No more rote learning

So finally it seems we are doing something about rote learning and thinking of ways that students can adapt, absorb and use to apply their knowledge. The Ministry of Higher Education, in close consultation with AICTE, the government regulatory body for technical education, is busy discussing changing engineering exam patterns across the country.

Expert's feel rote learning is the major reason behind the low qualifiers for JEE entrances and a dwindling job count among students making it past tests and first round of interviews.  For long the education system in our country has been compromised by a parallel coaching system and a formulaic test format that has herded students into an unwelcome and dulling uniformity. A test that will genuinely challenge every student to lay out his takeaways and lead him to probe the practical applicability of the knowledge he has acquired is a crying necessity.

The new format would also make our students more competitive at the international level. The holistic purpose of education, not just of engineering, is to stoke the spirit of enquiry and explore new frontiers armed with a resource base. Mugging up theories and static guidebook explanations of them will not hold anybody good in the real world till a student internalises and processes them in the first place. Hope the government looks at an interactive module of competitive testing that in the end will make learning more fun and less burdensome.