Archive for the ‘Reform’ Category
Education in India
Posted on: March 30, 2011
- In: Education | Reform
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A good article about how science is taught with the context. It is true of all the subjects that are taught in our schools and colleges today.
Take history for example, a typical question is arrange the following events in the chronological order. How does that help any student. No way. Instead they should encourage students to debate on the pluses and minuses of the different events, probe into the psyche of the people of the different countries based on the events that occurred there.
The education should give examples from real life so that the student can become a well rounded personality. If one debates on the pluses and minuses of the different historical events one would better appreciate the good and bad of events. One could try to become a better human being by not repeating history. Instead one ends up answering questions like was Jahangir father of Akbar or vice versa which serves no purpose other than testing the memory power of the student.
Similarly for geography the students should be taken out to the fields so that they can understand the local geography and geology. They should be able to see the red clay soil if they are taught that the red clay soil is present in the Deccan plateau. The should be shown an estuary if possible and a delta of the river so that they can relate and understand better.
Similarly as rightly said the article students should be taken out to experience botany and zoology. They will be able to better understand and related if they are taken out on field trips.
A similar problem exists in the technical institutes of today. A bachelor’s degree in computers hardly means that the person can start working in the computer industry. The education is bad to begin with, which means the basics of the person are muddled and to add to it our IT companies do not have a formal concept of mentoring so that the fresh recruits can be moulded or shaped to be good to great programmers. What we have in India a bunch of Average or at best Above Average set of people who can get a software up and running with complete disregard to quality. Programming is an Art. Software cannot come out of factories (consider the movies coming out of Ram Gopal Verma’s factory). The same is true of Software being written in India. Unless driven by the client the quality is pathetic to say the least.
Hope there is an educational revolution that will change this situation and hope that the future of the current generation improves.
Take history for example, a typical question is arrange the following events in the chronological order. How does that help any student. No way. Instead they should encourage students to debate on the pluses and minuses of the different events, probe into the psyche of the people of the different countries based on the events that occurred there.
The education should give examples from real life so that the student can become a well rounded personality. If one debates on the pluses and minuses of the different historical events one would better appreciate the good and bad of events. One could try to become a better human being by not repeating history. Instead one ends up answering questions like was Jahangir father of Akbar or vice versa which serves no purpose other than testing the memory power of the student.
Similarly for geography the students should be taken out to the fields so that they can understand the local geography and geology. They should be able to see the red clay soil if they are taught that the red clay soil is present in the Deccan plateau. The should be shown an estuary if possible and a delta of the river so that they can relate and understand better.
Similarly as rightly said the article students should be taken out to experience botany and zoology. They will be able to better understand and related if they are taken out on field trips.
A similar problem exists in the technical institutes of today. A bachelor’s degree in computers hardly means that the person can start working in the computer industry. The education is bad to begin with, which means the basics of the person are muddled and to add to it our IT companies do not have a formal concept of mentoring so that the fresh recruits can be moulded or shaped to be good to great programmers. What we have in India a bunch of Average or at best Above Average set of people who can get a software up and running with complete disregard to quality. Programming is an Art. Software cannot come out of factories (consider the movies coming out of Ram Gopal Verma’s factory). The same is true of Software being written in India. Unless driven by the client the quality is pathetic to say the least.
Hope there is an educational revolution that will change this situation and hope that the future of the current generation improves.
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