Basic flaw with Indian educational system
Recently, I met a post-doc in U-Michigan who moved to Ann Arbor from Stanford, where he completed his Ph.D (did his engineering in IIT-Madras and played classical violin on national radio in his earlier life). In our varied discussions, I learned that he was moving to India soon -- to teach. Curious, I inquired (assumed), "Ah, so you must be going to one of the IITs/ engineering schools to teach and then you might even be able to make time for research." To my surprise, he said no ("no interest in research or engineering") and that he just wanted to teach high-school children. I didn't immediately see the connection but it got me thinking...later it fell into place.
In our (Indian) educational system, we are taught to learn mostly by rote. The sky is blue. 25x25 = 625. (a+b)*(a-b) = a^2 - b^2. E= MC^2. Chemical equations, mathematical formulae, historical facts....we can "mug it all up." Parents sit with their children at 5AM to help them memorize multiplication tables (on the US side, the obsession is possibly with spelling-bees). So what's the problem? In their focus to just learn, children fail to inquire why the sky is blue - oh, it's because of refraction - how exactly, does refraction make it blue? - what's the whole story and where does this blue thing fit in? I see that this method of learning (or thinking) creeps into the workplace and it hurts - for e.g. in software programming - the newbee programmer will tend to program in silos and is unable to plan for the whole and write individual code that has a more wholistic grasp of the bigger problem that it is trying to solve - code that has perspective. It's a problem that my cousin (the same RFID guy) is tearing his hair about - trying to get some work done from India. There's no question that there are notable exceptions and also there are good and bad programmers everywhere - but that's not the point - this is a general issue. I see similar concerns even in other lines of work - for e.g. in executing a process-oriented task, professionals typically tend to ignore bringing in the big-picture perspective into individual activities - asking, why am I doing what I'm doing and what bigger problem is this trying to solve? You will exactly know what I'm talking about (and be nodding) if you've only faced it! Finally, excellent work does get done (that's why the Satyams, Infys have thrived) but it also requires more minds, brute-force (dubbed shadow workforce) - and requires to be led by someone who brings that perspective. The reasons for this are very basic - much simpler than one would imagine and it's our obsession to learn things by rote (even in a Google-world) and not asking (rather, thinking) - at the right time - why really is the sky blue?
In our (Indian) educational system, we are taught to learn mostly by rote. The sky is blue. 25x25 = 625. (a+b)*(a-b) = a^2 - b^2. E= MC^2. Chemical equations, mathematical formulae, historical facts....we can "mug it all up." Parents sit with their children at 5AM to help them memorize multiplication tables (on the US side, the obsession is possibly with spelling-bees). So what's the problem? In their focus to just learn, children fail to inquire why the sky is blue - oh, it's because of refraction - how exactly, does refraction make it blue? - what's the whole story and where does this blue thing fit in? I see that this method of learning (or thinking) creeps into the workplace and it hurts - for e.g. in software programming - the newbee programmer will tend to program in silos and is unable to plan for the whole and write individual code that has a more wholistic grasp of the bigger problem that it is trying to solve - code that has perspective. It's a problem that my cousin (the same RFID guy) is tearing his hair about - trying to get some work done from India. There's no question that there are notable exceptions and also there are good and bad programmers everywhere - but that's not the point - this is a general issue. I see similar concerns even in other lines of work - for e.g. in executing a process-oriented task, professionals typically tend to ignore bringing in the big-picture perspective into individual activities - asking, why am I doing what I'm doing and what bigger problem is this trying to solve? You will exactly know what I'm talking about (and be nodding) if you've only faced it! Finally, excellent work does get done (that's why the Satyams, Infys have thrived) but it also requires more minds, brute-force (dubbed shadow workforce) - and requires to be led by someone who brings that perspective. The reasons for this are very basic - much simpler than one would imagine and it's our obsession to learn things by rote (even in a Google-world) and not asking (rather, thinking) - at the right time - why really is the sky blue?
posted by pravs at 12:00 PM
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