The things that ail the education system

Any Indian would be familiar with the pivotal exams of one's academic life, the boards, entrance exams, and seemingly to a lot of the press, DU entrance exams. Bear in mind, that I'm from the north so forgive me if I focus on the region's torture chambers. Students go through hell to try and succeed at these tests, and they tend to become the focus of one's life for long periods of time. I have myself gone through some of these trials by fire, and emerged, on the surface unscathed and relatively successful. And I believe, this gives me an authority to comment on these milestone in academic life. I'm personally not a fan of these tests, because, contrary to what u might believe, these tests are not always the best indicators of 'intelligence' and are not designed by hallowed individuals who can do no wrong. Actually, once you get to the higher echelons, u realise that these tests are simply a reflection of what the people at the top of academia, feel, is necessary to succeed at a something. And the execution of their best laid plans are never something to be proud of. Which is why I feel there's something wrong, because these exams tend to stratify all test takers into atleast 2 categories, our lauded winners, and the forgotten losers, and so it's essential to ensure that everything right, cause u're scarring a child for life here.

Just the other day, I was reading in the papers, an article about cracking the boards, quoting last year's topper, a girl who'd scored somewhere around 97%(that's crazy marks man!). She told her formula for success was mugging up the entire NCERT books word to word, and vomiting them on the paper. Now, in computer science, this phenomenon is called a linear file traversal, i.e. u store stuff in a file (like a web page) and simply get the section that matches the stuff u're looking for, and outputting everything around it. That's a simple picture of how search engines work. Hmmm, so our tests reward being a computerized search engine, so where's the test of excellence and intelligence? It would seem our educators are turning a generation into mugging machines. But saying so would be sacriledge, anyone would agree to that.

Turning to entrance exams, I gave the engineering ones. It's quite well known that IIT's are the most reliable way to increase the quantum of ur first paycheck, which is what drives the 'best' minds there(forgive the sarcasm). problem is, that's how most students perceive it as an option. 14 years of training about the importance of mugging, doesn't quite develop a great love for any subject. Coupled with the livelihood issue, this compells the students to choose by money. And after 4 years, they choose money again, in this case, the best paying jobs, who's title has recently been taken over by investment banks, where astronomical amounts are promised to the top performers. Now this, expectedly irks the faculty, as their efforts in teaching are seemingly pointless, if u're gonna leave the field anyways. And the answer to the question of how to encourage the children to stick on, still eludes all. The problem is, the government expects IIT's to feed the growing IT industry with new computer science graduates. Problem is, the industry does little to improve it's image to fresh graduates. The pay is meagre, the job description is quite dismal, there's none of the intellectually challenging work u'd expect. Instead, the people they expect are coders, quite simply, they don't quite need ur analytical ability. That's like a frill, but that's not what they're shopping for. Which is why they lobby for 'vocational' training, aka make them coders. Ministers, then push faculty to make children go to these companies. This, interestingly, has resulted in a practice in a few IITs that some of you might find shocking, others quite right. It is to restrict the internships(and even jobs in some cases) to indian locations only, that too in companies. Now people expect that this would encourage the students to join these companies. But, if u're read Freakonomics, u'll appreciate this. After these measures, I saw even less people going to the IT sector in India. People going abroad for further studies also decreased, because now students don't have the recommendations of people from abroad, and no research project experience.

Interesting hmm? things at the premier institutes are not as hallowed as one would imagine. but the source of the problem lies at the roots, not here. The problem is, while earning a livelihood is an issue, people will choose money over everything else. Another problem is that, most people don't know anything about the branches of engineering u offer, how in hell do u expect children to choose then??!! or even have a semblance of interest, when choices are made purely on the basis of rank. so getting into textile imprints that stamp of being in a not so good branch. That obviously will hinder any further development.

More importantly, our system places quite too much importance on mugging and pure hard work. Not that it's bad, but the crux of engineering is to develop new solutions, you remember einstein and newton, because they gave solutions that no one else saw, solutions so simple, yet powerful. which is why, i feel, creativity is also essential for being successful, and even at a younger age, students must be encouraged to think creatively. because making someone mug up 21 points about Raja Ram Mohan Roy's contribution to society will not enthuse him to the actual impact of his work, showing him the impact will. because eventually, Roy will mean 21 points to him, not his work. I do understand this is hard work, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to fix. People usually counter with, why don't u do something to fix it, but understand this, I can show you a mirror, I'm not a plastic surgeon.