to this article and improve it, but back up everything you say, make sure that everything you write is neutral point of view, and remember that this is an encylopedia, not a soap box. Thanks. TomPhil 23:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for taking that out Tom. That was absolutely unecessary! Sabarinath Kumar 15:26, 10 October 2006 (UTC) umm wow

Another clean-up

Can I reiterate how important it is that Point of View and assertions are not allowed on Wikipedia. If you say something, you should be able to back it up, otherwise anyone could add anything to Wikipedia and with no way of checking it would totally compromise the integrity of the project. Here is a commentary on my latest clean-up:

Please verify: "It is known for being extremely strict, much more so than comparable international schools in Bangalore" - Known by who? Who says it's much stricter than other schools?

Removed: "The school's administration forbids students to eat jelly with a fork." - Even if this is true and not a joke edit, is it really important enough to go in the intro? If it is really of great significance, please justify why, and if possible give citation.

Please cite: "Regarding college placements, the school administration claims that "90% of the school's graduates study abroad."" - Where do they claim this?

Removed: "but they forget to mention that most of these come from terribly desperate, unheard of universities." - Totally POV and opinion

Removed: "Once regarded as having some of the best looking girls in the city, and being the perfect school, TISB has quickly gained the reputation of being a 5 star prison." - Yeees... not really appropriate in an encyclopedia article. Also POV.

Removed: "Boys are forbidden from walking past the girl's dormitory on their way to dinner at night. Students must eat the terrible food served in the cafeteria regardless of the fact that the soup is often blue in color. Personal food is strictly prohibited and often students have to hide food in the bathroom cubicles and eat there while they are pretending to excrete. TISB also seems to have an almost magical atmosphere, as girls and boys socializing past 6 pm allegedly causes pregnancy in many of the girls." - POV, opinion, sarcasm, non-verified information, etc.

Removed: "In spite of all this, the school can hardly be called "International". There is in fact nothing international about it except for Neils Strossler, who left the school 3 years ago." - POV and sarcasm

Please verify: "Owning a cellular phone, wearing a belt of the wrong color, or failing to have one's hair cut are all examples of offenses that result in suspension" - May be well-known to students of the school, but needs citation if it is to have credibility in an encyclopedia.

Please verify: "Therefore, a person who is caught drinking in class will suffer the same consequences as someone who is giving someone a good-bye hug." - When making assertions such as these, there really is a need for citation.

Please verify: "Students must be asleep by no later than ten o'clock." - Normally I would not ask for verification on a fact such as this, but considering how heavily this article talks about strict rules, to the extent of POV, I really feel any comments such as this need to be verified.

Removed: "Needless to say, any physical display of affection is grounds for expulsion." Repetition, OTT concentration on authoritarian atmosphere, uncited.

Removed entire advice to new students section. This is not what an encyclopedia is for, it was all totally POV, totally uncited, bias, etc. Please do not re-add.

Please verify: "This was almost cancelled due to the no electric guitar, no drums on stage rule that was imposed last year for a while" - There is so much uncited content in this article that alludes to this school being practically a concentration camp. Because the article is so heavily slanted towards this POV, each piece of information such as this really needs to be cited, or will just look like further POV.

Removed: "(reason given by the administration: you might shock yourself plugging in the guitar, and then we'll be liable)" - Too informal

Removed: "All in all, Vivum is one of the very few activities which the students look forward to, due to the absence of usual domination of the teachers." - POV

Please cite: "TISB conducts workshops for both IGCSE and IB teachers from around the world. The workshop conductors are teachers from other international schools from countries such as Britain, Thailand and Singapore" - The more that is cited, the better, and this is something that I really think can have a citation found for it.

Please verify urgently: "The school has a very good reputation for good quality education and claims to have highly qualified teachers having an in depth knowledge and experience in the subject concerned" - There has been a citation request on this for a while - without citation, it appears very POV.

Removed: "However, it seems that in the eyes of the administration, the students can never be right in this sense, because they believe that it is the teachers, not the studying that we put in, that brings the school good results." - Heavily POV rant.

Please verify: "However many students as well as parents have complained of poor teaching standards especially at the higher levels of the IB studies" - Again, seems very POV unless you can prove it.

Please verify urgently: "The administrative and teaching staff are strict when it comes to dealing with students behavioral issues" - The theme that pervades this whole article is how strict the school is, yet I don't think I have seen one single actual piece of evidence in the article that it is strict. For all I know, it could be the least strict school in the world. I could add "this is the least strict school in the world" to the article, and it would have as much credibility as these assertions. If you want to say things like this, with such force and so often, you must back them up.

Please verify urgently: "Students are expected to be completely obedient to the school's rules" - Same reason as point above.

Removed: "These punishments have become so common that a student is as prepared for a suspension while eating food in dorm as a suicide bomber planning to blow up the WTC." - Totally inappropriate, totally uncited, totally OTT - do not use metaphors again. This is an encyclopedia, not a soapbox.

Removed: "Frankly the teachers at TISB are a bunch of know-nothing pricks. There are completely partial, biased and uneducated bangs of horse manure. The majority of them are as proficient in English as a duck-billed platypus. Vocabulary of teachers includes blatant mispronunciations such as 'ghed or izhed' or z or zed, 'ello' for yellow; the list goes on. Teachers notorious for the disparaging lack of linguistic ability include a blind retard named Mr. Ravi. Ravi addresses everything, including proper nouns, as 'the ....'. For example the Ravi as he calls himself. He has said quotes such as 'give me a red pen of any color', 'listen to the blackboardtell your parents i want to see them and most of all tell your mother and father'(this is who teach the unhappy students of tisb) (where not only can you not listen to a board, but the board is white. I told you, the crack is blind)" - Total rant, total POV, libellous, never include this sort of content again.

Removed: "Some teachers do not have the requisite knowledge to teach beyond the 5th or 6th grades - and offer erroneous information to students, blithely unaware of their hilarity. Most of them are uneducated in the IB tradition. Angry parents are afraid to object in case the wrath of the gods of TISB fall on their kids. Some parents have been known to weep when their kids have been threatened with expulsion - just because they, the parents, had the temerity to climb the hallowed stairs of TISB into the Principal's holy office and voice an objection. This was the second of the three Principals the school has had since its inception. The reputation of this gentleman as a bully with alcoholic problems is common knowledge among students, staff and parents. This 7 foot Scottish throwback to a bygone era when men wore skirts actually ran the school like the Gestapo. He threatened senior students who refused to eat the revolting food served in the cafeteria, with immediate expulsion. These students apologized for their bad bad behaviour during school assembly so as to have the honour of remaining in this Auschwitz style school - tearful puppets in the end.

Removed: "Finally, we must mention the chairman of the school, the infamous Gopal Krishna, or G.K as he is lovingly known as. The son of a bitch is well known around Bangalore for having no manners, giving a graduation speech with his fly open, and for speaking rudely to parents because he thinks he is the shit. However, his most famous phrase is probably "Giyarls and Baays" (Girls and boys) which is how he starts every one of his deathly boring speeches. He has been called Bangalore's best educationists, but clearly he is more of a disgraced businessman than anything else. In fact, it is a well known fact that one of his relatives committed suicide just earlier this year due to excessive exam stress. Gory legend has it that as Principal of NPS he used to stalk the corridors just to hunt down very young students late for class and administer a sound whacking with the cane he always carried. In all the five schools he owns, the worst students are culled during High School like unhappy chickens - so as to avoid bad PR at the Board exams. This man does not educate - he simply trains students like performing circus animals in a well packaged, expensive circus tent." - Same reason as above.

Please verify: "It has a tough entrance test and lets only the best in" - Nice to see a line not slagging the school off, but please cite nonetheless.

Please verify: "This is the primary reason for its excellent college placement" - Says who? Is it excellently placed?

Please verify: "The majority of graduates regularly attend some of the best colleges and universities in India and around the world, such as the BITS Pilani, Columbia University, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, Stanford,MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, UC Berkeley,New York University, London School of Economics,University of Bath, University of Durham, University of Warwick, University of Edinburgh,University of Birmingham,Imperial University,University of Manchester, The Delhi School of Economics, St. Stephen's College, Lady Shri Ram College, the prestigious H.R.College and many others, once again a testament to the intellect of the students. The college placement service sends the required documents and completes the necessary forms." - Opposite problem to most of the article - this actually appears POV in favour of the school without citation.

Removed: "It should be noted that there was only 1 year when these superb college placements actually came through, and that was the class of 2004. Since then, it has all been downhill, and there is no doubt that the glory days are long gone." - POV, not cited.

Removed: "== Hierarchy of Punishments ==

As mentioned before, the school offers a plethora of punishments, for a wide variety of reasons ranging from talking on the dinnrer table to interaction with members of the opposite sex, and of course, not to mention, consumption of illegal substances. Below is a hierarchy of the punishments offered in the institution.

1. Defaulter 2. Scavenging 3. Weekend Gating 4. Conduct Detention 5. Work Detention 6. Tutors Detention 7. Principals Detention 8. Suspension 9. Expulsion

Info subject to change." - Info subject to be removed as it is unencyclopedic.

Phew... I think that completes this clean-up operation. Please stay away from uncited, POV, bias, unencyclopedic content in the future and maintain this article and this encyclopedia's integrity. Thanks. TomPhil (talk) 10:32, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey dont bother much with this page...the administration of the school will always try to sell the school while almost all the students have had a bad experience with the admin of the school...its an eternal rift. -- the kid. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.68.199.251 (talk) 05:09, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm..

This article still looks lieka an advert. I've been to TISB for Vivum 07, and the article and the place seem to be in 2 different worlds... --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 08:02, 17 June 2009 (UTC)--Rsrikanth05 (talk) 08:02, 17 June 2009 (UTC)