Surreal blog #2

# Indian Education System

Time: 11:17 pm
Date: 17^th^ November 2018

## System: The Origin

During Colonization period, lots of thing changed and one of those things is 'Education System'. Indian education system^1^ was made by Thomas Macaulay^2^ in early 1820s. As you can see, we are still using the same education system which was used by my grandfather and his grandfather too! It is hard to keep something so consistent for such a long time (sarcasm intended). Change is really necessary to keep on improving our life. Since our independence we have changed a lot, for example: our life styles have become better, way of commuting has changed, etc.
## Marks: A Rat Race

Nowadays, Education is all about getting good marks, getting admission in a good college and getting a degree. Nobody cares if you learnt anything or not; Everyone is running behind marks. And the worst thing is many teachers want their students to cram things not learn or enjoy them. Though they don't say they want students to cram, they show that indirectly by cutting marks when you didn't write what they made you write in class and sometimes they don't cut the whole answer they give partial marks. Cramming isn't a good option because you don't learn a new thing, you don't understand how it works and how to apply the knowledge. This system is actually killing students creativity. What's the point of learning things which can't apply even when you need them?
For example, Physics is a great subject which I personally like to study, I mean, isn't it nice to know how different things work and why are they the way they are.
This reminds me of a song from Rock On^3^
"Asmaan kyu h neela-neela
paani kyu h gila-gila
gol kyu h zameen"
(Why is sky blue?
Why is water wet?
Why is Earth round)
For fun knowledge: White light splits into seven colours of VIBGYOR (colours from down to top Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red or the colours of rainbow) and scatter in air and out of these indigo scatters the most but our eyes is more sensitive to blue colour so sky is blue. In universe, every objects tends to acquire a shape such that all the particles experience equal force of gravity which is only possible for sphere shape only. which is why Earth and other celestial bodies are sphere ( Sorry Flat Earth Society).
Coming back to the topic, Physics is a nice subject and fun to study. But many people fail to recognise this fact, they stay away from physics. When I ask them why they do this, they reply "it's boring", I think they find it boring is because they never read it properly, try to learn new things or don't have teachers to make that fun (reasons can be all the three in some cases).
Many a times, when a students learns a new thing and the teacher about it. They usually send them away saying "it's not in your syllabus" and many a times humiliation in front of class. which breaks the self esteem of students because of which they cease to learn new things. According to me it's like cutting wings of eagle which are meant to fly high before they even learn to fly and then telling them they are failure. People kill their curiosity and then blame them for not being curious. *slow claps* All the teachers say "If you don't understand anything, you can ask me even 100 times and I will explain it to you" and only a few teachers mean it. Students are afraid to ask even for the third time. Which shouldn't be a thing, a student should never be afraid to clear his/her doubts
All the teachers say "Everyone is equal for me, there are no favourite student, everyone is favourite for me". I can assure you, this isn't always true. There's always a guy/girl teachers always prefer. They are given good marks no matter how crap their answers are. Sometimes favourite student and normal students have same answers with different marks. you can't ask why and if asked it's either replied by dumb reason or aggressiveness.
Many times people have degrees but they have no clue about their life. It's common to see people doing IIT and then IIM. They are on the different sides of the river. If you wanted to study commerce why did you do engineering in the first place and waste 6 years, 4 years of btech and 2 years of studying science (they are not totally useless, you learned a lot of thing) for the thing you will not need later in life.
All the parents want their children to be scholars without considering what they want to do. Parents don't want their children to play sports, learn music, etc (For professional purposes, of course). And then they criticise India for not getting enough medals in olympics or not having enough good artists. Sometimes students want to study subjects like arts but parents force them to study science which in return cause them to score them less marks.

## Monotonous Syllabus

We are teaching the exact same thing to 2 different generations. Imagine your cousin who is married and has children had the exact same syllabus as you have now. I have personally experienced this my maternal uncles had the same chapter when they were of my age as I have now.
I am impressed by some of other countries' education system. For example in many foreign countries they don't have streams (like we have, science, commerce and arts). There students are allowed to choose subjects as per their convenience. For eg. There are 2 students Rakesh studying in India and Robert studying in France. Both are interested in English, Physics, History, Geography and Economics. Robert is not worried because his country let's him choose his favourite subjects and study them which actually increases the chances of him getting successful. On the other hand, Rakesh is worried because he can't choose all the subjects he like because there are different streams. And now he will have to study the subjects he's not interested in.
We need to change education system. It would be a lot more fun to study if you can study whichever subject you want to study. Or you can choose a profession which you love to.
Marks are important but when asked to choose between knowledge and marks, I will always choose knowledge.

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#### Thank You
#### Surreal

#### Footnotes
1. Indian Education System:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_Indian_subcontinent#British_India
2. Thomas Macaulay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_Indian_subcontinent#British_India
3. Rock On: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_On!!