Thursday 20 October 2011

Need of the day: An Educational Reform

Having a degree is considered to be synonymous to getting educated and has been the standard since traditional times. We often forget the purpose of what we have been doing in the conquest of becoming educated. The top most accusation is to be put on ourselves after the education system. We are the ones who have given it so much autonomy as to decide of how things will operate, thus putting the future of our generations at stake. And we forget to realize that we are relying too much on the degree and not the curriculum and the learning. As observed by many, our education system has many weaknesses highlighted below:

1) Market knowledge is not being imparted. Students know concepts but lack the application part. Especially teachers who have a lot of teaching experience but no work experience tend to focus only on theoretical aspects.

2) A lot of focus is being put on the bookish knowledge and important things like ethics, career building, counseling, and personality development are being neglected. Schools are social institutions where the learning process is transformed by inculcating these.

3) Mentors, guides and guest speakers are not being invited to talk to the students to give them an exposure of work life and environment.

4) The examples quoted in most of our books are from the international markets’ and authors’ perspective and are not relatable at all. Since the conditions shaping our surroundings are very different from the international ones, quoting local examples would be better. Also the ones that we follow have been the same for ages. Their editions haven’t been updated either and they give examples after pages of monotonous text passages.

5) Not all fields are being given equal exposure. Fields like arts, media, dance, sports, theater etc. are being ignored. Students end up choosing the same redundant fields leading to cognitive dissonance, frustration and dissatisfaction throughout their lives.

6) Students are not being given good training on time management, stress management, communication barriers bridging etc. and thus later in their professional lives they lack the power of handling pressures.

7) The system is completely devoid of understanding and reasoning. A research by psychologists shows that students who ask excessive questions in the class are not only left unanswered but also are discouraged to do so. The student who asks the maximum questions is the one considered dumbest and gets the least marks.

To summarize it all, the education system that is dominating our nation right now is far below the caliber of the international ones. We are forgetting that this is giving birth to an incompetent future generation that will lack in almost all fields of global competition. The only thing that can secure our futures is an educational reform. Just like we cannot expect a recipe to turn out into a well cooked and delicious dish if we don’t put in the right ingredients in their required proportions; we can’t expect a bright yielding future if we are feeding our upcoming generations with the wrong milk in the name of education.

Saturday 15 October 2011

Fiasco…

After a long, tedious and demanding month of mid terms, my friends and I decided to go out for Johnny English Reborn and decided to watch it at Cineplex rather than at Atrium Cinema, since it was convenient for all of us. We were surprised to see how the once cluttered cinema was now almost vacant without much traffic around. It was a week day thus we assumed that people were occupied with work. We bought 4 movie tickets and were told that the show will begin at 3 pm sharp. We waited for a few moments and then were directed to a hall only to discover that it was just the 4 of us in that cinema that day. For a moment we felt extremely royal at the thought that we would be able to enjoy without anyone judging us. We grabbed seats in the centre row and began munching on our pop corn sipping our drinks. 15 minutes passed and the show didn’t start. We started becoming restless since a couple of friends had been really exited about the release of this one. They demanded that the movie be played ASAP. It finally began around 3 30 pm. Excited for the movie, we ignored what had happened and started enjoying it. After a few moments the screen went all blank and we could only hear the actors chatting and the background sounds. Got that fixed. After a few moments, a little demarcation appeared on the screen dividing it into two halves. Later at least thrice the screen projection lost its actual position and the heads started appearing at the bottom while the remaining body went at the top. Once, even the entire movie stopped. All of us were really disappointed since we had been waiting for this one movie since like ages. Also the movie itself was not up to the expectations. After leaving the hall we decided never to go back to that place ever again. Cineplex lost another set of its customers. Unsatisfactory performance and inconsistent quality is one of the reasons why Cineplex has a declining market share and the remaining one is being gobbled up by Atrium too. Cineplex needs to revive its business strategy, else it will go extinct within no time.

Sunday 2 October 2011

You are the WORST thing that ever happened to me

Why is she always around? Why does she make things worse? She is that inevitable reality of our life that we can’t flush out so easily. Every time something goes wrong I end up cursing her. She is the one behind all our miseries and woes. I can’t believe how frustrating one can make another’s life like that. It’s like she is a bad omen. She brings this bad luck charm to us. Why is it that always in her presence things turn out so extraordinary in the evil sort of way. I cannot stand her existence. I cannot just explain how much I detest her. The level of abhorrence that I’ve developed for her in the past few years is so verbose yet impossible to explain. I can’t believe how someone can be that evil. How someone can be such a wonderful pretender. Her ability to twist the facts is amazing. So extraordinary that I get a feeling at some instances that maybe she has been blessed with this supernatural power of being so bloody evil yet appear as the most saccharine-ish creature alive. She is that bitch that I despise. She brings this bad karma which expresses itself so often. But as soon as she leaves I feel as if I’ve migrated from hot scorching sunny days to cool breezy nights. I have hated her, I still do and I will loathe her till the last breadth that I take.