Exams

Whenever i look back at my past, my heart swells with pride. Its been since the last seventeen unending years (of the total twentythree of my existence) that unflinchingly i have braved the relentless torment meted out unto me by the only demon terrorising poor kids like myself - Exams.

Insecurity they say breeds faith. And so I'd reckon that the fear of examinations is all that keeps me from being an atheist. In the relentless pursuit of ever elusive success i have realised that "Train,bus,ladki aur exams - Ek jaati hai Doosri aati hai". Alas this realization is yet to dawn upon my ignorant peers. Like predators they stalk their elusive prey and like hunters the administration create pitfalls in their pursuit. The wholesale revamping of the system is long overdue. The system belies the general attitude of the teaching fraternity towards students which focuses more on fault finding rather than fact finding.

Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia has nicely talked about this in his interview.When he'd gone to Caltech, Bhatia recalls, he'd just submitted his paper after reading up the four books prescribed for that particular course in philosophy, and he got a "D," his first ever "D". Why, he asked, since he'd read all the books and dutifully cited them in abundance -- "that's the Indian way," he explains to me. I've read them, too, is what his Caltech professor told him, what have you done to add to that body of knowledge?That, Bhatia says, is the big difference between Indian and US education. Last but not the least he added - Just a few months of re-orientation and, his Indian developers are on a par with those in the US.

Though higher education in India has a long way to go the more pressing concern is to improve the primary education system in our country.One way to bring about wholesale changes in the system would be to create enhance the reputation of teaching as a job. This has been well adopted by Japan. The rest of the requisite changes will all come by themselves. It might just be the lynchpin required to bring about the much sought after revolution in education. Just as what happened in the IT industry when it got fancy in the late 90's, we can bring a change in the whole system if only we manage to make the job of a teacher glamorous. Tough job but considering that bribing a whole generation with dal - chawal was considered do-able this should be a veritable cake walk for the administration. All we need is enhanced pay packages and propaganda. The rest will follow all by itself.

Any criticism of the Indian education system will optimally require a hardcover book of 500 pages. So i would stop here and now. Anyways, I have a lot of assignments to copy today. So i would love to get this blog published right now and copy down the assignments during my lectures. Somehow, I feel that no matter what you do, some things dont change.