With the sudden hopeless feeling which is trying to sink into me this past month, accumulation of the happenings at college, workplace, elsewhere; didn’t let me sleep last night. So to gulp down this mammoth disbelief I had to pen things down. Writing after a huge gap, courtesy: BE in MU that is, pardon my writing though I hope you enjoy my views on The Education System, as it has become a mockery anyways!

 

                 Allow me to introduce myself, I, Aditya Aserkar, kept terms for about a tad less than half a dozen times, never scored sixty plus throughout my four year engineering ordeal; ergo, it is an established fact that I’m in no way an extraordinary, or scholar student of any sorts and have pushed my way thro’ the four years that they were.Which reminds me that i never understood the concept of KT’s. If a student couldn’t pass in a subject, he is said to be keeping terms and move on with the remaining subjects of the coming semester. But when he cannot pass two or more subjects, he is said to have 2KT’s? So, in words, he is keeping two terms in one term for one term for two subjects? Umph! I’m never going toget that logic right in my head! Anyways, it doesn’t matter as I feel if a student gives the paper again, it indirectly becomes his ‘Major’. So what if he couldn’t write what was asked in the exam? He sure must have studied more than what he had previously!

                 Anywho! My plan was to write on the changing education paradigms. Our education system, which is governed by the age old Industrial Revolution needs a makeover and everybody talks about that. However what these everybody fail to understand is that lowering the passing marks and showing 100% passing is not going to help the institution to mould better students, obviously, the institution will prosper. Manufacturing robots to tag along and work with the processes in every field which have long lost its expiry date, is definitely not the need of the hour by such esteemed institutions. In my previous write up I had mentioned about coaching classes so not getting into that again, moving forward to what is going on around me right now and what imparted the disbelief that I’m in. An engineer who can deduce at what velocity will the air from the tuyeres in a blast furnace will reduce the energy consumption gets paid Rs 10 000 a month while the same person if to work on SAP will sit in an air conditioned office will be paid Rs 25 000. Was I asleep when they changed the definition of the term ‘Engineering’?

                 Either people are devoid of aspiration altogether or simply succumb to the rat race of earning more and more money despite the means. I have always imagined young children dreaming of growing up to become an engineer, a doctor, a pilot, an actor but never heard a kid wanting to become an SAP data entry executive. Executive, yes a fancy word, probably derived from ‘Execution’! I myself dreamt of becoming a pilot however constraints in my vertical expansion has become a roadblock!

                 Preparing, in vain, for MDes. made me realise how utterly useless I have become at drawing, once I believed I was quite good! Why have we been kept away from drawing or painting, or singing, or dancing just before reaching a stage of logical reason? Why to test a fish on its ability to climb a tree? Why is singing, dancing as a profession frowned upon? Though I would bet that even a backup vocalist earning Rs100 per day would be happier than an SAP operator with a fat pay cheque!

                People have stopped enjoying the journey in pursuit of the destination. A money minting highway is sought after where potholes are few but shortcuts are plenty. People have stopped thinking and thats exactly what the real owners of the world want. They hand out fancy iPhones and iPads to us to be all charged up about but the delusion of freedom that they hide behind it nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.

                Again, I’m no exceptional student, sure I don’t know how to apply Grubblers criterion of degree of freedom to Tchebycheff's mechanism but what I do know is that what is happening is wrong. Very wrong.

                Now, what is this 60+ criterion for jobs actually? They are trying to find out whether you are in a position to learn further as they know what you’ve learnt for four years is shear gibberish! So the four engineered years you just learn how to either succomb or to cope up with the gigantic stress that is this enormous pressure from all the directional axes on your infinitesimally small area; and the actual work related training, they give you in a mere years time as a GET, which you grasp and continue to do all your life till eternity or at least till boiling point!

                 Many engineers whom I know, do feel their life is on the likes of the sets of ‘Kya Aap Paachvi Pass Se Tez Hai?’, but cannot do anything about it as lets say, they had to buy a property, and that for most of us is a now or never situation. However we fail to realise that if the same company owning hectares of wastelands on both sides of the eastern express highway or even that on the entire trans-harbour link stretch could free up some land, the realty rates would fall at least by a 100 rupees, and for us, that sure is a lot! Anyways thats out of syllabus for this write up and could be taken up some other time!

                 Reaching this juncture, I would not be surprised if the times of Mohenjo Daro came back and artisans and peasants are worshipped again!

                 While proof reading the above ten paragraphs, I was instructed not to mention any specifics of any name of institution, cause who knows, however unwilling, even I may, one day, have to succumb to this viscous and viscious circle and get one of those ‘Naukri’ fiascos!

BTW did it ever occur to you that the word ‘Naukri’ is derived from the word ‘Naukar’?

Cheers !