Friday, 21 September 2012
I am very much impressed by the Indian children / students as they are very brilliant; you know in some countries like Japan, people say, if you ask two questions to a person at a time, he will blink. You must ask him one after another slowly. He cannot answer for your two questions at a time quickly. But, we Indians, while doing some work, are able to answer any number of questions at a time. In most of the countries, students are learning the Math Tables only when they reach 10. That too, at 10, they know only up to 5th table; but in Indian schools, at 12, they know up to 16th table, i.e. 16 x 16. Some foreign Professors wondered on it when they visited our school by seeing the children are taught 16th table at 12.
Recently Stephen Toope, President, University of British Columbia, reveals why there is a growing need for the Indian government to collaborate with universities abroad, in order to meet the academic needs of talented students.
He says: "We have a program called Global Link, which tries to take some top students from the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management and bring them in. But we're also looking at very strong undergraduates. For the foreseeable future, I don't think India will be able to offer spaces at outstanding institutions for all the talented students because there are just so many of them."
Really it is a great news and every Indian can be proud on Mr.Toope's statement; he says Indian students are brilliant and their calibre is high; it is a good point our educationists should note: we also must note what kind of education at schools we impart.
We present at schools only memory based education; children don't get any creative education. Morning to evening, the teachers, one by one will come to blackboard to teach; it is only Teacher Oriented Education we are giving, not Student Oriented. Students cannot question the teachers easily; the teachers are given certain syllabus to finish off in a year, this makes the teachers always on the hot pan. The teachers' work is just to finish off the portions; they never bother whether the students understood what they taught; if you ask, they say they don't have much time to look after all these as the syllabus is heavy and somehow the students should score marks; most of the schools, parents and teachers never bother about the knowledge what should have been gained in the schools.
This kind of very ordinary system of education is going on in our great country for the past 160 years. No one has guts to change it, it is really pity! Students don't have anything new in schools, same old one every year people follow; That is why, the students in our country, go to schools only on compulsion / without any interest; our education is not practical oriented. Even by giving this kind of education in our country, people like Mr. Toope appreciates that our children are great. If at all our children are given a practical oriented education instead of Marks / Exam, please think, where our children would have been there now! We fail to feed our children with proper syllabus; our children are brilliant but we really don't give them what exactly they need. Just for example you could see, by having B.E. degree at hand, people are working in Banks; (actually for banking services, just you need 10th std. maths enough); some study B.L. after B.E. ; some with M.A./M.Sc. qualification, appear for Clerical job in Govt. Departments. Are we not ashamed on our education system ?
Whatever we study in our life, especially between 5 and 25, it should be very helpful to our life. We cannot waste our precious time by studying something irrelevant. I thank Mr. Toope for appreciating our students ! I assure you, you will find more brilliant or real brilliant students from India in near future. Now only we started to realize on this point.
Dear educationists of India, let us not take the appreciation of Mr. Toope seriously and stop our work. Really we have to work a lot only hereafter.