Our Education System

Recently I was watching Mahindra Rise hangout session where eminent personalities like Mr. Anand Mahindra, Mrs.Chanda Kochhar, Mr. Arun Maira, and Mr. Rajan Anandan participated to discuss about India as the next innovation superpower. The panelists, who require no introduction, were of the view that education system in the India lacks on many fronts and the companies had to incubate innovation in order to be creative. This made me ponder over mine long education journey (still continuing) to jot down few points, relevant enough to be mentioned once.

Many of my friends have categorized me as one of the complaining types but this exercise is a kind of introspection of our present system which one should regularly do to stay competitive. (Disclaimer: Many people may have a different point of view & may also feel offended but it is to remind them that these are my personal opinion and one may simply write ‘Unlike’ in the comments or chose to skip the article).

1. Too much stuffing: There are plethora of courses that we have to study at each level of the education commencing from the primary to the higher education even in the post graduate level. Now I know it is a tradeoff between being Jack of all trades and master of one, but I for once will always go for “The Master” because one must always claim for the greatness which comes from specialization and not generalization.
   Now one may argue that we should get a taste of everything in order to decide the specialization as is the case of general MBA where one has to study different subjects in the first year and chose the specialization in the second. That is fine with me but it must begin in graduation itself
2. Aimless: There are obviously exceptions to this point but most of us just accepts what comes our way. Say for example a person scores some rank in IIT-JEE or AIEEE, s/he chooses his department according to that. So even if one has an aim in his/her life, gets lost in this bullshit. Why do one has to do compromises? Why is quality education not available to anybody and everybody who wants to study in any field of his/her interest?
   Let’s generalize some things, most of us aim just for a good job (which in itself is narrow thinking), does the education prepares us for this? The current education doesn’t focus less on practical application and more on theory.
3. Lack of Interested teachers/professors: I read a quote somewhere “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” Now I know there are umpteen reasons for paucity of great teachers but still something has to be done about this if we as a nation want a holistic or sustainable growth. Teachers are the building blocks over which our nation can reach greatness.
4. Rat race for getting good grades: This one is my favorite. I myself has been one of the rats competing for something trivial. All people who get good grades are bright but it rarely proves anything. It has happened many a times that a student scoring high in exams has struggled when put to test in real world like say when working for an organization.
   This rat race has led many students to blindly mug up the subjects without understanding the real crux behind the subject or its practical application and this is similar to not studying the course.

I think that the first step towards solving a problem is to clearly defining the problems associated with it (actually this is the basis of a lot of management techniques) so I have just tried to take the first step. Rectifying the issues with this system is very important if we as a nation want to actually become great which we all falsely claim to.

An ad; an incident

I was in Kanpur, my hometown, for end sem break when I saw an ad in which an urbanized person visits a village looking for someone; stops his jeep near a small boy in rags, and starts asking the address in his usual slang when he realizes that he is in a rural area thus he wouldn’t understand english. He then stops in mid of his speech & repeats aforesaid in hindi but to his surprise the small boy answers him in English. The ad ends with Abhishek Bachchan saying “What an Idea”, spreading education with his stupid impractical ideas.

The above ad reminded me of an incident when we were leaving hostel to go home, after sem ended. A zen stopped, with an alumni and probably his wife inside, looking like foreigners though, asked ‘ can u plzz tell me where’s limbdi hostel ‘, the boy answering the call this time was neither in rags nor was he small, he was my dear x-roomy(Sourabh Verma, final year B-Tech student, mechanical IT-BHU), standing tall with an air of pride, as if honored by the question, answers ‘sir it is after the chaura…………… hmmmmm…..uhhhhh…..sir wo agle ke agle chauraahe ke baad second hostel ‘ with a little disappointment as he has failed to answer in English. By the way it is not that he cant speak English , but he was unable to do so at that moment. The alumni eyes met mine (standing beside Verma) when we both chuckled a little and the car went away.