The fate of every Indian student!!

IT ALL BEGINS HERE:

Imagine a baby is warm packed inside its mother's womb and suddenly  hear it's  mom speaking " how would it be if we choose computer science engineering for our baby?" Just then it's  dad disagrees saying "NO, from generations our family is into medicals. our baby shall also serve this". Here baby's uncle enjoying the sip of tea thinks why should i lag behind in this race and adds " My brave boy/girl will be an IAS officer you see!!"  and so on goes with other family members.

It's natural that parents start building their castles of dreams on a count of their kid's future that doesn't even exist!! yes, there is no doubt that every parent wants their children's future to be secure. Then,Do security comes only when one has a high paying job?  Does anyone care about that kid's dreams??  what about it's mental peace and happiness???

According to a study by The American Institute of Stress states that "80%  of employees feel stress on job and nearly half of them need help in learning how to manage it"

have you ever thought what is the source of this stress? I think its mostly because they aren't doing something what they are passionate about!
 Besides, there are many who doesn't even know where they actually belong to?( I am one among this breed) This lack  of self  realization leads to confusion about what to do and that's how we land up in a soup. Here comes the role of society what is soo called "others opinion".
Its so strange to notice how recklessly we give complete independence to some random people who themselves don't know  what are they doing with their own life,and we let them decide what we should be in future.

okay, lets have a reality check. How many of you are in engineering or medicals on your own?? honestly there wouldn't be handful of people.Then why are you here??
Ah.. let me have a guess! you are here because of some random people in your life whose son/daughter is doing engineering/ medicals, isn't it? or maybe your parents forced you in??

Yes, we aren't soo grown up to take our own decisions.But, this shouldn't be the case always.
If this becomes a routine, The child may become  soo reliant on their parents or others for even taking the tiniest decisions of their life.

WHAT TYPICAL INDIAN PARENTS DO?

source Indian express

The first and foremost mistake what parents do is "COMPARE WITH OTHERS".

"Have you seen that Sharma ji  ki beti, She has scored 95% and look at you!"  This the common phrase what each one of you might have encountered atleast once in your lifetime or this might be a daily routine ;)

Of course, parents want their child to be the best among others; But it's equally important for them to understand too much of pressure to out perform can cause severe damage to child's emotional health.

There is a need for them to know the fine line between helpful encouragement and harmful pressure.

This unknowingly develops a sense of inferiority and give rise to the very common discrimination among students "The intelligent" and "The dumb". The effect starts to worsen even more when  they start thinking that they are worthless only because they couldn't score higher or they have failed.

That's the reason why most of you fear sharing your results with your parents "what if they scold us", "They may get disheartened that i was unable to stand on their expectations" are some of the common thoughts which conquer your brain and these thoughts make us go deceitful with our parents. Hence,we begin to hide things from them.

But all these together are ultimately making us "RESULT ORIENTED", 
we are just told to score,score and score and be a rank holder because that will make you successful one day. I don't know in what sense? I must also say that this is one of the primary reason why many students prefer  to mug up stuffs over understanding the concepts. Good marks can only give an idea of how well can someone memorize things, not intelligence!

The second  mistake what parents commit is they fail to understand what their child is  passionate about.

Without trying to understand their interests parents start constructing their castles of dreams. It leaves them with a zero option and nothing to do  but only fulfill their dreams sacrificing theirs. This constant thought keep them soo involved that they forget where their real happiness lies.In one or the other way parents want us to see happy they don't want us to suffer things what they have gone through and solution to this they get is a "high salary" job. But, the one who suffers know the true feel.

Pressure in severe case may go into unnoticed depression, students start loosing their interest in whatever they do and thus  derail in their studies. It's not that they don't give their best shot but it is breaking them down internally which makes them soo helpless.

Finally to sum it up i would like to recite a passage which is much familiar to all of us from a book called "THE PROPHET" by kahlil Gibran which says:

"Your children are not your children

They are the sons and daughter of life longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you

And though they are with you,they do not belong to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls.

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow"

THE MAIN 'HERO': OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

why is that many  booming industries in various fields think that 94% of  engineering graduates are unfit for hiring? The most common answer is " They don't have those relevant skills to be called as professionals"  let me tell you the reality behind "Skills".

The most basic need to be skilled comes from creativity, and creativity comes when we are CURIOUS, and this quest of knowledge and  intense feel to learn more becomes one among the vital factors of creativity. Isn't it?

But how is our curiosity fed??

I remember a scenario where  many of my lecturers when pose a question "DO YOU HAVE ANY DOUBT?" the only response to this question will be either a pin drop silence or a straight NO.  It's because someday in the past these  questioning minds were destroyed! Their minds stopped questioning because "Asking a doubt" is considered as an act of foolishness.For some that part of the brain might be not be explored yet, but that's an other case! 

Many teachers get offended if a student asks numerous number of questions not to exclude their classmates, luckily the world is not so cruel there are few good souls who try to understand the thought process of that kid no matter how silly the question is. 

The best example I could think of is about Sir Albert Einstein, He was not soo good at his academics except maths and physics. Although his curiosity was never satisfied , his numerous doubts were never encouraged. The outcome was such that he was always thrown out of his class because his questions offended his professors as they were either misunderstood or had no answers!!

And that's the reason why many students prefer to keep quiet!

our curiosity starves again when we are "SPOON FED" 

Source: Quora

We can see from the pie chart that all the top three Universities does not include more than 20% of learning from lectures.

But in India, more than 80% education is lecture based, only 5%-10% are project based or case studies.
Hands on experience are dreams!

If it was to educate someone through verbally/on textual basis Google could do it far better!
Then why do we need lecturers?
one thing what i would like to convey to our dear professors is that:

"If you teach me, I may forget.

If you show me, I may remember.But

If you involve me, I will understand and apply it!"

Many underpaid lecturers are soo frustrated that they don't show that dedication level in teaching, Things go wrong when teachers start thinking that the art of educating is only a medium to earn money and look after their needs.

 One more thing, which has to be on the spot light is about the way teachers treat their students, most of the time bright students are the ones who are always appreciated where the slow learners are cornered somewhere! 

This makes the bright ones to shine even more meanwhile others remain in their own of house of excuses. Reality is they are the ones who need more care and attention to grow!

It's crystal clear that anyone can make out why students don't enjoy the curriculum. They constantly keep staring at the clocks wishing to speed up, meanwhile each passing minute seems like an hour!

Now some of you might say" You can lead a horse to water but cannot make them drink" and to that i say "NO firstly, you could put salt in horse's hay and then make them thirsty"

Irony is such that we were never taught to enjoy the learning process,what we are taught is to mug things up and get some nice CGPA's . The one who fails to do so are coined as a "FAILURE".

Failure is an event not a person by himself! It's so sad that we are always taught how to be successful but not how to deal with failures! Film "CHHICHHORE" is one such best example.

Google says "CGPA's are one of the worst criteria to judge someone's intelligence or creativity"
And tragedy is such that our education system is all about CGPA's.

TEXTBOOKS: REASON WHY WE HATE READING

It's obvious, if you want any kid to hate reading give them your "prescribed textbooks"! 

Our education system want us to be future ready with techniques of 19th century or far beyond that! 

World has evolved from FORTRAN to programming languages such as Java script , Python , pearl, Ruby , swift , react native etc and yet we are learning HTML, C language and C++ in our engineering days which should have been taught in our pre-universities!

I don't disagree to the point that there few good reforms in system but most of the fresh jobs don't need much of what we learnt in college. so, the curriculum may feel outdated or irrelevant.

UNIVERSITIES PREPARING FUTURE "GHADAS"?

 The very first picture  in the beginning depict this well!

When students enroll themselves into college, They expect to have all knowledge and skills a higher education can give them. It's their right too! It is the duty of every educational institute to teach and train their students so that they can maximize their potentials to the peak. College normally focus on knowledge and skills of students but fail to prepare them to life after graduation.
Our potential is mostly judged by marks we score not by our communication techniques, problem solving ability,critical thinking or logical or analytical reasoning!!


skills which has to be the part of learning right from the beginning are  taught at the final years. Students unable to focus on every aspect in that short period of time will ultimately become nothing just "A MONEY EARNING MACHINE"
Sad that we are taught to be more avaricious and trained how to work under someone instead of casting out a leader within themselves.

Its not a complete blunder by education institution themselves, we have an equal share to this! There are universities and other platforms which provide us immense stream of knowledge and skills but its that we are unable to perceive it! 

If you want to fill a vessel with rain water, you have to keep it's wide mouth upside!
If you expect it to be filled keeping it downside, Then you are a fool!

Most of the students don't want to come out of their protective shell,Probably its the way how they are nurtured they realize the outer world only when they have fire on their tails! Best example i could give is about communication skills, though he/she might have great knowledge but if they can't convey it to someone then their knowledge is of no use! later on they struggle during interviews and blame institutions for not giving them proper jobs.

Anyways i have spoken a lot!, There are many more aspects which i haven't covered but my main goal was to convey what is going on with every Indian student.
It's not that we are discussing who has done the biggest fault instead to learn from the mistakes!

When things around you don't change it's better to take up your own charge. I am not telling you make strikes and protest on roads shouting your lungs out that "WE WANT JUSTICE"
It's impossible for you alone to bring this into reality.

I CAN JUST PREFER YOU TO BE THE SOURCE OF REFORM
COME OUT OF YOUR ULTRA PROTECTIVE LAYER 
BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T EVEN EXPLORED  0.1% OF THIS ENORMOUS WORLD NEITHER ME!!!  
BE THE WRITER OF YOUR OWN STORY, BE THE GAME CHANGER.
TRAVEL ON THE UNCHARTED PATHS, LEARN TO BE RICH IN TERMS OF HAPPINESS AND LOVE NOT IN TERMS OF BUCKS!!

 WHEN YOU HUNT THE TRUTH INSIDE YOU IT'S ONLY THEN YOU CAN LIVE YOUR PASSION TRULY!!