I feel that studying the way I studied(or most of us study) has trimmed my potential for creativity.I collide with the walls of facts,reason,logic , whenever my thoughts try to linger somewhere 'out of the box' .
Looking back,I can see the flaw in our education system.Endless mugging,learning facts without pondering on the background ,has left the innovative areas of our mind shattered.And I am not talking about mugging in the conventional sense.I mean the way of 'learning' promoted by our teachers uptil now.We are straightforward introduced to facts and discoveries and theorems ,and not encouraged to try and derive them on our own or, what might be even better- guess what all theorems would exist related to the given topic,based on our insight.
This seems impossible ,and I agree we are,at many stages, incapable of deriving theorems on our own- but such an exercise would help in building our understanding.
Some good teachers do tell the proofs and the derivations- but at no point of time we are encouraged to develop our own proof- or told alternate approaches- or explained why in particular instances some approach works ,and others dont. We are never told the background,the history,what led to the academicians to work towards that topic.
We are straightforward taught the applications-never has any teacher asked us to guess what the applications and the implications of a particular result or axiom or theorem might be.
To many all this would seem like an oppurtunity to put forward the common argument -"IITs are meant to produce engineers,not scientists".But what are engineers worth,if they lack innovation?What then,makes IITs,in particular,IIT faculty-different from any other college? We complain that we deserve to be a lot higher in world rankings.Why!?
Without an innovation based eductaion system,our world would be at a standstill.We would never progress towards newer horizons. Especially in an age where entertainment-based industry is flourishing and driving students away from research and science,towards money and fame.
5 comments:
EGGSACTLY!
I kept asking myself at the ioi, how the hell are these guys so good when I'm sure they'd hardly get anywhere in the JEE... came to the same conclusion as you: we here never discover; only 'learn' till our capacity for discovery tends to zero!
As for your last statement, about entertainment industry... :P ... that requires quite some creativity mister! Let it flourish for all I care, it'd be good if that calibre of creativity entered education!
@pgm:
I agree totally with you, (except for the ioi part, :P)
ok agree to each and every line ,especially the one pgm protested. Entertainment industry . Yeah ,requires creativity ;but I may actually refer to the masses industry has fooled into -just sitting in front of idiot box ,not interested to be creative themselves ;all they want is there money and fame -not the Newton way but Ambani way .However, we have debated on this soooooo long
@bhatta and PGM:
I didnt mean that entertainment stuff dont have creativity.All I meant is that all the creativity is going towards that,and its rare that good people go for research.
@piyush: thanks for the clarification, and now we'll just get back to screwing the system :P
@bhatta: ya, the entertainment industry is governed by the masses. "Art for Art's Sake" isn't there. Those who make music for music are nowhere near as encouraged as those who make music for the film industry (just an example)!
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