How is the education system today? I believe at the end of the day there must be effort put into by the student, but I would appreciate more enthusiasm from teachers. The contemporary state of exams is to memorize and lay it down in the examination hall. Is this the system that we want? Or is this the system we got? The result is the same, it does not help a student achieve great heights if memorizing and reproducing that memory in the exams are enough. I can give you an example, I had several friends in my computer science major that memorized the programs for algorithms. For those of you who are not aware of what an algorithm is, it’s a concept of how a program should work. Knowing how a program should work is different from memorizing the program itself! Hell, I get it, results matter. Maybe even more so for others than they do for myself. To guarantee good grades, I pretty much get that some folks would want to memorize the program rather than write the program based on the logic in the examination hall. Some people forget things under pressure, even I do at times. So I understand why people are doing it. The problem is, most of those people do not know how to write the algorithm without memorizing it even outside the examination hall. This is the state of our education system. It allows people to get away with memorizing things that should ideally be understood.

I’ve just finished my engineering. In retrospect, the education that was given was not really up to the mark. You know, knowledge is a thing. Knowledge needs to be passed on to others in such a way that it invokes curiosity and indulges students to seek deeper meanings. It does depend on the interest of the student, and how receptive they are to its dissipation. But if I were a teacher, I would care of those students who are interested in taking further steps in their advancement. The impression that I got from our teachers was on the lines of “we are not passionate because students are not passionate”. I don’t believe such a paradox exists. There will always be somebody interested enough if taught with well, or shown new wonders that provoke new ideas. These are one of the places where the teacher should be a role model. That’s because students learn from their teachers. If teachers are good, students will be good. Of course there will be exceptions, but that’s out of scope of this article.

As a kid, I was taught that all of us are special. Yes, each and every one of us, whether adult or child. We were born with a purpose in our lives. God simply does not roll dice! As humans, we are the chosen ones. But to learn, and experience the fact, you need a kind of education which nourishes your senses to a world with endless possibilities, where you can become whatever you desire, pursue your interests to the fullest and to give back to the society as much as you can. Someone needs to instill or invoke the untapped fire of creativity in us. Creativity. It’s really such a magical thing. Gives me immense joy creating things, whether the world knows about them is another thing altogether but I enjoy creating things. I believe my early days in school helped me out immensely. I realize this now, after looking at India through the scope of my college. From an early age onwards, I have been encouraged to open my eyes and fling my arms to the world. There’s everything out there. So much happiness. Something that I deeply feel that I need to share with the rest of the world.