Can we do something to eradicate ROTE LEARNING in India?
"Rote Learning" or Memorization is the most commonly used method of learning in our country. From all the fuss I see on Slashdot, I suspect that China follows India very closely on this. I think South America is also similar. Most of Africa is struggling to provide education. So maybe they can do some rote learning... Maybe they can leapfrog ROTE learning altogether.
There are other variants of rote learning like practicing math. Practice is definitely necessary to make anyone a good mathematician. But if the effort is directed to merely familiarize yourself with the "expected problems in the exam" through repetition, it is no better than memorization. In physics and chemistry, learning to substitute values in equations is no use unless, the real essence of the subject sinks in.
I wish to recollect a recent incident that Raghunath was narrating to me. His sister was "trying to memorize a program to print the Fibonacci sequence". Raghu is not yet much of a programmer though he has written some code with some guidance. But REAP has "spoilt" him beyond repair. So he cannot tolerate such an absurd thing!!! He was nagging his sister and his sisters response was "There are only 12 programs and if I learn them properly I will get the marks. So what is the problem." Her parents joined in and asked Raghu to keep quiet and not unnecessarily trouble his sister. After all she had other subjects to study also!!!
When I heard this, sparks were flying off my head. How can anyone be so dumb?? But then I paused and asked myself, "Whose fault is it anyway?". Raghu's parents wanted the best for their son and daughter. In India parent child relationships are much stronger than in the west. Most of what the parents earn is preserved for the future of the children. This might look absurd from a western perspective where you have 3 marriages and divorces in a life and things look normal. But how can some one tell Raghu's parents that they are hurting her rather than helping her though they don't intend to.
And this is not a freak incident. I have time and again seen a huge obsession with cracking the exam rather than cracking the subject. So the question that needs to be asked is... Who really benefits from Raghu's sister getting the funda behind the Fibonacci series? Raghu's family obviously benefits, but they have no clue!!!
The answer is "THE FUTURE EMPLOYER".
A person like Mr Narayana Murthy or Mr Sam Palmisano or Mr Ambani would benefit by a highly skilled and "useful" workforce. Don't they do anything about it? Well they do try... For Eg people like Mr Murthy keeps emphasizing the need for quality education wherever he goes and so on... But still there is a huge gap... Raghu's parents are still going to live in their own parallel universe. Does "Quality Education" mean "not memorizing the fibonacci program?" or "Memorizing even more programs"? How are they supposed to know? And if she is not going to be a programmer aspiring to join Infosys, is it then ok for her to memorize? Maybe she will get a job in a Bajaj or a Coca Cola...
Rote learning not only hurts Programming... It not only hurts Scientists and Engineers. Even a Salesperson, Accountant, Manager or Call Center Operator needs to know what he is doing. Computers will do all the storing and retrieving of the data. The real job of the person is to figure out what is going on.
I believe that all major CEOs of the world, be it Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Narayana Murthy, the Czars of Biotech, Oil n Natural gas, Manufacturing... Just about every brand that has been registered in the minds of the Indian should take a Unified full page ad on the front page of every newspaper in every language proclaiming that "ROTE LEARNING IS USELESS". If your scores can be attributed to Rote learning, you will NOT GET A JOB WITH US. Of course you could do well in your exam AFTER figuring out what you have learnt. But you cant join us if you behave as if your head is a replacement for a HARD DISK. The page must contain the trademark of each company as well as the signatures of the CEOs.
If a guy like Raghu, needs to answer his parents, he just needs to thrust this paper on their face and declare : "All the bosses in the world say, If she memorizes the fibonacci program she wont get a Job". It is a lot more powerful argument than, "She won't be able to appreciate the beauty of programming".
Is this going to be a very costly exercise? Companies place full page ads just to recruit individual positions for their companies. Here a single sheet is shared by thousands of companies. The cost per company would be negligible and would not even make a tiny dent in their ad expenditure. But the unified Message is STRONG!!! If done on a nationwide scale in a synchronized manner across languages across industries, people like Raghu's parents can't help but notice it. In fact the exercise would even strengthen the brand image of the participating companies saying that they really care about education. The price they pay would be an insignificant fraction of their marketing budgets.
Firefox which is an open-source browser manged to pull off such a campaign. Here we are talking about Chief Executive Officers who are rolling in money. And they desperately NEED a better pool of high quality professionals to hire from. They can wait 5 years to see the results. They will gladly agree.
The thing that is left to be done is to use all the people on the planet who are as frustrated as Raghu and me to propagate this message to other such frustrated people so that it can cascade and reach the CEOs of all companies that matter. All the IITans and the guys from the IIMs and research institutions and all freaks across the nation, please pass this message on until it makes it way to the top. Digg this, slashdot this... do whatever you can... Here is an invitation to all geeks across the nation to help eradicate the menace of rote memorization. You are doing yourself the greatest favor by doing this. You will have fewer morons to argue with. You will need to clean up the mess on fewer computers of your relatives. You will get to live in a more interesting world.
Hope this also spreads to other countries where rote memorization is rampant. It should become clear to every one that, if you rely on rote memorization, the only place you can get a job is the government. And the role of the govt is declining fast in the country. Most public sector undertakings are getting privatized. So the message to all Rote learners from all the CEOs shall be "Make yourself USEFUL".
There are other variants of rote learning like practicing math. Practice is definitely necessary to make anyone a good mathematician. But if the effort is directed to merely familiarize yourself with the "expected problems in the exam" through repetition, it is no better than memorization. In physics and chemistry, learning to substitute values in equations is no use unless, the real essence of the subject sinks in.
I wish to recollect a recent incident that Raghunath was narrating to me. His sister was "trying to memorize a program to print the Fibonacci sequence". Raghu is not yet much of a programmer though he has written some code with some guidance. But REAP has "spoilt" him beyond repair. So he cannot tolerate such an absurd thing!!! He was nagging his sister and his sisters response was "There are only 12 programs and if I learn them properly I will get the marks. So what is the problem." Her parents joined in and asked Raghu to keep quiet and not unnecessarily trouble his sister. After all she had other subjects to study also!!!
When I heard this, sparks were flying off my head. How can anyone be so dumb?? But then I paused and asked myself, "Whose fault is it anyway?". Raghu's parents wanted the best for their son and daughter. In India parent child relationships are much stronger than in the west. Most of what the parents earn is preserved for the future of the children. This might look absurd from a western perspective where you have 3 marriages and divorces in a life and things look normal. But how can some one tell Raghu's parents that they are hurting her rather than helping her though they don't intend to.
And this is not a freak incident. I have time and again seen a huge obsession with cracking the exam rather than cracking the subject. So the question that needs to be asked is... Who really benefits from Raghu's sister getting the funda behind the Fibonacci series? Raghu's family obviously benefits, but they have no clue!!!
The answer is "THE FUTURE EMPLOYER".
A person like Mr Narayana Murthy or Mr Sam Palmisano or Mr Ambani would benefit by a highly skilled and "useful" workforce. Don't they do anything about it? Well they do try... For Eg people like Mr Murthy keeps emphasizing the need for quality education wherever he goes and so on... But still there is a huge gap... Raghu's parents are still going to live in their own parallel universe. Does "Quality Education" mean "not memorizing the fibonacci program?" or "Memorizing even more programs"? How are they supposed to know? And if she is not going to be a programmer aspiring to join Infosys, is it then ok for her to memorize? Maybe she will get a job in a Bajaj or a Coca Cola...
Rote learning not only hurts Programming... It not only hurts Scientists and Engineers. Even a Salesperson, Accountant, Manager or Call Center Operator needs to know what he is doing. Computers will do all the storing and retrieving of the data. The real job of the person is to figure out what is going on.
I believe that all major CEOs of the world, be it Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Narayana Murthy, the Czars of Biotech, Oil n Natural gas, Manufacturing... Just about every brand that has been registered in the minds of the Indian should take a Unified full page ad on the front page of every newspaper in every language proclaiming that "ROTE LEARNING IS USELESS". If your scores can be attributed to Rote learning, you will NOT GET A JOB WITH US. Of course you could do well in your exam AFTER figuring out what you have learnt. But you cant join us if you behave as if your head is a replacement for a HARD DISK. The page must contain the trademark of each company as well as the signatures of the CEOs.
If a guy like Raghu, needs to answer his parents, he just needs to thrust this paper on their face and declare : "All the bosses in the world say, If she memorizes the fibonacci program she wont get a Job". It is a lot more powerful argument than, "She won't be able to appreciate the beauty of programming".
Is this going to be a very costly exercise? Companies place full page ads just to recruit individual positions for their companies. Here a single sheet is shared by thousands of companies. The cost per company would be negligible and would not even make a tiny dent in their ad expenditure. But the unified Message is STRONG!!! If done on a nationwide scale in a synchronized manner across languages across industries, people like Raghu's parents can't help but notice it. In fact the exercise would even strengthen the brand image of the participating companies saying that they really care about education. The price they pay would be an insignificant fraction of their marketing budgets.
Firefox which is an open-source browser manged to pull off such a campaign. Here we are talking about Chief Executive Officers who are rolling in money. And they desperately NEED a better pool of high quality professionals to hire from. They can wait 5 years to see the results. They will gladly agree.
The thing that is left to be done is to use all the people on the planet who are as frustrated as Raghu and me to propagate this message to other such frustrated people so that it can cascade and reach the CEOs of all companies that matter. All the IITans and the guys from the IIMs and research institutions and all freaks across the nation, please pass this message on until it makes it way to the top. Digg this, slashdot this... do whatever you can... Here is an invitation to all geeks across the nation to help eradicate the menace of rote memorization. You are doing yourself the greatest favor by doing this. You will have fewer morons to argue with. You will need to clean up the mess on fewer computers of your relatives. You will get to live in a more interesting world.
Hope this also spreads to other countries where rote memorization is rampant. It should become clear to every one that, if you rely on rote memorization, the only place you can get a job is the government. And the role of the govt is declining fast in the country. Most public sector undertakings are getting privatized. So the message to all Rote learners from all the CEOs shall be "Make yourself USEFUL".
posted by Unknown @ 10:38 AM
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