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India's educational system

bigbadwolf

bigbadwolf

Joined
2/7/08
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Points
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A good piece in the WSJ on India's educational system. Pakistan next door is exactly the same, incidentally. One professor at the NED University of Engineering (in Karachi) was trying to explain the limit as x ->0 of sin x/x. First he cancelled the x's in the numerator and denominator; then he asserted that sin = 1. I am not joking.
 
This is racial comment. Were you there at the university when the professor delivered the lecture? If not, i would like you to remove the comment.
 
@bigbad: Very true indeed. The Indian education system is based on how you rote the curriculum. From my batch, the Gold medalist is still unemployed.
 
I request the administrator to immediately ban "bigbadwolf" and shut down this topic!!!
 
I accept there are a few flaws in education system the comment is inappropriate
 
bansalmohit said:
This is racial comment. Were you there at the university when the professor delivered the lecture? If not, i would like you to remove the comment.
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Which racial comment? Would it be racial if the professor that makes that mistake is American?
arjunagrawal said:
I request the administrator to immediately ban "bigbadwolf" and shut down this topic!!!
Click to expand...
Reason?
There is no reason that we can't debate like adults, take criticism of what is wrong with the system and suggest ways to make it better like every responsible adult.
 
hey even I dnt think its an appropriate comment...if talking about Indian education system, then check out Tracker and see the number of Indian students admitted for various programs...
 
hariadya said:
@bigbad: Very true indeed. The Indian education system is based on how you rote the curriculum. From my batch, the Gold medalist is still unemployed.
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Same in Pakistan (I've lived in both places). First problem is that older people -- including teachers ("ustaad") -- have to be given a degree of respect and deference they'e done nothing to deserve. And they cannot be questioned. The second problem is the proliferation of mass education in the Indian subcontinent, usually on shoestring budgets (i.e., little money for libraries, labs, and proper teacher-student ratios), and employing hitherto unemployed PhDs who usually don't have a proper schooling themselves.

Dominic has pointed out more than once that the same holds in China. I don't have first-hand experience of China but it chimes with other accounts and from the general quality of graduates I've seen.
 
Andy Nguyen said:
Yes, I would like to know if bigbadwolf was there to see it or just play on stereotypes.
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Two of my engineering friends were taught by this prof at different times (and since he never changed his lectures, I guess generations of students have learnt how sin x/x = 1 in this particular manner). I myself had the enduring misfortune to go through that system myself so I know what I'm talking about. I remember one Pakistani M.Phil student (one who already had an M.Sc. in mathematics) asking what a vector space was (again, no joke). Then asking how 2+2=0 and not being clear about modular arithmetic.

The WSJ piece is entirely consistent with what I've seen and experienced in the Indian subcontinent.
 
Oh good. Now every politician will stop throwing the soundbite (come election time) that Indian and Chinese students are calculus ninjas and a threat to western jobs. NOT! :P
 
hariadya said:
@bigbaddie: Although being an Indian, I support you because you speak the truth here.
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Cheers, mate. I'm an Indian myself. Amazing how many Indians insist on living in a state of denial and sticking their head in the sand. They should ask themselves how a tiny country like Israel, with 7m people, produces more Nobel Prize winners than India, with 1000m.

The only people saying Indian education is great are perhaps idiots like Tom Friedman.
 
bigbadwolf said:
Two of my engineering friends were taught by this prof at different times (and since he never changed his lectures, I guess generations of students have learnt how sin x/x = 1 in this particular manner). I myself had the enduring misfortune to go through that system myself so I know what I'm talking about. I remember one Pakistani M.Phil student (one who already had an M.Sc. in mathematics) asking what a vector space was (again, no joke). Then asking how 2+2=0 and not being clear about modular arithmetic.

The WSJ piece is entirely consistent with what I've seen and experienced in the Indian subcontinent.
Click to expand...

Maybe you have had the misfortune of meeting the worst of the students. I am currently studying in one of the very good public schools in US. I am Comp Science major and i know fellow Americans who are senior(comp science major) and dont know how to compile the C code.

I myself am very knowledgeable of the domain and i know this because i have worked at Google. We have the same professors. The point i want to make is that it varies from student to student if they know the domain. Its what we choose to be and what we choose to learn, so you cant comment on educational system based on one student.
 
bigbadwolf said:
Cheers, mate. I'm an Indian myself. Amazing how many Indians insist on living in a state of denial and sticking their head in the sand. They should ask themselves how a tiny country like Israel, with 7m people, produces more Nobel Prize winners than India, with 1000m.

The only people saying Indian education is great are perhaps idiots like Tom Friedman.
Click to expand...

Well you have proved that you are too immature for this forum by calling other people stupid.
 
Moksha said:
hey even I dnt think its an appropriate comment...if talking about Indian education system, then check out Tracker and see the number of Indian students admitted for various programs...
Click to expand...
I'm not a big fan of bbw's constant stream of overly permissive posts on Quantnet but I fail to see your logic here.
The students represented in our Tracker are highly competitive from top universities in China, India, etc. That does not mean everything is great with the education system of our respective motherland. I will be the first to admit things are screw with my country's education where the ability to memorize everything is highly valued.

We need to be open minded, specially if you want to study and be successful in the US. The system will come as a shock to many people who haven't studied in the US before.

And lastly, by this logic, should we not criticize MFE programs because many Quantnet members here are current students and graduates of every MFE program you see in the Tracker?

Let's open mind and help one another learn about our weakness, our strength in order to survive in the highly competitive world out there.
 
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