Is it worth going with the flow?

I’m back with a new discussion which is quite similar to my previous discussion – ‘why everyone is rushing towards becoming doctor & engineer’, but I’ll discuss it quite differently.

Well, recently, we had IIT Mains & I think it needs no introduction (if you’re in India!). Lakhs of students had appeared in the exam for getting to best engineering institutes in India. And in coming days or a month, we’ll have Medical entrances too & of course, IIT Advanced. So almost every 12th passed students are geared up for the coming entrances. You’ll also find among your relatives or friends appearing for these exams. But if you go & search, you’ll get a result that is quite shocking (at least, to me) – majority of the students are appearing for MEDICAL & ENGINEERING entrances, may be around 90% or more (as far as my guess goes).

But what is it that is most shocking? In a population (of India) of almost a billion (10,000,000,000), is it possible that almost every student wants to become an engineer or a doctor? Let’s try to give a possible answer to this question. But in order to be satisfied with the answer, you’ll need to think different like me, & of course, you’ll need to be a radical.

So what’s exactly happening? I’ll not start from the very beginning of childhood, but let’s talk about class 9th students. If you’ll go to any 9th classroom in almost every school in India & ask students what they want to choose for their career, 2 very common answers would pop out the highest – doctor & engineer. But if you’d have asked those 9th students the same question years ago, when they were in 1st grade, you’d have got something different in response. You’d have got a mixture; some would’ve said doctor, some painter, some engineer, or writer, or singer, or…cricketer & a lot different. You’ll also get different answers if you’ll ask a 9th student (the same question), but who don’t know anything about career, about what people are doing in the professional world. Why so? What does it happen within 8 years that students completely change their views? What does it happen that if you don’t know about careers & all these stuffs, you’ll give a different response? The only answer is – ‘the FLOW’. There’s a flow of everyone becoming doctor or engineer. (And if you’re confused with what ‘flow’ is, try to understand it like what happens to water in a river. No matter what, water always flows in the same direction & if there’s any rock or something to distract, it changes it way according to the curve of the distraction. The very same way, there’s a flow of everyone doing some common works (in this case, it’s the choice of engineering & medical) no matter what). If you’d say someone, you want to be a cricketer or an actor or a painter or a writer, he/she would see at you awkwardly feeling funny. But if you say you want to be a doctor or an engineer, no one would respond differently. Ok, but that definitely doesn’t mean everyone would do the same. But majority of people would feel quite awkward if you want to do something different. So we all are going with this flow & I think it’s turning into a culture.

In a class, students who score high are expected to be doctor or engineer. And you’d see of teachers or parents or someone else talking about being doctor or engineer. When it comes to career, engineering & medical are the most commonly heard words. Also those who are average in academics are assumed that they’ll not be able to make any good career & career means engineering or medical; so they can’t be doctors & engineers. You’ll also get people who’d advise you to be a doctor or engineer. And if you open a newspaper or any career related magazines or websites, you’d get of nothing other than engineering & medical (and of course, MBA programs). If you search for seats in any reputed institutes for undergrad programs, you’d get most of the seats for engineering & medical. If you search for any foundational courses (both in 9th & 11th level), you’d get nothing else than engineering & medical entrances foundation in such courses. When you’ll be in class 9th, everyone would tell you to study hard because this is the time of competition. But competition of what? Of getting selection in Olympic? Or of getting selection in a singing competition? No, but for the competition of getting selection in engineering or medical institutes. And if you ask a student why he/she is studying so hard, you’ll get the answer – to get into engineering or medical entrances. So your day starts with engineering & medical, & so will your night end with the same. Terrible! That’s called the ‘FLOW’. Everyone is doing the same, just like water flows in a river in the same direction. And the reason why students change their minds is because the atmosphere forces them to do so. During childhood students don’t understand about outside world & they’ve many possibilities & dreams. They want to do what they want to. But as time passes by things change terribly because they start to understand & try to be with the flow; because otherwise they’ll be rebel & no one wants to be rebel. And as far as I’ve experienced among my classmates, those who’re meant for other careers (and wanted to pursue their interests years ago) want to be in engineering & medical. And honestly speaking, these are not their personal decisions, but are solely affected by the ‘flow’. But is it worth going with the flow??

Before answering that, let’s imagine a situation where everyone would be doctors & engineers. What’ll happen then? Ok, before that let’s imagine another situation when there’s a cake & there’re 10 children? then 20? then 30? then 40? then 50? And so on & so forth… Who’ll be worst affected by the increasing number of children? The children themselves. So, similarly, when number of doctors & engineers increases, who’ll be the worst affected? Definitely, doctors & engineers themselves. And how will they be affected? There’ll be unimaginable competitions among them. And do you know who’ll be still most affected among them? Those who’ve passions for engineering & medical! And honestly speaking, this is exactly what is happening right now. Because everyone is applying for engineering & medical entrances, those students who are meant to be doctor & engineer by interest face more competitions & challenges. If only those who’re passionate about these fields apply, there’d not have been much problem clearing the entrances. And if you ask someone, who is affected by the ‘flow’, whether he/she’s really passionate of engineering or medical, he/she would tell you that he/she’s really passionate about them & is not affected by the flow. But truth is always different.

Moreover, those who’re doctors or engineers by flow are in fact economic waste to the country, because they never contribute to our economy. In fact, they pose threat to passionate doctors or engineers in the job market. And we’ve these people in large number. To some extent, engineers who’ve just got the degree (not by merit) are not that much of harmful. But doctors with such kind of degrees are definitely harmful because there’s no guarantee what will they do with their patients!! In conclusion, such academic qualifications are worthless. But still, we’re producing such doctors & engineers every year. Despite the popular movies like 3 idiots which are meant to give this very message, there’s been no impact on people. Still, we want to make our children doctors & engineers. No matter how these students get their degrees, we just need the titles of engineer & doctor behind their names. This flow is also affecting the quality of the population. We’ve people with different talents & interests. But every time, we’re producing doctors or engineers, we’re destroying many talents & thus ruining the quality of our population. If people of different interests pursue their respective interests, then, we’d get highly talent population. And those doctors & engineers who are changing the world are those who’ve pursued their true interests & are not affected by the flow. You really don’t need to do any tough job, you just need to follow your interests & that’s it.

What would’ve happened if Steve Jobs had become a singer, if Pablo Picasso had become a politician, if Sachin Tendulkar had become a scientist, if Lata Mangeskar had become a tennis player, if Vikram Sarabhai had become a writer, if Chetan Bhagat had become a painter, if Michael Jackson had become a pilot…& so on? Then, we’d not have got such game changers. And in fact, if you try to look into lives of some of them, like of Chetan Bhagat, you’d see that they’ve started their journey with different fields, but after they chose their interests, they rocked the world. And that’s what generally happens…if you’re in your field of interest, you rock the world. Moreover, we want revolutionary visionaries, those who are not bound by any flow. It’s better to be a radical when you know the flow is in the wrong direction.

We’ve faced the 21st century with many challenges. So in order to solve them & change the face & fate of the world, we need Wright Brothers, Maxwell, Steve Jobs, Vinci, Einstein…But in order to get them again in this century, we’ll need to create another flow in which everyone pursue their own interests. We need to initiate a movement. And we’d basically need to look back to our very system of education in order to solve this problem, after all education is the root of everything.

So is it really worth going with the flow? Definitely no. And this is not exactly an issue related to engineering & medical only, but an issue related to almost everything. We people, despite being most intelligent, don’t try to think independently. We do what others do without thinking of its impacts in large scale. Pursuing of engineering & medical by majority of students is just an example. There’re many more such problems that we’re facing. We just need to think a bit deeper & visualize ourselves from a bird’s eye view of what we’re doing.

Though we’re not able to notice any negative impact of being with the flow, it’s affecting the whole world negatively. And this’d be visible in coming decades. And by far, according to me, India is worst affected by this flow.

We need more creative & innovative people in the coming years as things are becoming more complex. But if this goes on, there’s no doubt, we’ll be in grave danger. The only solution is to rethink our mindset.

So ask yourself – Is it worth going with the flow? Probably you’d get a ‘NO’ if you’ve really understood what I’ve said above.

Copyright©2011-13 Sandeep Deva Misra

Instead of searching for toppers among billions, why don’t we try to make everyone a topper?

 

If you’re saying that you’re gonna participate in a competition, it’s always expected that you’ll top, you’ll secure first position. It’s a common psychology of almost everyone. Competition means topping & nothing more nothing less. Competitive exams like IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Mains & Advanced, Pre-Medical Test (PMT), Indian Administrative Service (IAS) are coming or are going on (if you’re staying in India). These are some of the country’s toughest exams which try to search toppers among thousands or even half a million of candidates. Institutes like IIT give admissions to only about 2% of candidates. Uffff…frightening!! It’s commonly assumed that tougher the exam, better the quality. It’s like reputation of the institute. They proudly say – ‘out of thousands or lakhs of those who worked day night to achieve their dreams, we’ve selected only best thousand…’ But they don’t add – ‘…and by doing so we’ve destroyed thousands of dreams.’ I don’t know if you think only few selected out of 7 billion can achieve excellence, are gifted enough to be best. But I DON’T do so. I DO believe that excellence can be achieved among 99% of our population & due to some reason or other remaining 1% may not be able to do so, but there’s no guarantee in that too, may be they can also achieve outstanding excellence. So, to be honest, if right condition can be created, 100% can achieve excellence, & if few hundreds can’t for some extreme situation, then too, there’s not that much problem.

The question that – Instead of searching for toppers among billion, why we don’t try to make everyone topper – came few days ago for 2 incidents. First was, while searching, I got to know that only 2% of the luckiest students can go for quality education to IIT & second was while I was watching a TED video of leading educationist & founder of SOLE (Self-organizing learning environment) – Dr. Sugata Mitra. Those 2 incidents prompted me to ask myself this question. And I want to share the same feeling & curiosity with you all.

What really hurt me the most was the fact that only 2% can have access to quality engineering education in India. It gave me a hard blow. I was wondering what would happen to 98% of the students. Definitely, they’d apply for other reputed institutions in the country, but to me, it’s still awkward that only 2% are meant to be best engineers in our country. And the incident that sparked a hope that 100% excellence is possible came to me after watching that extremely motivational & mind blowing video of Sugata Mitra at TED Conference 2013. (Here’s the video from TED.com – http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html). Let me share what he’s doing.

While teaching computer programming in Delhi 14 years ago, it came to his mind whether extremely poor slum children would be able to learn to program or whether they should learn to do these kinds of things. He thought of doing something special. He dug a hole in the wall of his office & fitted a computer there. All those kids rushed to see what that ‘thing’ was. They asked him, but he answered he don’t know & went to work. Then, when he came out to see what’s going on 8 hours later, he was shocked to see that those children who had never seen a computer in their life & didn’t know what a computer is, started to teach each other how to browse! It gave him a hard blow. He was shocked. His colleagues told him that may be someone passing by showed them how to browse & now they’re doing it themselves. So he tried the same thing 300 miles away from Delhi in a distant village where there’s no or little chance of any computer literate passing by. And the same thing happened there too. In another village in South India, he left a computer with biotechnology lessons in it & told the children that these things are important & in English. While he returned after few months, he was amazed to see that a small girl was talking of how neurons communicate. When asked, they told that they understood almost everything. Since then, he has been doing these things around the globe getting the same results again & again. CHILDREN WERE LEARNING BY THEMSELVES.  It was a shock to Dr. Mitra & others who learnt about his experiment & so am I. But at the end of the day, it can be concluded firmly that if we completely change the present system of education, there’re lots of hopes of achieving 100% excellence among 100% population. It seems like a big effort, but honestly speaking, it’s much easier than what we’re doing right now. What Dr. Mitra did? He just put a computer left alone with children & went away. Nothing more. And things happened automatically. Students started teaching themselves. In present system of education, you need to admit your children in big costly schools where teachers have to lecture for hours & still, students don’t pay attention, & it’s a matter of worry for you too. And basically students don’t have natural tendency of learning & you just need to put them in that death hole! But what was the magic behind those children? Were they gifted? Did they give attention because they hadn’t seen such things even in their life? No, not at all. The only magic was in that type of self-organizing education. Dr. Mitra calls it Self-Organizing Learning Environment (SOLE). What happened with those students was that they were learning themselves in their own way, at their own pace. There was no one to scold them for mistakes; there was no one to keep eye on them. They did in their own way. They didn’t need to keep quite. It was just students doing everything by themselves in their own way. So such system has much more potential than we might have thought of. I better recommend you to watch that TED talk by Dr. Mitra to know about his efforts in his own words.

Ok, so why I mentioned about it here? Because in darkness, there’re still sparks of hope & the complete revolution in education can lead to 100% toppers. In the present system of education or more simply, in the present system, we’re only searching for toppers. We’re searching for those lucky guys who passed the death race! But in doing so, we’ve forgotten about remaining 98 or 99 percent. Is it possible, in a world of 7 billion people (and still growing…!), there’re only few hundreds, who are excellent? Are the remaining waste? Could it be possible? And what the hell would that hundreds could do to the remaining billions? We never think of that. We just need first prize winners. Everyone appreciates those who come first. But have we ever asked ourselves – what’s about the other competitors? What’s about their talents? In a competition or a game, it’s possible that out of 100, there comes one winner. But that doesn’t come solely by talents or skills, rather, that comes by chance, by luck. The worst thing that we people do is we only think about that one topper who was lucky enough to survive & ignore or forget remaining 99. But if these things go on, can we think of facing the challenges of 21^st century, of ever growing population? Definitely no. The present system is similar to monarchy. Why? I’m not talking about politics. But I’m talking about people’s participation. In monarchy, only the king or queen & members of the council have the sole authority to take decisions & remaining millions of citizens don’t have any right to participate. The same is going on today. Only selected few out of millions or billions are assumed to be capable of top level of works. Though everyone has fundamental rights in a nation, it’s indirectly assumed that only that less than 1 or 2 % are capable of top level of works & remaining others are nothing. Is it democratic? Ok, I’m definitely not saying that an organization or institute can select everyone who comes to apply or everyone is perfect for every type of work. This is not practical. But what I’m saying is that we need a system which encourages entrepreneurship, which gives chances to almost everyone. And this is now possible by internet technology. We need to give share to everyone by some way or other or encourage them to start their own companies. Moreover, in terms of education, every institute should give equal, quality education to everyone. There shouldn’t be anything like – this is the best institute & only top lucky students can go there. Talents are multi-dimensional. They can’t just be compared by exams or something like that. So chances must be given to everyone some way or other because then we’ll be able to utilize the talents of all mankind. In that process, there could be someone more successful or more talented than others for some reason or other but that’s not important. Only talents don’t add to anyone’s success. There’re many factors behind it. So that’s not something to worry about. We just need almost full utilization. Also there can’t be like 100% population would be doing something great. It’s not natural because nothing can be perfect. But at least we can hope of most of the people achieving excellence.

In this competitive world, we’re in a race to find the best of best. But we always forget that still there’re billions who are uneducated or have very less education. There’re many who are undernourished, starving of hunger. And as community of rich & educated is rising up, a community of poor & uneducated is rising, & to the amazement, they’re living together. In one side, there’re skyscrapers full of highly educated & skilled people & in other side, there’re slums full of highly poor & uneducated people. So whatever we say, the net result is always zero or is in negative. In one way, we’re saying that we’re selecting top students, producing highly skilled professionals. In other way, we’re forgetting that still there’re much more uneducated than top professionals. So in the race of finding best of best, we’ve completely forgotten uneducated people who will definitely cause much greater problems in the development of the world. The only solution is to educate 7 billion people & stop searching for best. Everyone has unthinkable skills & talents as they’re born as humans.

If we’ll always be searching for top guys, we’ll never get any positive results. This is because it causes great discouragements for those who are not selected as top. This leads them to doubt their own talents & as a result of which they can’t utilize their full potentials. In my last post too, I had described why competition doesn’t bear good results. Naturally, some people will be more influential than others due to various factors. But there shouldn’t be anything like we’re selecting the best & assuming others as average.

So, without taking this much further (I’ve already written 1860 words!), I just want to say that humankind will be getting much more challenges in the coming time. So we need full utilization of our population. There was a time when we were selecting top people, where scoring 100% was everything & 99% is nothing, but that time has gone. 21^st century is the beginning of a completely new era, when there’ll not be any toppers because everyone would be topper. Right now our only goal should be to educate 7 billion people & to make everyone a topper.

Ask yourself – Instead of searching for toppers among billions, why don’t we try to make everyone a topper?

 

Copyright©2011-13 Sandeep Deva Misra

 

Why it’s not good to compete?

Months ago, I had written an article related to competition & why it is so dangerous! This time, I’d address the same topic from a different perspective. This one would be quite similar to previous one, but quite different too, & hopefully shorter!

Let me begin this discussion with few simple questions.

What happens when you come first in any competition? What happens when you come second? What happens when you come third? And what happens when you don’t get any position at all?

Think about these 4 conditions – when you come first, when you come second, third & finally, no position at all. There’ll be noticeable difference in your emotions in all these 4 conditions. As position decreases, hope & happiness also decrease. And any observer can clearly observe differences both in your emotions & your activities for few days.

In the first condition, when you come first, it feels like you’ve achieved everything; you’re at the top of the world. In the second condition, when you come second, it feels you could have done better; but still okay, better luck next time. In the third condition, when you come third, it feels that things are not as you expected, you feel quite depressed, but still a spark of hope lies in a corner of your mind that you could secure a position. But in the fourth condition, when you lose the competition, don’t get any position at all, you feel that everything has gone, there’s no hope of success, there’s simply nothing, you break down, & sometimes wonder it’d have been better you born as a bird & not as a human, where there’ll be no competition, no fear of failure, just free to move.

So these’re 4 different conditions with 4 different emotions. What did you see in these conditions? Or what did you learn from these? In the very first condition, when you come first, your world fills with hopes which give birth to future successes. But when you don’t get anything, your world becomes hopeless & dark which give birth to future failure. So things are not going on well. If you do a very deep analysis in the activities of people; you’ll see that in most of the cases, competition makes people hopeless, dreamless & pessimistic. In a matter of seconds, your bright world turns dark. When it comes to winning, things are more than good. But when it comes to losing, things are more than worst. In our as usual practice, we all tell that you should learn from competition. You shouldn’t feel anything bad when you lose. Participation is more important than winning or losing. But honestly, it’s really not true. Winning is winning & losing is losing. Despite your best efforts, if you don’t get anything, you feel extremely depressed. But what about kids who’ve just put their feet in this world & are pushed to the world of competition? Can they withstand failures always? Can they withstand depressions of their parents when they lose? Definitely no. At the very beginning, things don’t become noticeable. But as time pass by, effects become quite noticeable. There’re educated parents who teach their children to learn & not to compete. But on the other hand, there’re a lot of parents who expect really a lot from performances of their children & always encourage them to compete. Personally too, I’ve seen many parents who are really very much concerned about performances of their children since their very admission to school. In class 1 itself, they can’t afford losing a single mark in exam by their children. Being concerned about learning & education is different from being concerned about marks & performance. From a bird’s eye view, no difference can be seen. But a detailed analysis always shows huge differences between them. I’ll discuss this shortly.

Let’s try to depict the journey of a student since his/her first class. In the very first day, his/her parents will ask him/her to remember all the alphabets, numbers from 1-10 or 20, names of animals, birds, fruits & all these things. They prepare their child as his/she is going for a war! As days pass by, they’ll keep on consulting his/her teachers for feedback about their child. If they get anything negative, simply anything, they start focusing more & more in his/her studies. Now, the final exam has come. Both mom & dad will give rigorous training to their child. If mom takes the test for alphabets in morning, dad takes the test for names of animals & birds in evening. They do so much hard work in studies of their child that they themselves hadn’t do in their own studies! Now it’s the exam day. They’ll send their child with lots of wishes & blessings & high expectations. During the way to school, they’ll ask him/her to recall whatever was taught & if possible, will take a pre-test too! As the exam ends, they’ll rush to their child in sweat & tension if he/she has attempted everything well. If the answer is ‘yes’, then, it becomes the happiest moment in their life & if ‘no’, then, it feels to them that everything has finished. And after a wait of sweat & tension, the results have finally arrived. Both mom & dad will go with their child to take the results. They seem as being going to take the result of any entrance exam! If he/she gets 100 out of 100, then, all the world’s joy comes to the lives of his/her parents. And if he/she gets 99 out of 100, then, all the world’s sorrow comes to the lives of his/her parents! And the child will need to listen to hours of lecture from his/her parents & the study hours will be increased & other activities will be decreased. This is quite funny, but more than true; at least, as far as I’ve seen. And these things keep on going & in fact, get doubled every year. By the time, the child complete his/her school education, he/she turns to a soldier, parents & teachers become trainers, fellow students become enemies, school & home become defense academy & finally, exam becomes battleground. And the results are nothing but lose, lose & lose.

So in the end of the day, what have you learnt? Well, a child, in the end, will be left with no one else than a soldier of a war. And who among you love wars? To be really very honest, I’ll suggest you – if you’re one who loves wars – then you’d definitely love competitions & there’s no meaning of reading this. But if not, then, you’re most welcome. So let’s start…

As discussed in the very beginning, I had asked you some questions – What happens when you come first in any competition? What happens when you come second? What happens when you come third? And what happens when you don’t get any position at all? And I had also discussed about different outputs of these 4 situations. And…here’re the loses we can think of from these situations – you become hopeless, pessimistic, dreamless, you start fearing challenges, you keep depressed most of the time when you lose, your natural tendency for learning decreases & you study only for marks or credits, you consider yourself inferior to others, you don’t want to do anything new or creative…and there’re lots of loses. Successive loses in any competition would definitely make you hopeless about future successes. Your natural desire of doing something decreases. You don’t possess enough energy for doing anything. It feels like you can never succeed. Moreover, you become pessimistic. You also become dreamless. You can’t imagine yourself doing something big. You always feel inferior to others. And there’re lots of other negative things that you experience. To conclude, your potentials are left unnoticed.

Moreover, you don’t study because you want to. You study because you need marks & otherwise, you’ll be seen as losers. By these things, your natural tendency of learning decreases. You become computer – one that stores data & use it for a particular purpose. The biggest disadvantage of competition is that you don’t realize your potentials. And in fact this is the most important topic of this discussion.

Competition forces your mind & body to devote your full energy to achieve a particular goal. You work really hard for it. Also you get pressure & stress. After the competition, your only aim is to do better than your competitors. In the result time, if you win by a difference of one point too, you feel that you’ve achieved everything. And if you lose by a difference of one point too, you feel that you’ve lost everything. Moreover, most the competitions demand for common talents. So as a result of all these things, you fail to explore your true potentials. You become more & more engaged in competing with others. If your rival scores 10% too, your aim becomes to score 11% or more! As a result of which you never feel that you can do better than this. In any competition if you win, it’s ok. But if you lose, then, lots of negative changes come to your life. And you really can’t feel that something wrong is going on with you. Also, there’s nothing like you can win. In any competition, there’s almost 50-50 chance of your wining.

Shifting our topic a bit, competition prevents the natural tendency of learning. You don’t learn because you want to, but you learn (even the world ‘learn’ is not perfect here) because you need to. There’s nothing natural about it. You need to be pushed to learn. Once the push is off, you stop learning. There’s always a reason behind what you’re doing – doing better than others. You never get the natural call from your mind that you really love it & that’s why you’re going to do this. You always need a push behind you to do something. There’re huge differences between learning by interest & learning by force or for sake of doing better. People who do by interest always remain as inspiration for billions. But people who do by force are never reminded. Do you know why? Because those who do by interest are those who change the world, those who leave marks upon whatever they do. Ok, you don’t want to be successful in life, you don’t want to change the world, you don’t want to be reminded, you don’t want to leave marks; and then, too, you should do what you love the most because you’ve got one life. You’ve not got more than one life that you’ll do all the frustrating works in this life & interesting works in others. You’ve got a one life. You need to enjoy it. Things what you do by force are those that sucks, they make you frustrated. There’re also people who lived their passions, but they couldn’t do that much significant. But the most important thing is that they enjoyed their lives because they love what they do. But in the competition driven life, you never feel the tastes of life. You feel everyday as war – war against your friends, war against everyone. Your sole motive is to surpass others. And when you can’t, it hurts the most. From an education point of view, competition never makes you a learner; it just makes you a soldier. Your world always gets confined with marks, degrees & all these things. You can never realize your potentials. There were people in the world; thousands of years from today, who changed the world with revolutionary ideas, & those who’re remembered till date. Do you know why? Because they were wanderers, explorers, free of boundaries. They did whatever they want to. There were nothing like competition that you need to come first at any cost. There may be personal competitions between people, but there was nothing like what we’re facing today. In today’s scenario, there’re less innovators in compare to quality of education & developments. Why? Because competition is also a part of this. Everyone is in the race to be better than others. But in the process, they leave themselves behind, & forget that before ‘others’, there’re ‘themselves’. They’ve to do best use of their own potentials. And always keep in mind that everyone is unique in respect to their potentials & overall personality. Because they can’t make use of their potentials, they fail to withstand the challenges of this world.

There’re people out there who feels that competition serves as a motivation. It encourages to push against the limit. It never let you stop. And even if you lose, it teaches you a lot to win. Ok, to some extent, I do agree with the fact that sometimes competition serves as motivation. But it always comes with lots of side effect, some of which are already mentioned here. And motivation comes without any side effects when you live your passion. When you do for your passion, you’re always motivated. And this comes without any side effect. To cite my own example, my passion is to revolutionize our world with the power of technologies & to do all these with my own company. Now, the very feeling of this, gives me a very different level of excitement & thrill. And what I do is only for this passion. So, I don’t need other motivation to succeed. Only this is enough to succeed. And this comes without side effect. Moreover, this is purely natural. I don’t need to be pushed or forced to do something. And this is the most important thing. Another example is when I get results of my exams. Since very beginning, I’m not a competitor. I don’t love competing. It feels really frustrated. Also my parents encourage me not to compete & only to focus on self-learning. But a year ago, I used to compete a bit. And this was solely because fellow students use to show off when they get marks near to me or a mark above that. I really hate that. I don’t have problem if anyone get more than me. But you shouldn’t show off. And so I had little bit competing mind. When I get results of my exams, I always used to take tension. And if I don’t get marks as expected, or get a mark less than some of my topmost rivals, I used to be quite depressed for 2-3 hours! But a year later, the scenario has changed completely. I don’t care about others. I don’t compete at all. Nor do my parents say anything about my performance. Because both my parents & I know that competition is of no worth & it’s better to focus on self-improvement & self-learning. And because of that I don’t take tension in giving exams or taking results. Nor do I care if anyone scores more than me. I’m just focused on myself. Also I know that I’m best in myself, in my world. Moreover, even if I score a little less, I’m very hopeful of my future. I know that things are ok, there’s no need to worry. If I work well, I’d be able to do better in the world & especially, because I know that I’m better in this real world.

Now, what can you conclude from my example? 1. When you live your passion, you’re always motivated & that comes without side effects. 2. When you don’t compete, you enjoy your life & you become hopeful about your future.

And believe me, I’m not just telling you all these. I’ve seen many failing because of competition. You really live a life full of frustrations & all sorts of odds when you compete. And for what you need to compete? For motivation? Ok, then living your passion alone can make you motivated. And believe me, competing will never make you successful. Success is all about your passion, dedication, hard work, planning, determination, self-improvement. It’s not about competition & will never be about it. Believe me. Moreover, always be focused on self-improvement & self-learning. All you need is to improve your personality by learning by yourself. There should be a call from inside that you love this & that’s why you’re going to do this. You should feel that. And that’s your passion, your interest. And this doesn’t come by competing; it’s solely natural.

So without making all these things long (I think I’ve already made it quite long!), I just want to put a single conclusion – COMPETITION IS NOT AT ALL GOOD. IT ALWAYS ENDS YOU UP WITH NOTHING BUT LOSE, LOSE & LOSE.

 

Copyright©2011-13 Sandeep Deva Misra

Why do we need to reinvent education?

Our world, as we can see, is changing rapidly, much faster than anything else on earth. Since the beginning of this century, we’ve been seeing exponential growth, development & change in our world. In fact, this period has seen the maximum developments in human history. Almost everything has been changing. But what is it that brought such an exponential change? The answer, as one might expect, is computer or information revolution. It’s the computer technology which has brought in such exponential changes in this world. But what is it that is mother of everything & still left almost untouched by this computer revolution? The answer is EDUCATION. Since, the very foundation of modern education system, it’s left almost untouched. There were changes in it over the period of time. But not as this changing world demands for.

Here we’ll look into why education is needed to be reinvented to fulfill the demand of 21^st century & what can we do to do so.

I’ll begin this discussion with very simple questions. Just say yes or no where possible.

Do you really think that every student in this world is suited for or adaptable to classroom, a teacher with an hour long lecture, a blackboard, & bunch of students? Do you think every student has same learning strategy? Do you think every student wants to study during morning? Does every student want to learn in group? Does every student have same learning speed? Is it necessary to know how many states are there in our country or how many meters are there in a kilometer or how many bones are there in a human body to be intelligent? Does intelligence or creativity lie on pieces of paper? Can intelligence be compared with marks only? Is it necessary to sit in front of your study table & open a book in order to learn? Can’t we learn somewhere else than our study table? Should we cope with the education system which was made decades or hundred years ago? Is it fair to give preference to science and math only? Is it necessary to give exam to study? Should we not study if we don’t get passed? Should education stay as a scale to compare students on the basis of some exams? Should we compare someone on the basis of his/her performance in exams? And yes of course, should we compare someone? Is it fair to compare intelligence in scale? Do you think, while taking education, we do something creative other than mugging the concepts & writing in exams? Do you feel our current education system will affect our future in a positive way? Will it make us capable of facing the future? Is our education system capable enough of taking out our potentials? Does it open our creativity out or does it keep it uncovered or hidden? Is mathematics more important than arts? Do getting full marks in exam make you intelligent? And does getting zero make you fool? Does knowing all the elements of the periodic table make you smarter than those who don’t know? Is it more important to memorize a poem than to simply understand its hidden meaning & enjoying its beauty? Does your general knowledge make you smarter than those who don’t have? And more importantly, what is more important – having information or creating information, i.e. knowing what’s out there in the world or inventing your own ideas? And finally, do we need to reinvent our education system?

So…lot many questions with puzzling answers. Internal mind saying something else & external something else. Right? But think on these questions. Read out each of them loudly (if silent reading doesn’t let your brain to ‘think’!!). Then, think & rethink. Try to find answers to each & every of them. Don’t ask others. Just try to answer what your internal mind says. If all the answers are in ‘NO’, then, the last question would be definitely ‘YES’. And do you want to know my answers?? A big ‘NO’ to every questions & a big ‘YES’ to the last one! Ok, if you’re in my side, come with me. And if not, then, also come with me…to explore why we need to reinvent education?

Well, let’s start with the first question – Do you really think that every student in this world is suited for or adaptable to classroom, a teacher with an hour long lecture, a blackboard, & bunch of students? Ok, so what’s your answer? Yes or No? Whatever, your answer is, mine is a big NO. Not everyone in the world is suited for a same kind of environment. To cite my own example, since my very childhood I’m not interested in school. Now guess why. It’s not because I’m not interested in studies. It’s because I’m not suited for that kind of environment & may be partly because I don’t get a good study environment in my school. But I’m really interested in self-study. I love to study alone where I’m both the teacher & student. I love reading books. I love reading online. The point I want to make clear is that no one in the world is suited for every environment. You may be different from your friends. Earlier, I used to think why I don’t like going school despite the fact that I’m interested in studying. The answer which I’ve found is that I’m not suited to the as usual classroom environment. My reason may be slightly different because I don’t get that much good classmates & study environment. But for the majority of students, the main reason is this inadaptability.

Now, think about this in a little bit different way. When do you love to study the most – early morning? Mid-day? Evening? Mid-night? I think most of the students study in evening (at least school students). Well, my answer is almost similar, though bit different. I love studying at night or you say late night the most. So, the thing is that study period changes from person to person. But if so, then, why do we go to school in morning? Is that good? Think over…

Till now, we’ve 2 conditions followed in a school –

• A classroom with teacher with an hour lecture, a blackboard, & bunch of students.
• Classes are held in morning.

But let me ask you a natural question – does this system of education affect the learning process of students? Of course, & why not?? If you are one who loves studying during night, love studying alone, love 2 min. lecture than an hour long lecture; it’ll definitely affect your learning process & so of others. No matter what’s the quality of education is it’ll not do anything special for you. And this is one of the biggest causes of low performance among students. This is not because they don’t study hard, but because the conditions in which they’re adapted to study in are not fulfilled. So expecting anything is worthless.

Here’s another question – does every student have same speed of learning? Think what makes you learned most – fast lecture? Slow? Or medium – not so fast, not so slow? Well, this’ll also differ from person. I love medium speed lecture – not so fast, not so slow. But there’ll be those who understand the most when listen to fast lecture. There’re also those who loves things to be taught slowly. So requirements are different, but provisions are not as required. There’ll be teachers who teach things fast, those who teach slow, & those who teach medium (speed). And there’ll be also students with different learning speed. But in a class of fast teacher, students with medium or slow learning speed would not be able to capture all the concepts.

Like the speed, there’s also concept grasping. There’re some students who understand some concepts at once. Likewise, there’re students who understand the same things when taught twice or may be thrice or even more. This is not because they’ve different intelligence level, but because they’ve different learning strategy. You may be good at arithmetic, but at the same time you may be average at geography. And there may be some other students from your class who are good at geography, but average at arithmetic. So when taught in class, you’ll grasp arithmetic the most, but you’ll take some time to grasp geography. And the reverse is for those who are good at geography & average at arithmetic. But you don’t get this condition in a classroom. Your teacher will not teach the same topic multiple times & in practice, he/she can’t. And if your teacher teaches arithmetic thrice or more for others who are average at arithmetic, you’ll find the class bore. And if not, they’ll not get the concept. The point is that everyone has different requirements. But the requirements are not made in current system of education. Now education has become personal. Everyone has their own requirements. But they’re not fulfilled. And this is one of the biggest FAILURE of current system of education.

Now, let’s shift to the way things are taught & what are taught. I had asked a question in the beginning – Is it necessary to know how many states are there in our country or how many meters are there in a kilometer or how many bones are there in a human body to be intelligent? Well, these are the matters required in our education system – no. of states, meters in a kilometer, no. of bones in human body & all these. Ok, now what’s the problem with these questions, to be honest? Before answering that, I’ll ask you another question – do you find anything different, anything creative, and anything unusual in these things? All geography books will have the no. of states in countries. All math books will have no. of meters in a kilometer. All biology books will have no. of bones in human body. What’s different? These days a computer also has these information. Your phone which you keep in your pocket also knows these answers. So what’s the difference between computer brain & human brain? There’s nothing creative about these things. But creativity is the biggest thing you need to stay alive in 21^st century. It’s not just a thing which is good to have, but it’s a thing which is among the requirements of a good living. But unfortunately, this system of education doesn’t demand for creativity. Human is the most creative creature on this planet, but still our education system doesn’t want to unleash it. Is this not quite awkward? Things which are taught in school have nothing special. Knowledge given in school is repetitive rather than creative. Number of bones in human body has nothing to do with creativity. It’s not at all different or special. So what’s the importance of that kind of knowledge? Well, I’m really not telling that such knowledge are worthless, but I’m telling here that such knowledge are required as just general information, & not as important academic requirements. So what should be taught in school? Our curriculum must include questions, assignments, projects which require critical thinking, problem-solving. Courses should be such that they require thinking skills of students. Everything those are included in courses should be creative & innovative. And this shouldn’t be for high school students, but for kindergarten. Now, things shouldn’t be complex & serious. They should be fun, engaging & yet require little bit thinking. If this process goes on till the higher level, students would be able to process their creativity & would develop a good problem-solving skill. And this system of education wouldn’t give pressure to students because this requires one’s own thinking, & this would be fun. You don’t need to memorize a poem, you just need to understand it & answer simple questions which require your understanding. For a kindergarten student, he/she needs just to sing the poem & feel its beauty. Memorizing a poem is both meaningless & poses pressure on minds. A K-12 student wouldn’t need to memorize the whole periodic table & the atomic weight of all the elements. He/she would just need to solve questions which would require his/her understanding of the topic & where things like atomic weight would be mentioned in question paper. Right now we’re focusing more on things which require rote learning & not understanding. Remembering the periodic table doesn’t make you smarter. In fact, it wastes your brain power & energy. Instead of remembering these things, it’s better to understand, explore, & learn with fun. In this way of learning, learning must also be very fun. In a conventional classroom, teachers lecture of half-an-hour or a full hour or even more. But according to studies, it’s found that one’s concentration period doesn’t last more than 18 minutes. So, whatever the topic is being discussed or however the teaching is, it doesn’t add to learning of students. Lectures shouldn’t last more 10 min. or maximum 18 min. After a very short lecture of a topic, students must be asked to discuss the topic in small groups (4-5 students). They should be allowed to discuss freely whatever they want to with their mates. Moreover, teachers shouldn’t judge them as it can create nervousness & seriousness. They should just be given to discuss freely whatever they want or however they want. After that, there should be a session of exploration. This session should have diagrams, pictures, video clips, small projects (where possible), & that type of exploration-related things. After that, there should be a short & bit creative MCQ-type written (or may be oral) quiz to test their understanding. And the session is over. After that, another session with another new topic…

Now tell me what’s the benefit of such creative learning? Students become more creative. Such type of learning keeps the mind working. They make the mind to think, to question. Moreover, this is also very important to meet the challenges of 21^st century. We no more need learning machines, those who memorize without understanding. Computer can process much more information & faster than an ant. But an ant is more intelligent than a computer because it can learn by exploring. But a computer can’t learn a single thing by itself. It just stores information & nothing more. And our current system is just doing the same. It’s creating computers & not humans. You just need to memorize the lessons & write them in exams. And nothing more, nothing creative. If not changed, it’ll have a big impact on the future of students. In fact, it’s impacting. There is handful of students who later went on to innovate. Others are left with as usual repetitive works. Right now, those without innovation, creativity are also getting jobs. But within the coming decades, there’ll be a decline of such jobs. Moreover, no company would be able to survive without innovation. They’ll need to keep on innovating. So it’s a must to keep on innovating.

Now, let’s shift our topic to another question – Can intelligence be compared with marks only? This is another big & important topic to deal with. We often see us compared with marks. But are your marks your ultimate intelligence? Do they really reflect your abilities? Ok, I don’t know your answer. But I’ll say with ultimate confidence that – NO, intelligence is not comparable nor do marks show your intelligence. Do you know about IQ test? IQ means intelligence quotient. This test shows one’s intelligence, one’s thinking skills. But since I know about it, I’m a big opponent of such tests. I don’t believe one can be compared with mere marks. In such tests, there’ll be mental tests like patterns, connecting related things, arithmetic, odd man out, puzzles & things which require you to think. But do you believe everyone has skills for these things? There’ll be people who are good at painting. There’ll be those who are fantastic dancer. Those who are singers, writers, & lots more. So how can a test show one’s actual intelligence? Let’s think of another disadvantage. May be you’re better in these things than your friends. But you get more nervous than your friends. When you sit in the exam hall, your heart would begin to beat faster. If you get a tough question, you’d get nervous. And so on. As a result of which you’d not be able to do better than your friends. They may not be as good as you’re, but because of your nervousness, you’d be marked less than your friends & that would mean you’re less intelligent than your friends, which is actually not true. And that’s the matter. Moreover, there’re various reasons one can’t do well in exams despite being smarter. So how can you say intelligence is comparable? Not only this, intelligence is a very complex ability. It’s not something that’s so easy to measure. It lies in various activities of life. It’s multi-dimensional. It’s really hard for anyone to measure one’s intelligence, or say impossible. Exams should just be a way to check understanding of a concept & that should be self-based. It should neither be used as a way to measure one’s intelligence & nor to compare with others.

So, again let’s shift our topic a bit with another question – Is mathematics more important than arts? This is a very important matter of education system. Our education system was formed decades ago during World Wars & rise of industrialism. So it’s quite natural that importance was given to mathematics, science & engineering. But subjects like arts didn’t get much importance. But this system is going on & that’s quite shocking. Today things have changed. We need people of different backgrounds – arts, science, philosophy, math, media, history, sociology, engineering, design & lots more. Today we don’t just need scientists, engineers, & mathematicians. We also need sociologists, artists, designers, lawyers, historians, philosophers, dancers, singers. And this is not what I’m just saying. It’s the demand of world right now. We now need people of all backgrounds. So why does our education system give more focus on subjects like mathematics, science? In order to meet all the challenges of this century, we need to train people of different backgrounds. So preference should be given to all the subjects & these subjects must be included in curriculum. Those who’re interested in arts will apply for arts. Those who’re interested in math will apply for math. As there’re students of different skills, subjects must not be made compulsory. Students will apply for their respective interests. If this model is implemented, we’ll get highly skilled professionals in different backgrounds.

Our education system is making students rote-learners. It’s not making their future, but destroying. It’s teaching students that marks are the ultimate results of life. It’s teaching students that if you’ve degrees, you can succeed. It’s actually making students pessimistic. It’s making them less creative. It’s making students to dream less. It’s making them to do something for life which they don’t like to. It’s making them hopeless. It often seems that education makes people more civilized. But I think those with education are more uncivilized because if you do something bad without having education, then, it’s not your fault. But if you do something bad despite having good education, then, it’s a shame. We’re social being. Still we’re most unsocial in compared to other animals. There’s something which is wrong, that’s responsible for all these miseries. Is education just confined to a school, books, lessons, exams, marks? Is just knowing everything make us educated? Is opening a book before the study table makes us learned? Does just earning a degree make you more learned than those who don’t have one? Definitely NO. Education is not just confined to these things. It’s beyond that. In fact, it’s boundless. Infinite…without any boundary. Education is everywhere. It’s at your home, your workplace, market, restaurant, ceremony, street, park, forest & everywhere. Education is everywhere but still nowhere. Why? We think just by going to school, just by reading books, just by scoring high, we become educated. But humans are fools who can’t realize the true meaning of education. We never try to find education other than school. Education, in reality, is the all-round development in personality of a person. And such developments are multi-dimensional. They don’t exist in school only.

So, there’re a lot of problems with current system of education. There’ll be a lot more than discussed here. But I tried to cover the most profounding ones. Education is the root to everything that exists in the world. But if education itself face problems, then, expectations from other things are meaningless. Due to problems in education, problems are arising in other things too. Why there’s low performance among students? Why people are not getting jobs despite of academic qualification? Why we’re behaving as uneducated, uncivilized despite being educated? Why there’re handful of people in the world innovating? Why everyone chooses some common career options? These’re some of the questions which push us to education. There might be some problems with education. Otherwise, despite beings highly educated, why do people do highly uneducated activities. Education is getting more & more personalized. It’s now no more of groups, but of individuals. Everyone has their own requirements, & because these requirements are not properly fulfilled, they can’t learn well. The emergence of online education is the solution to this personalized education problems. Online education seeks to promote education everywhere. Moreover, students can learn in their own pace. You can study in morning or evening or night or whenever you want. You can study individually or in group. You can adjust the speed of the lecture & whatever you want.

Not only these, education also needs to be made flexible. There shouldn’t be an age barrier for it. Anyone, with any background, should be allowed to take education. School should also not be made mandatory. If anyone wants to study at home then, he/she should be allowed. Education shouldn’t be any rigid system. It should be something that people can enjoy throughout their lives. Moreover, education should not be aimed in information-related stuffs, but in analytic skills & personality. As stated again & again, we don’t need computers, we need humans. Education should make us more humane than computerized. Its aim should to make people more & more creative & create a hunger of learning. Education is not all about forcing, it’s about desire…desire to learn & explore. So, its aim must be to develop that hunger. And to develop that hunger, we need to make it more & more interesting. And to make it more interesting, it should be more flexible & need to fulfill all the requirements.

So, problems after problems & still we don’t realize them. When children can’t do well in exams, their parents often say that they don’t study hard. But they never try to look into the problem. There’s nothing like they don’t try to study hard. They also feel bad when don’t get good results. But the real thing is that education itself is not made interesting & don’t meet the requirements of everyone. Not everyone likes classroom, not everyone likes an hour long lecture, not everyone likes to study in morning…and the list doesn’t end. So, it’s the appeal of this century itself & of the coming generations that education needs to be reinvented. As the world’s becoming more & more complex than before, this form of education wouldn’t be of any worth to make us able to face the problems of 21^st century. No one is able to see this need. But it’s one of the biggest problems ahead of us & that needs to be solved as early as possible to survive in this century. So without saying any more, I just want to say – WE NEED TO REINVENT EDUCATION AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE TO MEET THE CHALLENGES OF 21^st CENTURY…

 Copyright©2011-13 Sandeep Deva Misra

Do children really get education by going to school?

School – a word that is very familiar to every one of us. In Greek, it means leisure. Almost every one of us has gone to school. Do you remember your school days? Parents send their children to school in the only expectation that their children get good education in an education-friendly environment. But do children really get education by going to school or do they become more uneducated by doing so?

One day, this question came to my mind. I wondered if children really get education by going to school. Whatever you say, in most of the schools, children exchange bad habits with each other! To be really very honest, I’ve never got to learn a single good thing from my classmates. Whatever good things I learnt are either from my parents & teacher or from my own observation or from books & such things. And especially, from my own observation & desire to be good, & from the environment of my home. But really not from school.

It’s a common misconception of parents that their children would become educated & good by going to school. But I’m telling from my own experience that if you’re thinking that you’re going to make your children educated & good by sending to school, then forget it. Sending your children to school will never make them good, but bad. That’s the truth. Sweet or bitter, it’s a truth. Here, please note that being educated doesn’t mean only scoring good marks or being good at studies; but it also means having good habits, honest, & overall, good personality. So by being educated I mean everything, be it study or habit.

So, a student may be good at studies, but he/she is not educated if he/she has no good habits.  In most cases you’ll come to see that by going to school students become more notorious. And these days, this is a common trend. In a school, you’ll get very few ‘educated’ students. I don’t know what’s going on in other schools, but I can’t even count a single good student in my school properly. There’re a lot of schools around the world where rules & regulations, & educational system are tight & good enough that almost every students becomes ‘educated’ afterward. But this is not what happens everywhere. Though parents send their children in the expectation that they’ll get an educated & better version of their children, that’s not what happens as usual.

There’re 2 types of bad students – 1. Bad from the beginning 2. Good in the beginning but become bad afterward in school. If someone is bad since the beginning, then it’s almost ok. But if someone become bad after going to school, then what more can you say? The second one is most common. In a school, there’re both good & bad students initially. But as time pass by, good students also become bad by staying with bad students. There’re very few students who don’t become bad after staying in such conditions too. And such students are those whose home environments are really very good & those who have the enough mental resistance to resist all the non-sense activities. But unfortunately, there’re much more bad students in comparison to good students. That’s true. You’ll not get many ‘educated’ students around you. Some of them may be good at studies. So what? They’re not good by personality & behavior. I remember once one of my teachers in 5^th std. told us that pollution is the contamination of good with bad. And this applies here. Not every student is bad my beginning. They become bad after staying with bad students. And the place where these things happen is school.

It often happens that parents feel that their children are taking education in school & in private tuitions, & leave their children without guidance by themselves. They feel that everything is going on well with their children. But they never try to look into what’s been happening with their children actually. And when, after few years, find their children smoking & drinking & coming late night, realize what happened those days. And to be honest, realizing then, is of no worth. So parents’ duties don’t lie in simply sending children to school & insisting their children to study, but also to guide their children personally. Parents should never leave everything to school.

If you’re a radical person like me, then, I think you’d agree with my following ideas. According to me, if you give good education in home to your children, then, I believe, your children will be much more better than what they’ll be after going to school. That’s true. I know someone of you will argue with me. Some will say that the education given in school can’t be fulfilled by education in home, or by going to school students develop social interaction. Such arguments are most common. But to be honest, no such things are going to happen. It simply appears that students develop more senses by going to school than by staying home. But this is nothing more than illusion. There’s no reality about it. The truth is that by going to school, students become more notorious & develop bad personality. You believe it or not, it’s true. Again & again I’m telling this – it may not sounds well for all, but that’s the TRUTH. By giving quality education in home, you can make your children more educated & more successful afterward. Earlier, it may be tougher for parents to give quality education in home, but these days, after emergence of online education, such things are absolutely possible & are cost-effective too. There is nothing like being practically present in classroom & hearing lectures will make one educated. You can learn more simply by sitting in front of your computer taking lectures absolutely free of cost. And I assure you, you’ll be more educated by doing so. And these days, you can also buy any book through online shopping. So, what’s the problem out there? Well, there’s one problem – exam. If things are slightly modified, then, you can apply for exams & give exams in the exam centers. What’s the problem in this? We often do so these days too. You don’t give competitive exams in your school. You’ve to give them elsewhere in other centers. So, the problem of exam can be easily solved. So what left? Simply, nothing. And if someone still discourages this idea by saying that discussion – which is an important part of learning – will not be possible in this system, let me tell you that online discussions are possible these days & in forums, you can discuss your problems. And if you’re still not confident about this system yet, then, let me assure you that in earlier days, lots of great personalities hadn’t had formal education till the high school level. And in fact, some had never got formal education in their life. They took education in home.

Well, I’m not telling you that you’d get 100% success by home education as everyone’s learning strategy is different & not everyone is alike. But I’m confidently telling you that studying in home is much better than studying in school. So, what’s the purpose & effect of this system? Answer is simple than you might think. In school, children go in the name of education, but when they return home, take lots of bad habits with them. And don’t think that they give any attention in school. Also always keep in mind that a child fears his/her parents more than teachers. If you were thinking that by punishment of teachers, your children would reform, then, forget about it. You can’t also keep eyes on your children in school. And for how long teachers would look after your children? After all, it’s you who can change the game. In this system, what’s going to happen is that you can guide your children well. You can keep eyes on them. In the good environment of your home, your children would develop better. He/she will not learn any bad thing or habits. It also helps enhance the overall personality of the child. Studying in home & studying in school has not much difference in terms of learning, but in terms of overall personality of a student, both of them have many differences.

See, I’m not telling that school education is bad. They’re excellent if classes go on well & teachers teach well. But it becomes bad when it comes to friends. I’m not trying to say that you just need to stay with good guys always. In life, you’d need to face people of different backgrounds & you’d have to accommodate with every condition. But, in the process, it shouldn’t happen that you become bad. If you get good teachings on these topics since childhood & develop enough mental thinking skill, then, I don’t think you’ll become bad. You’d be able to stay with those bad guys without harming your personality. That’s what you’ve to learn. But this doesn’t happen with everyone. There’re very few guys who don’t get affected by their external environment. And most of them get mixed with rest of them. So the benefit of home education is that at least you’ll not be exposed to a negative environment since childhood. No matter how much your parents are strict; almost every student becomes bad after staying in such environments since childhood.

Though, I’m supporting such home education, it’s not always possible. There’ll be some difficulties in implementing these things. Also, if parents are not that educated or aware of all these education-related things, then, such systems will not be of any benefit to every student. So, if we’re to stay with existing system, then what should parents need to do in order to avoid children from getting spoilt?

• Parents should create a good environment in home.
• Since childhood, they should start to teach their children good & value-based things.
• When children reach almost adolescence stage, parents should teach what to do & what not do.
• They should be very aware about the activities of their children without hurting their children’s privacy.
• They should guide their children throughout.
• Parents should be very friendly to their children since very beginning.
• Though parents must not be strict, if necessary, little bit strictness is not bad.
• Parents must not rely on school education only; they should also review their children’s learning.
• They should focus on the thing that their children have developed enough mental ability to judge good from bad.
• Parents should keep their children with them most of the time, till a certain age, if possible.

These are the minimum things that parents can do for their children’s golden future. There’re nothing like that you’ve to follow these things only for your children. You can have you own choice. You can have your own way, but that must be effective.

As the outside environment is not well these days, being little more aware is best. Though the theme of this article is to address the problem with ‘education’ being received by students in school, still there’s a bigger theme – awareness & adaptability. In today’s life, you’ve to be really very aware of what’s going on out there around you. Moreover, you need to adapt to any condition, no matter good or bad, without changing your personality. You may sometimes need to stay with some bad guys, but you don’t actually have to change yourself. There’ll be lots of situations that you’re going to face, but you need to survive everywhere surviving your personality too. Adaptability is applied for students only. But awareness is for both parents & students. Students must be aware of what’s going on with them & what to do & what not to. And parents must be aware of the activities of their children outside home.

I just want to be little bit clearer & would like to clarify that by this article, I’m not saying that going to school is a bad thing or school is simply not a good place. As far as, school is concerned, there’s no problem. Your teachers or your school authority wouldn’t ask you to be spoilt. But the problem is with your classmates or simply, friends. You may be an honest guy in the beginning, but later, it’d turn out that by staying with some bad guys, you are spoilt. And this is not something which doesn’t happen or this is also not something which happens with everyone. But, majority of students get affected by this. So there’s nothing like that everyone would be affected. There’re lots of good students, & are always good & live a successful life. But you really don’t know whether your children would be among those lucky students or not. So I think it’s better to be little bit aware about these things. Sending children to school is not bad at all, but believing that school will do everything is bad. Always remember, in a school, your children would get to meet with both good & bad students. So, you can’t determine which side your children would choose afterward. And don’t think that you’d know it so easily. Every bad student pretends be good in home. No one would show the real colors. It just needs very attentive eyes & a long amount of time to determine this. And if you get the negative result too, it’d be too late. You’d not be able to change your children. So, very good education since childhood can be effective. Otherwise, honestly, I’m telling you, there’s no other solution to this problem.

So don’t stay in the misunderstanding that your children are getting ‘education’ (recall the meaning of education, it’s not only study, its overall personality) by going to school. Rather, there’s 90% chance that your children are ‘de-educating’! Beware of what’s going on around. Prepare your children mentally for the coming obstacles in life since the very beginning. Remember, your children’s turning color is both unexpected & inevitable. It’d happen before your eyes & you’d not be able to figure it out. So, prevention is better than cure, and by the way, here, there’s no cure too!

Ask yourself – do children really get education by going to school?

 

Copyright©2011-12 Sandeep Deva Misra

Diwali, cracker, pollution, & global warming

Please refer to Is Diwali transforming from the festival of light & joy to the festival of pollution & destruction? : Diwali special for more details on the ill effects of crackers & the consequences of global warming.

After a year of waiting, Diwali arrived. Everyone’s house would be lighted up with lamps & joy. Almost everyone loves celebrating Diwali. Though I’m an atheist, I also like this festival as it lights up the world. But along with bit happiness for the arrival of Diwali, I get lots of worry every year. Whatever you say, Diwali, along with bunch of other festivals & functions, are tagged with some key words – crackers, pollutions, global warming & noise. However we celebrate this Diwali; we can’t remove these tags from the festival.

I remember last year I had posted a post on why not to use crackers in Diwali & other festivals. Do you remember that? It was – Is Diwali transforming from the festival of light & joy to the festival of pollution & destruction? : Diwali special. In that post, I had explained in details how firecracker, which is generally ignored as the cause of global warming, is affecting our climate & contributing to global warming. I don’t know if you’ve stopped using cracker by reading that post. Or even if you’ve ever gone through it completely!! But whether one ignores its bad effects or not, it’ll certainly contribute to the world climate change, & the unfortunate fact is that we can easily stop using crackers without any problem & reduce CO2 emission, but despite this, we’re wasting millions on it every year without any meaning & hurting the planet.

As the world is getting more & more educated & civilized, we’re doing more & more meaningless & uncivilized works. Today, using cracker is becoming a fashion. Millions are spent on this worthless garbage stuff. Bursting crackers is turning to a competition & a status indicator. Many people feel proud to show off their wealth by investing thousands or even lakhs on this non-sense stuff. Though I’ve used Diwali here as it’s a major event in India when considerable amount of crackers are used, in almost every event today, we wildly use crackers. I really don’t understand why even educated persons do not understand the ill effects of global warming. It’s a SHAME on our education.

Many of you may think why I am behind crackers so much. The reason is that crackers are something which, if we don’t use, will not affect our daily lives anyway. It’s nothing more than garbage. Then, why to use such a thing & hurt the entire planet & ourselves?

It is estimated that the annual U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fireworks is 60,340 tons or the same emissions from 12,000 cars on the road for a year!! If one suggests that planting trees is a solution, then, please be informed that it’d take the entire lifetime of 5,000 trees to offset the 60,000 tons of carbon emissions produced in this one day!! Not only it pollutes the environment, it also causes many deadly air-borne diseases. It releases carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide to the atmosphere with serious health hazards.

Despite knowing all these things, why to use crackers? As discussed in Is Diwali transforming from the festival of light & joy to the festival of pollution & destruction? : Diwali special, other sources of global warming are those which are important for our living or to fulfill our basic needs. Most of the causes of global warming are energy producers without which we can’t live. In fact, researches are going on on producing eco-friendly energy sources. When we’re uniting together to save this planet from global warming, then, why to put this garbage stuff in the equation?

The only condition for using crackers is the eco-friendly, carbon free, noiseless crackers which don’t affect us anyway. Still, it’s economically a waste, as it gives only ashes, & its prices are soaring up.

However you describe the ill effects of crackers, every time you’d get something very bad or simply, worst. Crackers are unnoticeably affecting all of us. We should understand what it’s doing & how it’ll threaten our very existence in future. Governments should take it very seriously & should:

• ban the production of crackers
• enforce laws on its production, sales, use, & advertisement
• popularize the idea of not using crackers among public

There’re a lot of causes of global warming & pollution. All the other sources are important for our living despite their ill effects. But cracker is absolutely nothing more than garbage. Be smart, be civilized, use your knowledge, don’t worry about what others think, don’t care about society, & DON’T USE CRACKER.

With all these, wish you all a happy Diwali. Celebrate Diwali & all the other festivals & events in eco-friendly way without using crackers. Share this message with others & contribute towards a safer & healthier earth.

 Copyright©2011-12 Sandeep Deva Misra

Thank you letter to readers!

Dear Readers,

Today, I’m overwhelmed to see that since March 2011, almost 20,000 people have visited this blog around the world. It may be a little number to those who have hundreds of visitors daily. But this figure is enough for me to thank you all who have been visiting this blog.

I remember when the blog stats exceeded 1000 people, I had posted a same thank you letter to readers. And this figure increased 20 times! I expect that you’d give me the opportunity to post more such letters.

Though I’m happy to see more & more readers of this blog, I’m bit disappointed with the fact that I’m not receiving more comments & ratings from readers. I know that it’s much better to read than to comment. I also feel lazy to post comments in other blogs! But in order to improve or to know if you all are satisfied with my view, I need to get comments. I don’t care if I get positive or negative comments, but I care if I get comments. This blog is a way to interact with the world, & see what others think about the issues I post. So, feedback & ratings are always welcome & will be taken seriously.

I hope that you all will are & will be having fun with Sandeep’s Cosmos…

-Sandeep D. Misra

Author, Sandeep’s Cosmos.

Copyright©2011-12 Sandeep Deva Misra

Does facebook need to increase security?

 

 

 

Facebook (fb) – a common household name. You may not know what’s a computer, what’s internet, what’s social networking, what’s http, what’s url, what’s website; but you certainly know what’s fb. Everyone, from kids to teens to adults to olds, knows about fb. Over one billion people have an fb account & most people spend more than 50% of the day on fb. It’s really difficult for many fb addicts to spend a minute without fb. Fb is now more than a social networking site.

Fb is now more than a social networking site. It now became the basis of life for many. It has turned to a virtual world.  Over the time, fb met with many controversies. In many nations, it’s banned. It’s blocked intermittently in Republic of China, Iran, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Syria, Bangladesh for different reasons including religious issues & posting of offensive contents. Many concerned parents don’t allow their children to access fb. Fb is also a place for hackers. Many fb accounts are hacked; & offensive & violent contents are posted creating much confusion. Also the posting of violent contents has been reasons for many riots, including recent Kokrajhar riot in India (Assam). (Micro-blogging site Twitter was also responsible for this case).

Many think that fb is not a safe place to roam around. Over the time, it’s been suggested that fb should be banned. Some suggest that children shouldn’t be allowed to access fb. Fb now turned to matter of debates & discussions. So, does fb need to increase security to have a control over what its users do?

Well, here, I’m not going to list the controversies of fb or how is it affecting negatively. You better visit this Wikipedia page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Fb. But, here, I’ll discuss if fb needs to take some actions to prevent all these cases & make it safer for coming generations.

As the controversies are rising, Facebook Inc. is getting more & more problems in handling these cases. Though the positivity & negativity of any thing is dependent on its use, it’s now true that fb is no safer due to its misuses. Also people’s view toward fb is getting negative. Fb has been a place of illegal, offensive, inflammatory contents; some of which gave rise to riots & disputes. Terrorists & enemy countries can use fb to give rise to disputes & wars. Many hackers (both professional & amateur) hack others accounts & post illegal contents on their behalf which lead to misunderstandings. At a glance, illegal posting by users made fb unsafe. So what should they do to avoid this?

As fb is now more than a website, it’s important to implement tough rules & regulations in order to prevent illegal activities. This is the only way to prevent what’s happening in fb. If someone does a crime by using fb, then he/she would be punished according to current judicial system. But the changes should be made in monitoring these illegal activities & the actions taken against those users. So, let’s list what should they do?

• First & foremost, Facebook Inc. should declare a constitution having all the laws, rules & regulations.
• Then, they should appoint special teams of experts to monitor users’ activities. They can also use advanced software programs for this purpose. Tracking software should be used which can track offensive words in order to find such contents.
• Identity proofs should be made mandatory for creating accounts. This would ensure that no fake account is created & also users will not be able to post any illegal contents.
• License should be issued for creating fb accounts so that only licensee can create accounts.
• Users who post illegal, violent & offensive contents or bully others; should be given strict warning against it & Facebook Inc. should have the authority to delete such contents. In case, the user repeats such activities, his/her fb account should be deactivated & license should be suspended.
• Facebook Inc. should increase security such that accounts can’t be hacked. Very strict actions must be taken against hacking.
• Cyber security should be increased by governments in order to prevent cyber-crimes. New strict & rigid laws should be drafted along with strict implementation of these laws.
• Cyber-crimes should be made equivalent to other crimes.

At least, these are the minimum thing that Facebook Inc. & government can do. It’s very important to increase security & implement new laws in order to prevent these cases. Also, cyber-crime & cyber security should be added in curriculum. It’s also the responsibility of parents to teach their children what should be done & what’s not in internet. It should be noted that though I’ve talked about the security of fb, there’s nothing like these are only about fb. As fb has been a topic of controversies & it’s the largest social networking site till date, I’ve used fb as an example. But all these things are meant for other sites too, especially social networking sites. Micro-blogging site Twitter, & search giant Google, should also take the same actions in order to prevent illegal activities. The situation of Twitter is as same as fb. Google is a search engine. It enables users to search webpages. So Google is not responsible for any illegal contents in websites. But in order to prevent these illegal activities, Google can specially search such pages, & block them so that they’re inaccessible. If & only if special actions are taken, we can reduce illegal activities from internet & make it safer. The security system of other websites should also be increased so that hacking is not possible. Governments should also take special actions in order to make things safer. It may result in some loses for these companies, but it’s something that is very important to do. It’s also making people feel that internet is unsafe, which is actually not the case. It’s only the users’ activities which is making it unsafe. So actions should be taken at any cost.

Although security must be increased, it’s also important that internet must be free & independent. The independence of Twitter made Arab Uprising possible.  So every step should be taken with proper decisions & planning & by keeping everything into mind.

 Copyright©2011-12 Sandeep Deva Misra

WHY EVERYONE IS RUSHING TOWARD BECOMING DOCTOR & ENGINEER?

Hey, what do you want to become?                                                                                       

Engineer.

What’s your aim in life?  

Doctor.

Where do you want to make your career?

Engineering.

What are you going to study after +2?                                                                                        

Medical.

Aah, how do you ask, or whomever you ask, you’ll get the same answers regarding one’s career choice. Doctor or engineer. That’s it, & nothing else. There’s no other choice. Simply nothing beyond these 2 fields. Everyone is rushing to become a doctor or an engineer. But is it practically possible to just have these 2 choices only? Is there nothing else beyond these? Is it possible that everyone’d choose these 2 fields? Possibly ‘NO’. Then why everyone is rushing toward becoming doctor & engineer?

If you do a survey in India (I’m not that concerned about other nations regarding this matter) you’d get that maximum number of students, especially those who’ve secured good marks, want to become either doctor or engineer. Roughly, it can be determined that almost 90% of students of India want to have engineering or medical as a career. But would everyone have these 2 choices only? This is a question which confused me for years. Still, I don’t have any answer to give. It’s a matter of great puzzle that whomever you ask, he/she would give an answer of becoming doctor or engineer. There’d be hardly those who have other choices. And rest is rushing toward engineering & medical.

Why does everyone choose engineering or medical? Why there’s no choice beyond these two? Is there no career choice beyond these? Why do parents prefer their children to be a doctor & engineer? Is the choice of choosing these 2 career options, the true choice of students? Or is it due to others say to become or everyone is becoming the same? Does the world need to have doctors & engineers only? Is it good to choose something you don’t want to choose? How many true doctors & engineers are there in the world?

We’ll discuss all these questions here.

Before starting the discussion, I just want to clarify that I also don’t have much knowledge on the answer to this question. Here, I’m trying to discuss the topics & its possible answers. Replies from readers would of much help.

So, let’s start with how students enter to engineering or medical. First, when a student passes 10^th std, & enters 11^th, he/she is actually ‘forced’ to take science by his/her parents. The student may or may not be of science stream, but he/she has to take science whether interested or not. Parents actually force students to take science in +2. Those who don’t take science are those whose parents understand what their children want to take, or simply children refuse to take science. Among them, there’ll be lots who are interested in science in reality, & take science in +2. After that, when they pass out 12^th exam, they’re forced to take either engineering or medical. Some force to take engineering, & some force to take medical, & even some force to take either of them, wherever the student gets seat. If students can’t get admission, their parents give donations of lakhs of rupees to college. After that, through several complex processes (complex processes = giving donations to college + cheating in exam + other malpractices), they pass out as doctor or engineer. And when you ask their parents, they’d say with pride that their children are doctor or engineer. After that, engineers would try for companies, & doctors would either work for hospitals or start their own clinic. And continue their lives. They get satisfaction by just labeling ‘doctor’ or ‘engineer’ in front of their names, & nothing else. And parents also feel pride by saying that their children are now doctor or engineer.

This is the scenario of India at the moment. Everyone just wants to label the titles of doctor & engineer in front of their names. No one has the feeling that becoming doctor or engineers through these complex processes is really nothing. Today, if you count doctors & engineers in our country, you’d need a supercomputer as the numbers go on forever…!! And you can count other professions on the heads of your finger.

People have very wrong thoughts that position, money, respect, & every good thing lie in engineering & medical. Other fields are simply nothing. This is now a common mentality of lots of parents, & so from very young ages, children are told to become doctor or engineer, & so when you ask someone what he/she would become, you’d get two common answers always. Also, as everyone is going to become doctors or engineers, every new student has these two fields as their aims. This scenario also shows that people only care about degrees & jobs, & nothing more. Continuously, I’ve been writing about these issues in my blog. The only theme in such posts are that that people share a very wrong mentality that everything lies in marks, degrees, jobs, & competition. They simply can’t think beyond this.

Engineering & medical are among the most important & demanded fields, without which many of our progresses would be stopped. All the latest technologies of today are only possible due to exponential growth in engineering, & we’re creating treatments of many previously untreatable & deadly diseases only due to the same exponential growth in medical. So both of them are very important for our both development & survival. But the problem, in anyway, doesn’t lie within engineering & medical. The problem lies with the fact that whether they’ve talents in the fields or not, the majority of students in India are taking either engineering or medical as their careers. As pointed out above, it’s impractical that everyone would have a common goal in life. The main defect is with the society. It’s a common mentality of the society that everything lie within engineering or medical, which is actually untrue. One faces the force of society to either become doctor or engineer. It’s actually not a force, but a regular appeal. People would ask you to become a doctor, an engineer. Moreover, you’d find lots of ads of engineering & medical institutes. Also you’d get to know that almost everyone you know is studying engineering or medical or is an engineer or a doctor. So, over the time, you develop an interest towards it. And if you find it hard to get into these fields, your parents in some way force you to choose them. And still, if you don’t get the marks needed to enter the institute, all the complex processes would be applied. Hey, don’t get confused complex processes with complex numbers! It’s something different. So by all these, at least you either become a doctor or an engineer.

So, it can be concluded that by this way or that way, most of the students go into these 2 fields. This is not actually the fault of students; it’s the fault of society. If we give our children complete freedom to become whatever they want to, then this problem wouldn’t have happened. Everyone would choose what he or she wants to. Then, this world would have the privilege to give births to lots of Einsteins, Vincis, Edisons, Harveys & lot other geniuses. But today we’ve very small numbers of Edisions among lots of engineers, & very small numbers of Harveys among lots of doctors. Now, why this happens? Simple. Because among large numbers of doctors & engineers, there’re small numbers of doctors & engineers who actually have talents in these fields. Others are just those who became doctors & engineers by complex processes. And these other guys have talents in other fields which they didn’t choose for reasons mentioned above.

Another problem to be dealt with is of the view of society that every good thing lies in engineering & medical. I really don’t know how such thoughts had come into the minds of people, but this is a great misunderstanding to be dealt with. Engineering & medical have all the hardships, failures, successes, rewards, discouragements, goods, bads that other fields have. There’s simply no difference. If you’re really talented in a particular field, you can leave marks in that field. If you’re not talented in a field, then whatever you do, you’d not be able to do anything special for that field. There may have some stereotypes about some fields a couple of decades ago. But today there’s really nothing. World is giving scope to each & every field. And to be honest, today no one gives interest in what your profession is, but everyone gives interest in your skills & what you can do with them. Whether you’re a doctor or an engineer or an artist or a businessman or a politician or a social worker or a sportsperson or an actor or a journalist or whatever you’re, it’s not of any interest. The interest is in what you can do with all these.

So, always choose to become what you want. The choices of life shouldn’t be affected by others interference. It should be solely personal. If you want to become an engineer, go with your dream. If you want to become an astronaut, go with your dream. If you want to be a writer, go with your dream. If you want to be a doctor, go with your dream. If you want to be a singer, go with your dream. If you want to be………, go with your dreams. But if you don’t to become, never go with it. You’ve the rights to choose for your life. Never hesitate of doing something you know, is right for you, & you want to do.

So what should we do to prevent this situation in future?

• We should reform, & change our thinking.
• We should let our children to become whatever they want to.
• We shouldn’t force anyone to choose something which they don’t want to.
• We should support every profession that has positive impact on society.
• From the very beginning, we should introduce our children with different professions, so that they can choose which one better suits them.
• Children should have their own choices & should have their own judgment capability.
• Children should search themselves wherever they are talented in.
• We should create more & more platforms for talented students.
• Instead of providing jobs by corruption, we should recruit those who have real talents in a particular field.
• Educational institutions should admit talented students, instead of those who give donations.
• We should all develop strategies to turn a desert into grassland, than to stay in the desert. Means, instead of going for some developed fields, we should turn an undeveloped field to developed one.
• We shouldn’t keep on saying about some specific fields as career options again & again to children, which create negative impacts on them. (This should be taken care especially by parents & teachers. When they’d always say about engineering & medical as career options to children, children get more pressures of choosing these two. Instead, if they talk about every field, children would get to choose vast majority of professions).
• Educational institutes should advertise various professions, instead of few particular.
• Government & other organizations should take initiatives towards supporting all forms of talents, & creating quality platforms for them.

These are some of the things came to my mind, which can be done. There may be more things which we can do. But the thing which can really affect the system is the education. Our education system should teach children to choose professions according to their talents, instead of choosing some common professions. Parents & teachers should take care of the fact that children explore themselves, & choose to become whatever they want to. Any ill thinking of society shouldn’t prevent them in doing so.

In conclusion, I just want to say that we’ve lot of options ahead of us. We can choose what we want to. The choices of life are not like the MCQs of exams, where if one answer is wrong, one mark would go. But these are something which affects us lifelong. If we choose something incorrect because others are saying to do, we may need to suffer for the whole life. Again, I’m saying at the end, to prevent misunderstanding, that the choice of becoming engineer or doctor is never bad. Instead, they’re excellent if you’ve talents on them. But the bad lies in the fact that without having talents, everyone is rushing towards becoming doctor & engineer.

So, explore the possibilities of life, choose your profession according to your talents, become what you want, & rock the world with your talents…!!!

 Copyright©2011-12 Sandeep Deva Misra

IS COMPETITION THE ROOT OF FAILURE?

(Please refer to SIMPLY GETTING DEGREES & JOBS IS NOT ENOUGH, THE REAL THING STARTS THEREAFTER before reading this post. Both of them are interconnected.)

(A student to another student) – Hey, what’s your overall percentage in this exam? I’ve scored 99%. 

(In response) – Aaa……….Not that bad. I’ve scored 89%.                                                                

(In response) – You scored well. But I got 10% more. I secured the highest.

(The same student who secured the highest to his/her parents) – Yippee, I secured the first position in this unit test. I had beaten up all the top students.                                            

(In response) – Oh that’s nice. You’ve made us proud. Now, you should prepare more & more & more for the next term so that you continue your position. One mistake & all our hope would be lost. So prepare well.  Don’t worry about tuition. We’d get you as much as you wish to.

(Teacher to the student who topped) – I’m highly impressed by your marks. You need to work ready hard to keep sitting on this position. Your marks are after all the marks of this school. You’re our proud. We’d give you all the supports. Keep it up!!                                                

(In response) – Sir/mam, I’m working really hard. I’ve increased the study hours too by 2 hours. I’d try my best to fulfill all of your dreams. I’d top again & again.

(A neighbor to the student) – How’s your studies going on? Remember, you’re the hope of this area. Your marks would inspire others. You really need to do well. Study hard. Fulfill the dreams of everyone. If you ever need any help from anyone of us in any way, you’re most welcome.                                                                                                                    

(In response) – Uncle/aunt, I’ve secured first in the last unit test, as usual. I’m just doing my best anyway. Your well-wishes & blessings would be of utmost importance to me. I’d definitely ask for your help if I need.  

This hypothetical conversation between two classmates, between a student & parents, & between a student & a neighbor, is quite common these days. Everyone is rushing for marks. The race is on. One mistake & everything finished. Students, parents, teacher, & everyone are just interested for 100%. It’s now changing to a fashion of getting good marks in exams.

Competitions, competitions, & competitions.  It’s just like a virus which has been infecting the whole system & the solution lies deep. As pointed out in my previous post – ‘Simply getting degrees & jobs is not enough, the real things start thereafter’ – marks are really not everything. But convention has changed. People are not seeking for real talents, but marks. This world really doesn’t need any learning machine, which go on memorizing everything & pass all the tests. We need those who can’t be simply compared by all these marks which only lie in papers. We need those who can think analytically, practically, logically for the real world, & not for a virtual world of academics. But as convention is changed, getting marks is in high fashion. Competitions are everywhere. Parents don’t want their children to be talented in real world, but they want them to secure 100 out 100. Today we don’t want wise people, but top rankers, because we’re in a high fashion of comparing through marks. We decide everything through some couple of numbers.

So, is competition a good practice? Would marks of exams decide our face & fate? Is securing the top most rank show that you’re talented? Should parents put their students in the dangerous world of competition? Is competition draining the real abilities of students? Is competition producing learning machines, or is it producing wises? Should parents expect their children to be top rankers in academics, or top rankers in the real world? Should marks be secured ‘anyway’, or should they be secured only & only through correct form of learning? Should a society be ruled by one who was successful in academics & failure in real world, or one who is successful in real world & failure in academics?  Is competition becoming a dirty game? Finally, is competition the root of failure?

We’d discuss all these hot questions here.

In a general or natural sense, competition is not a bad practice at all. In fact, competition is a mere natural character of living beings. We compete with our fellows when things are not equally shared, or simply because, we want more. Competition can be noticed among other life forms, be it a bird or an animal, or an insect. We all compete with each other for something which is valuable to us. But this competition has a dark side. Competition may not be that bad for other life forms, but in the complex society of human beings, competition has been turning to a bad game. From a very early age of life, students are asked to compete with each other for marks. Such feelings of competition get into the minds of students, & as they grow up, these feelings develop more & more. Students use to focus simply on getting marks, & not learning. Learning no longer remains their intention, but the marks. As such, learning process starts to break down. Not only it finishes the learning process, but it also inculcates other bad habits. Students start to cheat in exams. Because everyone is comparing itself with marks, getting one mark less than the rivals would decrease the social standard of the student. Today, this is the mentally of students. Parents also have such feelings. They think that if their child doesn’t secure more than that of others, their status would go down. They’d have to face shame in society.

Today, almost every student is inside pressure cooker, where flame is considerably high. Every student faces the pressure of competition. Such competitions may have not be that bad at all if they’re not taken as status indicator. But today, one’s mark shows his/her status. Everyone is taking them very seriously. Students face pressure or tension of getting good marks. In any way, they need to score good marks to keep their status on. As shown in the conversation, today everyone is trying to compare themselves through their own marks, or the marks of their children, or of their students, or of the toppers of their area.

Though not all the exams indicate the social status, exams like HSSLC, HSLC, JEE certainly indicate one’s status. No doubt, competitions are naturally occurring phenomenon among humans, but today’s scenario shows that such competitions are ruining the thinking or ideology of students, & the society itself. There’re a very few parents who like to see their children as talented & want them to do something good for the society. The rest believes that everything lies within the marks of exams. People are comparing one’s knowledge, skills, talents, abilities only through the marks. People are taking all these as the means to show their statuses in society. Competitions & exams were not made to weight each other in society. Their main motive was to help students to test whether they understood all the concepts. But things are turning toward opposite direction. Today, competitions are to show off one’s status.

As their parents, teachers, neighbors, relatives, all hold hopes for the top most position, students often need to carry burdens on their heads to secure the desired positions. Competing to become a good & a complete person is the right way of doing competitions. But competing for some marks, & comparing with others, is not a good practice at all. Today, students cheat, fight for one two marks only because they’ve the pressure in their heads that they’ve to score more & more. There’re lots of suicide cases due to this. When, they can’t get the marks their parents or others wanting them to get, students commit suicide. This is a very depressing side of competition. A sense of severe jealousy & anger develops in the minds of students when they don’t get more marks than their rivals. This can also lead someone even to murder. All the kinds of negativity that can happen lie in competition. This is not because competition itself is bad, but because people are taking it in the wrong way. People don’t have the feeling that all these are doing nothing but lose, lose & lose.

As the title says, competition is the root of failure. Why? Well, competition would insist students to try to get marks only. By this, the learning process couldn’t be processed. If students were not doing competition with each other, they’d try hard to learn only. Also, competition would place a pressure on students. They’d have tensions, nervousness, & lots more. By this, students wouldn’t be able to appear well in exams. They’d also not able to face the results of exams. If they can’t solve a particular problem in exam, they’d try to discuss with each other. Some would also bring cheats from home. They may get good marks in exams, but this wouldn’t be their real marks. Also this would spoil them. If they get less mark than others, they’d feel depression, jealousy, angry, abhorrence. Anther ill effect of competition is rote learning.  If a student can’t get the concepts, he/she would start memorizing the concepts in order to get marks. By this, one’s analytic ability would decrease. Now, when the students would appear for national or international entrance exams, Olympiads, or any other exams of higher level, their problems would start. First & the foremost, they’d not be able to solve the problems. But why? Because in their lower classes, they use to memorize the questions, or didn’t study as they should because they had the pressure of competitions. Gradually, all problems would start to rise. The most important of all these is the application of abilities in real world. During the study days, they used to memorize things, used hundreds of references, did dozens of tuitions, did cheatings, fights for marks, etc. But in the real world, they’d not be able to apply their knowledge. The objective of education is to produce those who can apply their knowledge in this world. Getting marks is never the intention. It just gives you an idea of how you’re getting the education given, & nothing more. Competition ultimately leads a student to failure in some cases. Though some might argue with me about this, but that’s the reality these days. Competition turns a student to a learning machine & nothing more. There’re other negative aspects of it, as discussed above. People still don’t understand that nothing lies in the virtual world of competitions & all these things. Main thing lies in what you do in this real world. There’re many toppers in academics, but there’re few toppers in the real world. What is the value of getting good marks if they can’t utilize their knowledge?

Now, what should have actually happened?

In ‘Simply getting degrees & jobs is not enough, the real things start thereafter’, I had listed few practices that an ideal student & ideal parents should do. (Please refer to them). Here, as the main topic is competition, I’d mention few things that an ideal student & ideal parents should do in oppose to competition:

• The student should develop an interest for learning.
• He/she should not develop any intention of competing with others.
• He/she should only compete with itself to do more & influential.
• He/she should keep on learning.
• He/she should consider marks as a medium to test his/her learning.
• He/she shouldn’t care about what other students get.
• He/she should try to improve if the marks are not as expected only by seeing his/her own performance & not others.
• He/she should try to develop good qualities & become a complete person.
• He/she should always utilize his/her knowledge in the real world.
• He/she should never take his/her academic performance as status indicator or anything else.
• His/her focus must be on to utilize the knowledge to do something influential for the society.

These are what an ideal student should do at least, & ideal parents or teachers or anyone else should ask a student to do. ‘Simply getting degrees & jobs is not enough, the real things start thereafter’ was completely based on the simple fact that marks, degrees, jobs, & all these are not everything. The real things are what you do after these. Here too, the things are almost same. Only, here, I’m talking about competitions. As mentioned earliest, here, I’ve no intention of saying that competition is a bad practice in general. But, the way we take competition is bad. If one compete in a fair way with itself, then, in any way it’s not bad. If one compete with others in a positive & fair way, then also, it’s not bad. But if one compete with others in negative & unfair way to get marks only, and then it’s bad. Competition becomes bad if one compete to get more marks than others, even in unfair ways. Those who focus on learning, & applying knowledge, & competing to become a good & a complete person, get success in life. Competition exists in every level, but they shouldn’t be taken otherwise.

In conclusion, I just want to say that always focus on what you can do with your knowledge. The real world doesn’t seek for those who were good in academics, but those who are good in this world. If we notice carefully, we’d get many scholars of past, who didn’t have any formal education, who simply kept roaming here & there, but they eventually, changed our view towards the world. I’m not saying that one shouldn’t take education & keep on roaming around, but I just want to say that marks, degrees, positions, & all these are not of that value, or in some senses, they’re meaningless. But the real thing lies in what you do for the world. If all these were of that importance, all those people couldn’t have done what they did. So, concentrate only on what you can do practically. Competitions are just to develop skills in you by hard working. It’s not to compare with others. Such competitions lead only to failure, & nothing else.

Competition is the root of failure if it’s taken otherwise.

Always focus on learning & doing innovative for the world. This is the real competition…!
(I request readers to post their views regarding this matter in the comment section. Today, this is a very important matter to discuss. Comments from readers would help me to decide whether I’m right or not in my view. This would also help me to write more on these matters. Feedback are most welcome!)

 

Copyright©2011-12 Sandeep Deva Misra