Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Education: Something has to be Done

It was Sunday night and after two days of loss of appetite and skipping the lunch before in the day and with a maddening headache, I felt a few rats in my tummy getting up from a hibernation and starting to yawn. Feeling happy at this regain of little appetite after a long period of around 51 hours 45 minutes and 27 seconds, I asked Sanket to go out and eat something. And hence we moved to the mess near his apartment to eat some 'light home-made kind of' food. As we sat on the bench of the mess, I saw Sanket waving to a guy sitting on the nearby bench. And all of a sudden this guy asked me whether I was an IITian. I was startled a bit but then realized that he might have known about Sanket eating there regularly and hence would have guessed that I too was from an IIT.

After that, this guy started asking me about which place I worked, how much I earned, why was I not working in MNCs like Google, MS and others or Indian biggies like TATA or Reliance, which coaching institute did I go to. Now, with a mind boggling headache torturing me, I was on on the least of ease to answer any of his questions. And then, he started telling me about what he was doing (medical aspirant) and why he was doing that (because he feels that now-a-days its tougher to get into an engineering college than a medical college). And after that, he again started repeating the same questions about my job which I had left unanswered. This was the time I realized that there was something wrong with this guy. And then I started ignoring his questions and whatever he was speaking. Later when I inquired about him to Sanket, I was told that the guy is preparing for medican entrance examinations and is disturbed mentally. Though the level of disturbance was only at the psychological level now, as it seemed, it is certain to reach a more dangerous state. In addition to that this guy lives in Delhi all alone, with no one to talk to him, console him, guide him, bring him back to normalcy.

And then we talked about so many medical and other aspirants who, after starting the preparation, take that as a larger than life aim. And how failing there repeatedly disturbs the mental make up of any person so badly. I hope our school system could do something to address this problem of 'taking things too seriously' or 'not accepting failure with ease'.

Another incident happened yesterday in office when I saw the SOPs of two MBA graduates of a reputed university in the country, which they had sent as a part of job application. To my utter dismay, in the name of SOPs, they had sent their resumes in a different file format. So when the MBA grads of such a big university don't know the meaning of SOP and didn't bother to or couldn't think of googling the word before sending it for a job application, I am left wondering what would be the condition of graduates in the shops mushrooming around us which sell MBA degrees!

And what makes me wonder is how we can upgrade the condition of education in our universities! What does it take to make a better university? And how does one get better teachers teaching at our colleges?

And the wondering goes on...................

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