If you have been in any engineering college in India, you would have heard these statements at least once for sure ‘The current syllabus is outdated!’, ‘They just emphasize on writing theories rather than practicals.’
The topmost argument for lower grades being, ‘We do not have qualified professors to teach us.’ You know what, this is the crappiest answer I have ever heard from the students. It’s bad to blame teachers for the students not being good.
The educational system is going through upgrade. You can’t just change everything in one day. It is our mindset that needs to change first, then there is any point in upgrading the syllabus. I’m sure students will come up with some other reasons for their lower grades, which would hide their short comings.
Talking about the theory, yes at first even I thought why is the need of all this. Why a computer engineer has to study chemistry. But that is just to filter the crowd. As you progress in your course you can see that it gets to the core basic. If you took a closer look at your syllabus no doubt it will be out dated. Just take that course and compare it with any other university (from different country) which is of the same standard you will find the syllabus though out dated still teaches you the basics better. Of course you cannot compare the course material at MIT and a regional college.
The educational system of India can teach you a lot but you need to learn it by yourself. You cannot depend on any professor to teach you everything, as you grow up those shackles have to be broken at some point. This spoon-feeding has to stop somewhere.
Your progress depends upon your interest in the course you are doing. Most of the engineers I have seen in normal colleges are already frustrated with their life. They are doing it just to make their parents proud. They feel that since they didn’t make into IIT, NIIT or BITS they don’t stand the chance of excelling in their career. So they are dejected and just want to get through the course as soon as possible. They are not interested in learning the basics; they just snivel about the topics being outdated but never even care to bother why they were introduced in their course. If you like what you are doing you, you will always figure out a way to get the most out of it. If not then you will find an excuse to get away from it.
Let us highlight a few basic questions here:
1. How many students have you seen who actually perform practical and other assignments?
– In most of the colleges only a handful of the students perform the practical, AND NONE OF THEM IS A TOPPER. They are all low graders just excellent in the practical and in the end they are the only one who lead a better life than the others because their hard work pays off at some point of time.
2. How many of the students take the pains and refer the original reference books that the course says to refer to?
– Most of the students blindly read the local authors just to save the time of going through the actual text.
3. How many students really take time to understand the entire concept rather than just mugging it up?
– Students just want to get a better grade they don’t care what the concept is they just blindly copy the text in their papers and later forget about it.
Technical education is about self-learning and evaluation rather than the course material. The course material is just to guide you to the right path.
Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change with it.
-Steve Maraboli
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