Here is a Reply for the previous POST from one of MY BEST FRIEND. Thanks for taking TIME to share your Views and emotions towards EDUCATION system and CHANGES required ...READERS of this post will definitely accept the FACTS and those who purge for TEACHING PROFESSION will take your ADVISE for sure :)
I had a long desire to write about the teachers whom I had
faced on my due course of education here in India. Thanks to Venky for invoking
that desire. For your information I’ll furnish the background information on my
schooling so that this post will make better sense.
Kinder Garden to 5th Std -> St Anne’s Convent,
Krishnagiri
6th to 8th -> Don Bosco MHSS, Krishnagiri
9th to 12th -> Sri vidhya Mandhir
MHSS, Uthangarai, Krishnagiri DT
B.E -> Panimalar Engineering College, Chennai
Foreword or Disclaimer
[or whatever you call it]: The contents
of this post is strictly my views on these topics.
The structure of this post is like “What is happening in the
teaching industry in India” and “What I would have done”
Discrimination on the
Grounds of Caste:
I had spent nearly half of my education period in Christian institutions, what I experienced
there was not quite surprising. It would be rude to say that the Christian
teachers there discriminated school children based on caste, and that is not
what happened. Being a Christian minority school, 90% of the teachers were
Christians. Krishnagiri being a small town with very few churches, most of the
Christian school children were already familiar with the Christian teachers as
they often meet in weekly masses or some marriage in church. What I found odd
is, sometimes those teachers used to give those little perks and exceptions to
those Christian children as they knew them well. Little perks and exceptions
are not a big deal, but that sets up a negative impression about the teachers,
school and why not even about the caste on the minds of young children
belonging to other castes.
So as a Teacher, I would refrain from doing any such
discriminations.
Prejudging the capabilities of a student:
This one is the most common attribute of a *Indian* *Tamil Nadu * teacher. They develop a
picture in their mind, about the student in just seconds after meeting them.
What, do they thing they are Sherlock Holmes or some pro- secret service agent,
Huh. I had pretty much bad experience in
this.
I’m quoting one of my experience.
“As I already mentioned, I had shifted to a new school for
my 6th grade. I used to participate in speech competitions at school
right from my 1st grade. When I enrolled for a speech competition
which was organized as a part of children’s day celebration in Don Bosco, A
tamil naïve teacher of Don Bosco said “Dei, ne ella enna da paesapora. Poi
padikura velaya paruda” English Translation: “ What the heck are you going to
speak, you better go and mind your studies.” And she expressed her support for
a girl who studied in that school from her KG’s. Later on the competition day
that girl quitted, and I secured first prize but that’s a different story and
it’s not what I mean to tell. What I mean to say is by prejudging a student in
a negative way the teacher loses his/her respect which the student has about
him/her. That’s what happened in my case. I lost the respect which I had on
her.
So, if you are not
good at judging, better don’t try that at all.
Teachers in Colleges,
their mind set:
I won’t call the guys
working in colleges as lecturers or professors because; they don’t deserve to
be called so. Thanks to TN government for *FUCKING UP* the higher education
system; The guys who fail badly in their B.E, those who fail to secure any job
at all, end up being lecturers in Engineering Colleges. I do not blame them for
taking this profession, but if they had already figured out what’s the reason
they had failed miserably in their education then they should have make sure
that their students don’t end up in same mess as they are in.
Their Mindset:
These guys have a preprogrammed mind which makes them to
think students who score 80+ in their subjects are the *ONLY* people who are
*INTELLUCTUALLY CAPABLE * of doing anything, and the rest are *SHIT*. If a
student is not asking any doubt in their class, they will come to a conclusion
that the student didn’t listen or he didn’t understand. Their Pre-Programmed
brain won’t think “Oh, the student understood the concept it seems, that’s why
he didn’t ask any question”
To DO List for a Lecturer/Prof in college:
·
Choose what you want to do, The college
management eventually wants to show higher pass percentage and they don’t give
a damn about research or anything, If you want your students to remember your
name even after 10years, then let them to do research; However even if you
don’t they will remember your name as the person who spoilt their education. So
it’s up to, to whom you want to be honest.
·
Choose whether you want to work with the student
on his paper or project or else with the management to do the barber stuffs, I
mean checking whether the student is well groomed, clean shaved.
·
Learn to encourage students, okay before that
learn *NOT TO* discourage students. Because student minds are nascent and
highly volatile, so whatever you are speaking in the class room is going to be
an impact for them in one way or other.
·
With
great Authority comes great Responsibility, so do not misuse your
authority.
·
Do not spoon feed the students, never practice
spoon feeding. If you are asking a question, teach them how to find the answer
for that. Do not let them to ask the answer to you.
·
One person cannot be a master of all arts. Teach
your students how to find, who will provide a efficient and most elegant answer
for their questions. Engineering might be least valued in Tamil Nadu [Thanks
again to _Replaced_unparlimentary_word_
Tamil Nadu Govt] but in the West and in the Europe it is a highly
respectable profession. So as a student you can even speak with leading
researchers in your field to get your questions solved. Imagine How cool is it
to make a twitter conversation with a INTEL Engineer about your doubts on
methods used to minimize leakage current, May be he could give some insights on
Tri-Gate Transistor Technology. Believe it or not, they will answer for sure
and I personally had done it several times, though not with a INTEL engineer;
The thing is you must know how to question intelligent people.
**** The Quality of Teacher’s part ends
here**** Below is another interesting topic on Tamil Nadu’s Higher Education***
The Higher Education
Bubble:
Many
people, particularly in TN don’t get a picture of the bubble which is all set
to burst in few years. I’ll try to explain it in a simple way.
Time line of Tamil
Nadu’s Higher Secondary Education:
Government Forms
a committee to design a new challenging curriculum for 12th and 11th
students and succeeds in designing one, For some reason the same Government
thinks the curriculum is too hard for students and for few teachers too and
then decides to scrap *most of the portions* of it. Then the government sets up
a simple question paper for the final board exam with just one or two
*twisted/thinkable/knowledge-based* questions. Then after few weeks the Govt.,
decides to give grace marks to those twisted questions in a result to beef up
the pass percentage of students. In Parallel to this, the state approves a shit
load of colleges under its mighty *Anna University*.
What the high scores
in board exam means to parents of students from rural areas ?
The parents of
those children from rural areas don’t think that the score which their child
has got is a result of monopoly played by the Govt., [On a side note, most of
the parents from urban areas too don’t realize it] according to them, their
child has scored a good score in their higher secondary, so most of them decide
to sell their *agriculture land, cattle, property* etc to fund their children’s higher
education.
What happens in
Engineering Colleges?
*MOST* of those
students who were pushed to be passed by the government find it next to
impossible to clear their exams. And many students in the fear of thinking that
they had taken a wrong decision and now that their family is in risk of losing
everything they had earned till now sadly end up in taking choices like this,
this and these.
Other students who survived their 4 years of engineering life in a
–not-so-worthy- college obviously might
not have got a good education [see teachers in college and their mindsets for
clarification] end up either getting unemployed or taking up a M.E course at
another –not-so-worthy-college and chose to be lecturers in engineering
colleges.
Bubble Burst:
At a particular
period of time, the elite professors in engineering institutions will be
replaced by these students who failed to succeed thereby diluting the quality
of teaching rapidly. And what if a mass IT recruiter didn’t turn up for
recruitment for a year ?. How many investments made by those poor people are at
risk ?. Can they repay their loans on property ? Who is responsible for the miserable state of
TN students ? You do not need to be a detective to figure it out. It’s the
Govt., which rakes money from private engineering colleges as well as colleges
owned by politicians, approves them and adds it to their Anna University
affiliated colleges kitty, sets easy question papers, gives good marks to most
of the students irrespective of the easy question paper and not so great
answers thereby driving/manipulating them to invest in a engineering college.
On other words, it’s all a fuckin evil Plan
laid out by the then Govt., which said it contributed a lot to the higher
education reforms in the state.
My suggestion:
Readers need
not mistake me for being a hypocrite over rural students on this issue, after
all I’m not a urban student, I won’t say I’m a rural student either, I’m from
this awesome town. I’m not
generalizing that students from rural areas don’t perform well in engineering
education, there are many bright students too; but this post focuses on those
not-so-bright students. My suggestion is
to give quality-uniform education to all at the school level and based on
competitive exams they should be given admissions in engineering colleges so
that a deserving student gets his dream accomplished and a non-deserving
students doesn’t ends up in losing his life and his family won’t get bankrupt.
PS:
Outrages are
welcomed at sathyaprakash222@gmail.com
:D, [shame_less_self_promotion] wanna
read more outrages , controversy, Info Sec, Core Computer science ?., head over
here. [/shame_less_self_promotion]
