Strange, @
bigbadwolf is from Pakistan ,
citing all examples/quotes from Pakistan's educational system, and is discussing about Indian Education system using those facts. I understand they might have good institutes but none of IIT's stature in Pakistan. There can be a lot of difference between the two's education system and IMHO, the PAIN bbw felt while studying in Pakistan, is not justifiable/true for the Indian education system.
And, for this thread, I don't think, it should be deleted or banned. Interesting discussion is always good and as a famous saying, "Sell the sizzle, not the steak
"
You are correct, sir, and that is a legitimate point. As I've pointed out in an earlier post, Pakistan has no equivalent to the IITs and IIMs, or to JNU for social science research. And I forgot to mention the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research. My experience is mostly with Pakistan, and so I cite it, aware that there are some broad similarities (rote memorisation, outdated syllabi, lecturers who can't be questioned, endemic corruption, poorly funded libraries and labs). I reiterate: the Pakistani system is even worse than the Indian.
Avinash Burra said:
I'm not going to use the word "victim" in this context, but I too was in the same system for 21 years. If what I have read on the subject as well as as anecdotal accounts of education elsewhere are anything to go by, I would be surprised if there was any place in the world where the education was all that much better than the first 17 of those years. I would be equally surprised if there was any place that was worse than the last four years.
I'm not sure. I think continental European systems -- the German, the Finnish -- are streets ahead.
By way of further anecdote (not related to the immediate point above), I recall once having a lecturer explaining Gauss' law in electrostatics to us. He wrote an integral sign and put a small "S" at the bottom (for surface integral). The Pakistani book did not explain what this really meant in terms of calculations; the lecturer himself did not know. And the students, having a lifetime of uncomprehending rote memorisation behind them, were incurious about it. One of my friends was distressed that he didn't understand what was going on -- and started to doubt his own intelligence, since no-one else seemed to have any problem with it. Yet he was not stupid -- he had three "A" grades in his London University "A" levels (which subsequently got him a full scholarship at Cornell so he could quit the dysfunctional Pakistani system altogether). Returning to the surface integral, it was presented out of context, not shown what it meant in terms of calculation, and was meant to be memorised and regurgitated at exam time. At no time did the students get a proper training in vector analysis -- line, surface, and volume integrals, and divergence, curl, and gradient. How, then, were they supposed to understand any electrodynamics or fluid mechanics? Rote memorisation is inevitable and indeed all that is required.
What I am describing above is of course not unique to the Indian subcontinent but holds throughout the Third World. I think Feynman described a similar experience when he went down to Brazil (I think given in one of his autobiographical books, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman?"): the students didn't understand anything, hadn't learnt to question, and just rote memorised everything.
The consequences are that fundamental lacuna remain even after subsequent attempts at rectification. Not to talk of years upon years lost.
For India, I cannot now speak. But in Pakistan, the financial and political elite doesn't give a rat's ass about the educational system: their own children go to exclusive private schools and from there to Western universities. Because the masses of people remain undereducated (possibly deliberately?), the status quo does not change and the country remains inextricably mired in backwardness and corruption, and utterly dependent on the West for basic science and engineering.
