I believe i am an Educationist

Happiness

2010-01-15T21:51:00.000-08:00

I have always looked my life in a very strange perspective. While great people have always advised to see life as a whole by itself, i have always followed the path contrary to it.

For me, my life is just a part of a very big jigsaw puzzle. And therefore even if you are not whole, the whole is incomplete without you. That is where lies the importance of your part.

The problem, starts from here. The moment you try to fit into the whole two common difficulties happen:

1) You do not find the right hole where you can fit in

2) You may fit in structurally but not aesthetically and therefore your contribution is out of sync with the rest of the whole.

A large majority of us actually suffer from the first one. The reason is our incapability to visualize the whole, especially when there is no prototype in this case. And therefore we wait for others to contribute their part, get a fair idea of the structure and then start our contribution. While this is a logical approach;however since all of us feel like that, there is nobody to take the first step. Those who takes the first step need to be bravehearts. After all they are the ones who will be keenly watched by the other players and decide the future course of action for the game.

If you look at the beginning of a new movement, it was almost always an effort to visualize a jigsaw puzzle as a whole. Gandhiji conceptualised India when there was nothing other than small princely states owing their allegiance to the Queen. Russell tried to explain actions by fitting fragments through mathematics and logic. And Freud could relate your being to your past. They became drivers of change: a change in the thought process.

While the first one is difficult, however its failure is not dangerous. Because if you cannot initiate you do not need a de-structuring of the whole. We will just need a new visualizer. The problem is the second. That is because when you actually fit in the whole structurally, you tend to be complacent and ignore the aesthetics. And therefore though we have a whole structure, it just does not look good. And by the time you notice it and start restructuring, the time is lost and its too late for you to recover.

The second therefore is about not only knowing your true colour and shape but also analysing which part do you synchronize with. That is the analysis of others' colours. Most of us are too myopic to analyse others along with us and therefore we just try to fit in in the available holes. That can give us short term happiness, but not a "wholesome" happiness.

Happiness is not only about you fitting in to the available holes, happiness is about knowing yourself and fitting to the right hole after knowing others and then getting in sync.

You might know your true colours? But do you know what colours you fit in?

God of fractals

2009-09-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

Can educational services be commercialised?

2009-07-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

With huge advent of private sector in Indian Education system, both in mainstream as well as non-mainstream education, one question that has arisen is whether education can be commercialised?

My thought on this has been that of a traditional revolutionary.

Let us first look at the Indian Education sector in last 60 years of independence. Till as late as 1990's, the mainstream education had extremely limited scope in terms of deciding a long term career.If you were a science student, you become a doctor or an engineer.If you are not then you become a CA for a commerce guy, or a PGT/TGT for a Arts student. Accordingly the glamour got attached to different courses. Generally the "brilliants" got into engineering or medical, the lesser mortals into other streams.

Accordingly there was a huge demand supply gap for proper knowledge required to cater for the entrance exams to go into the best of the colleges in the country. 5 IITs and 10 RECs was too less for more than 6 lakh science students writing their XIIth exams. The situation was grimmer if we look at Medical with premeir institutes like AIIMS offering only 60 UG seats on a All India Level.

However post 1990 and post LPG implementation by Dr. Manmohan Singh during his tenure as the finance minister, brought a plethora of options of career for students of any educational background. India was in huge need of people who can not only make roads or treat patients but also can sell, manage and lead in hitherto unusual areas.

The IT boom along with it, demanded not only software engineers, but also finance and economics guys who can act as the interface between the client and the engineer. We needed jack of all trades, master of "some". Even agriculture attracted attention of big corporates, and therefore along with capital investments came requirement of structured and planned means to seek return on that investment.

That resulted in huge change of mindset towards education system. For the first time not the expertise, but the expert got more value. It was not the field, but the performance which spoke more. Thus no field was less glamorous. If you can become an expert in "bungee jumping" even that can make your career.

However the change was fast and steady. The Government, though was instrumental in bringing the change, was suddenly found unable to keep up with the pace of the change. Most of the governmental organizations like schools and colleges did not have enough trained personnels or coaches to adapt to the innovations required to be with the change.

Here in private players came into play.Looking at the huge demand for a professional and branded approach, private players like the Goenkas, Birlas and Srirams invested in mainstream(and non-mainstream) education. They sought foreign help which helped in bringing experts like Kotler, Peter Senge or even Hawking and thus introduced new age learning systems. For the first time we were talking of application based learning which not only helped creating right individuals but also right jobs for them. Can you now imagine Harsh Bhogle as some database developer in some software company in Bengaluru?

However there still exists a huge gap between demand for professional learning and supply of the same.This has resulted in mushrooming of thousands of shady educational institutes with no credibility who just want to make money when the iron is hot.

Till education runs as a business where both the seller and the customer get their value, the demand supply curve remains sane and most of the time the seller can actually deliver consumer surplus. However as in any buying process, the customer has to believe in brands or has to do proper investigation about the seller, especially when the thing you are buying is as long term as your lifelong career.

Why i should study?

2009-06-22T03:48:00.000-07:00

In my career i have always been asked by students, why should i study more?In a country which is already having trouble with employment rates isn't it unnecessarily postponing a scope of employement by studying more? Does it help?

My one point answer. Yes it helps. But that is provided you know whats the objective and then have a clear idea of its expected return.

Lets take the case of MBA. Unlike the other countries, MBA in India can also be done by a fresh college graduate.Except some percentage bar in some colleges, there is virtually no bar or test to check the preparedness of the student to undergo the course.

Lots of graduates in India look at the MBA course as a "shortcut" to a great salary which otherwise would have taken them atleast 5-6 years after their "only graduate" degree.

However 2008-09 has made it very clear that salaries offered post MBA are surely functions of external conditions like US or Global Economy and therefore cannot be a guarantee for a colourful life. In premeir institutes like ISB or IIMs the placements saw a drop of 20-30% from last years' salary figures. And lots of heartburns as well considering the fees are almost twice to thrice of what they were 2 years back.

However i still say nothing has gone wrong provided you understand whats the objective of an MBA. MBA was never designed to give you good salaries. It was designed to make you a "decision maker" . A plain decision making will involve the following steps:

a) Recognising the problems and constraints related to it

b) Prioritising which constraints to take care of and which can be ignored

c) Finally finding an optimum level of the constraints to reach the best possible combination.

Once you know the scientific way of doing this, you are equipped to do your work more efficiently. Thus organizations find more value out of you and hence are ready to pay you more. However don't forget that if you do not perform they have no hesitation to withdraw the goodies either.

Thus MBA should be looked as a long term perspective and not post 2-years of study. It is the beginning of learning and not the end. You learn a process and post MBA you start applying it and learn more. Whatever job you get at whatever salary, the real value comes only after 3-4 years when your value gets demonstrated and therefore gets a recognition in the job market. Even if you have started with a paltry salary, nothing stops you at that time.

Infact if you take a review 10 years after an MBA course, you will be surprised to find 50% of the batch have vanished to nowhere.

Thus MBA is more a course to learn and not mug up and pass. Same is true with every learning in this world. The world has very less respect for degrees after a certain period of time. Its the action which speaks much louder than degress.

So "learn" well and not just "study". Equip yourself with skills and apply them wherever you get the scope and opportunity. The real value comes only from the learning and application of it and let it take its due time.

If you set the expectation right, you will get the value right. If however you set it wrong, it might show some glitter in short term but long term it will lead to doom and nothing else.

So keep on "learning". Don't run for a degree, run for knowledge and skills. Thats what matters!

Education in India

2009-06-09T08:56:00.000-07:00

Information, or rather the lack of it, is perhaps the root cause of a dormant education scenario in India. In my formative years, i really had no idea how to learn.In fact the only thing we were told is what to learn to "pass" the exams. Luckily it seems unknowingly i learnt how to learn also.

When the tables turned and i took the teacher's dias, it was a heart breaking revelation. My students knew a lot of "what" but a very little of "how" and "why". People with enviable marks in their mainstream education, faltered on application or basics. It is like joining a chorus to sing without having any knowledge of music. You may always pretend to sing in a crowd, but you get exposed when you are told to be the lead singer.

What India needs right now is a reorientation of the mainstream education system. As J Krishnamurty had said "we must learn how to learn". The young minds need to be educated not taught. Instead of answers, focus should be more on questions. Only a thinking mind can ask questions. Unfortunately our schools do not encourage students to ask questions.

The teachers have a key role to play in this. The theorems and text books should only act as a supporting tool to explore the world beyond it. It should not be the end, it should be the beginning.

Let me give you an example from class VII maths. The divisibility rules state that for a number, if the sum of its digits is divisible by 9, the number is also divisible by 9. For most of the class, the teaching ends here. The student is never encouraged to ask "why". He is never explained the fundamental behind it being basic decimal system. As a result the student will know this, but can never derive any other divisibility rule and only can be feeded in. This constraints his thinking to new or innovative.

I think the first step in this regard is to redesign the training of teachers and make them more application oriented. Also train them how to encourage the students to go beyond the book and text.There should be marks for not only answering correctly, but also framing right questions. In many exams there is a separate section to frame a question for a given answer. Why can't we have that even in schools.

Another thing that needs to be ensured in the schools is availability of correct information. Most of the time a student fails to pursue a genuine interest, inspite of having a aptitude, just because of lack of information. A proper counselling system needs to be set up. One thing is very clear now. Unlike 10 years back no job is inferior than the other. While i was in my XIIth, i knew about only two courses for a science student : Engineering or Medical. Now a days its your success which talks and not the field. Thus we will need to recognise aptitudes and give them the right direction.