Sunday, July 31, 2011

My letter to Hindu editor

This is my mail to the editor of Hindu newspaper on the article Poor standard of results in JNTU

Dear Sir/Madam,
I read your article about "Poor standard of results in JNTU." What surprises me is this: We seem to blame the college in which the students join, rather than the poor quality of the students. I live in USA now and recently I have been on a trip to India. During that trip, I had a chance to go to National Institute of Technology, Trichy, my alma mater, and chat with some of the profs there. They had a singular complaint : "quality of the students entering had declined." They quoted that the top rank students from various states fail to perform in the first year. Their argument is that " students are spoonfed even in +2 courses, while they have to study on their own in engineering". this doesnt mean the teachers dont teach. In universities, the profs are more to introduce the concept and let the student explore the subject while the profs guide them to do so. Unfortunately even good universities get blamed for the poor performance of students, while it is the system that is feeding the universities to blame.
In AP, the colleges like Narayana and Chaitanya are only interested in making the students get marks and not gain knowledge. Since EAMCET is multiple choice questions we are taught mostly to correctly guess the answer, rather than deducing it from fundamentals. Fundamentally, there is a difference in solving a problem by knowing the basics, and to pick an option out of four. The teaching methodologies are different for these two methods. My mathematics professor was so disappointed with the students from Andhra, that she asked them "why are you scoring so low when you were scoring so good in +2?" and their answer was: "Madam, have the test as multiple choice and we will reign again." Pun intended, of course. They admitted that they were taught to pick the right answer rather than the subject. This is a major problem with our education system.
I heard from a neighbor that the schools stopped teaching a lot of 9th std courses, and are directly introducing 10th std in in 9th itself. This is a clear indication of "marks" oriented teaching vs "knowledge" oriented teaching. How do we expect our next generation of students to compete against the students from rest of the world? How can we say that the poor performance in engineering colleges is due to the lack of good teachers? Though I agree that lack of good teachers in University adds to the problem, this doesnt explain why the toppers of +2 falter in good colleges like NIT.
From your article what is more disturbing is students failing in mathematics and physics which are the two main subjects required to enter into engineering. I strongly believe we need a stronger control over these private institutions to teach the subject rather than making students guess the right answer. The examination mode has also to change to stop students from doing this. Only those students who understand the subject should get good ranks. We have to change our testing procedure to that affect.
Lastly, I know for a fact that the engineering students in India work not even 10% of what the engineering students in US work. We are losing the zeal to work hard, and every step of schooling we seem to be taught to find the easy way out. Thats why when students from India come for their masters they find it so difficult to adjust to the system that makes you work hard for grades. I pity those students who complain it is too hard for them, while this is how it should be, this is how you learn the subject and gain understanding and application of that knowledge learnt.
Thanks for your time!

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Indian mentality observations

During my brief visit to India after 2.5 yrs, here are a few  of observations I made here.
1. Indians are very indifferent to others. Today it was raining heavily. India has a lot of two wheelers. Poor folks were getting drenched in rain. If it was me,  I would let them go first if I am in a car and be careful when I am passing them so as not to spill the water on them. But I see four wheelers folks just running over and honking at the two wheelers folks to move away. I thought that was really callous of those folks.
2. Each Indian thinks he is always correct. Everyone will comment on the way someone is coming in the wrong direction in traffic but when the time comes they would not hesitate to do the same thing. Its also the same when it comes to corruption. They would make a long speech on how bad the state of the country is, and how bad corruption is. Yet, when faced with a situation where they have to pay a fine, they would try to bribe the officer and avoid the fine. In some sense, it works out win-win. less for the finee and more for the officer.
3. Indians speak out of their line. My brother was getting married and we were preparing boards. The printer completely printed the names wrong. When I went to ask about the same, the guy who actually printed the board was not there. Some other employee said "Sir, its not a big mistake. Anyway who cares about the board at the wedding."  At this I got a little angry and asked him if he would be ok if his name is printed wrongly in the wedding card. And he thought I was attacking him. I told him, you are just speaking out of line. First, you should not ever say that names dont matter. Second, you were not the one who printed the names, you could just keep your mouth shut. I see this trend everywhere, Indians answering questions that they dont have any authority. You can tune to any channel after a crisis in India and hear the politicians speak way out of their line. Health minister accusing terrorists cells just after an attack. Isnt it home ministers duty to send out a message if at all? Why is health minister speaking? and that too with no proof?
4. Indians pay no attention to spellings. I wish I could show you a visual proof. But you would laugh your ass off looking at them.