The MHRD's recent decision to conduct one single exam for all engineering applicants, and to give some weight to a student's Class XII performance in the Boards, has generated controversy. The MHRD claims this is a 'one-cure-for-all-ills' solution - while opponents claim that not only will the solution not work, it will actually backfire and spoil the brand name of the IITs.
I strongly believe that the MHRD's solution, if implemented even by a fraction of IITs or NITs, will be disastrous. In this and the following blog-posts, I shall try to explain why.
I had originally thought of collecting all arguments and publishing them in a single post, but it would have been far too long for one post; I felt that it my article could be divided into three logically distinct components:
1) Some background on myself, and my recollections of higher-secondary schoolteachers, preparing for the JEE and so on;
2) My opinion on the MHRD's suggested pattern; Also, an FAQ section which I may update from time to time.
3) Some constructive suggestions: How can the system be improved?
The following is Part 1. (Click on these links to access Part 2 and Part 3.)
I attended Rosary School, a good school in the city of Vadodara, the cultural capital of Gujarat. My schoolteachers in the primary section were excellent, and I shall always remain grateful to them for laying the foundations of a very good education. (I suppose I am privileged in this respect. My school was a Catholic institution run by the Jesuits, and discipline was a strong part of our ethos. Not all students imbibed this, of course, but the strict discipline ensured that there was an absolute absence of bullying or any similar puerile nonsense. Therefore, in spite of being diminutive in physique and rather shy, I was treated well by my teachers and peers because I was a reasonably good student.) My recollections of my primary and secondary schoolteachers are, however, irrelevant to the JEE question, and so I shall simply state that my primary teachers were excellent and my secondary teachers were, on an average, good.
I have always been interested in science from a very young age. The answers it provides are clear and testable, and so scientists have always been my role models. Luckily or unluckily, near my residence, there was no one near my age sharing similar interests, so I became a voracious reader. I used to devour books, and my fondest recollections include getting lost in good books for hours on end. (I remember that, one summer, I had to join three libraries!) Then, when I was in Class 8, I read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, and I was immediately captivated. I did not understand several things, of course (I still don't), but the idea that cosmological mysteries can have beautiful, clear, and testable answers, was fascinating. Ever since then, I have always wanted to become a physicist; I was not sure how much I would be able to contribute (maybe nothing at all), but I was sure of the fact that I wanted to learn the answers properly. So we approached, of all places, an MBA coaching centre that had recently opened in Vadodara, in the hope that they might provide us with some guidance. I was in class 9 at the time.
Today, awareness about the IITs has increased in Gujarat. But seven years ago, awareness was extremely poor: Believe me, I had not heard of the IITs till class 9. So when the director of the MBA coaching institute told us that there were places where the best students from all over India flocked to study, and that they had a Physics course as well, I was captivated. Our local university (the Maharaja Sayajirao University, MSU, named after an erstwhile Maratha ruler of the princely state) offered a Physics course as well, but the students who entered the course were those who had failed to gain admission absolutely anywhere else in an engineering course, and therefore tended not to be serious in their studies. There were reports of frequent strikes by the students, and it was not at all an attractive environment for me. So when I heard that IITK offered the best pure science course in the country at that time, I decided that was where I would try to go.
By the time I passed my class 10 exams, a new coaching centre run by IITians - Yukti Classes - had opened in my city. However, for several reasons, I decided to take the safe route. I knew that getting admission into an IIT was difficult, so (I decided) I would prepare properly for the Board for two years. (Which meant memorising the textbooks.) This would assure me admission in a good university in my state. Then I would, simultaneously with first-year studies, prepare for JEE as well. It seemed at that time to be a good plan.
But then, "The best-laid schemes of mice and men often go awry." Higher secondary teachers in schools affiliated with the Gujarat Board tend to be very poor on an average. I shall not take names here, but I remember the following incidences:
1) A mathematics teacher claimed that pi, being 22/7, is rational.
2) A chemistry teacher claimed that all seawater is a saturated solution of sodium chloride.
3) A physics teacher claimed that the units of resistivity changed if you changed the shape of the substance.
4) An English teacher pronounced 'fury' as 'furry'.
5) The "Thomson effect" was described in our physics textbook; it was predicted by Sir William Thomson, who later became Lord Kelvin - this little nugget of information was also mentioned in the textbook. So one teacher had the brilliant idea to ask in an exam: "Explain the Kelvin effect." (I guess the next question was: State Isaac's first law of motion!)
6) Most Board questions (about 90%) were, and continue to be, copied-and-pasted from the textbook. Of the remaining 10%, most are minor modifications, such as changing a number here and there or changing the ordering of options in MCQs. Just let this fact explode in your head for a moment: Students actually remember that the answer to so-and-so question is option B! Not just 10 microcoulomb - that is too much to remember - but option B! And if my Board exams were a joke, my practical exams were an utter and complete farce. The less said about them, the better.
[Update: When I read my own post recently, it seemed to me that these points pointed to a feeling of disrespect for teachers. Believe me, that was far from my mind. If there is a way these points can be stated without implying disrespect for teachers, I would do it. I have always felt that my schoolteachers were quite devoted and sincere. If few students were willing to learn at school, the transgression, I am afraid, was committed by us students - attendance was regularly very low. In spite of these circumstances, my teachers probably did the best they could.]
All this started getting to me. My Board coaching class teachers were better, but they too were bound, as if by an invisible hand, to the textbook. Any question even slightly different from anything in the textbook was deemed irrelevant and a wastage of valuable time. This was not their fault; this is just how the exams were constructed. Then something happened; Following the advice of a cousin, I gave the Olympiads without any preparation save my useless Board education, and I qualified for the Indian National Mathematics Olympiad (third in class 11 students in Gujarat, if I remember correctly), and the Indian National Astronomy Olympiad (the only one qualified from Vadodara, if I remember correctly). (Later, I did not clear the National level tests for either.) Noticing my performance in both, the director of Yukti Classes, Amit Sir (Amit Dixit, an alumnus of IITB), called me and told me I stood a reasonable chance of clearing JEE. So at the beginning of my class 12, I started attending Yukti Classes.
As I prepared more and more for JEE, my disillusionment with the Board grew. Preparing for JEE was enjoyable! Here, at last, was an exam where your handwriting would not count; where no question was ever repeated; where concepts were tested relentlessly; where questions were always challenging; in short, a complete and utter meritocracy! I enjoyed learning from my coaching teachers too. Questions were encouraged, and answered! Challenges, many of which I could not meet, were set! Concepts were clarified! In short, I received at Yukti classes an education that I would have received at an ideal school.
At this point, let me put in a good word for Yukti Classes. Since I had joined too late, I could not sit in the same class as regular 2-year students. So I sat in the 1-year batch, but feeling that this was not sufficient, Amit Sir (who taught Maths) coached me personally several days a week, as did Kamal Sir (IITD Mechanical Engineering), who taught Physics. Kamal Sir, by the way, is one of the best teachers from whom I have had the privilege of learning Physics. And for all this extra effort (for which I should have paid double), Amit Sir accepted only about one-fourth of the regular 2-year batch fees (and probably one-eighth of what he charges now), and that too at our insistence! Let this fact be absorbed by all those who claim that coaching institutes are money-making factories headed by ruthless businessmen.
To anyone who has recently given the Board exams, it will be clear that my life then was not very easy. I simultaneously prepared for the Boards (in coaching classes as well as in school), and for the JEE - although, as time progressed, I gave disproportionately more attention to JEE. The long and short of it is that I finally cleared JEE at my first attempt, and received admission in IITK - M.Sc. (Integrated) Physics.
Since then, I have enjoyed every moment of my life here (well, mostly). I have excellent teachers who understand their subjects well, and I have friends with whom I can carry out intelligent conversations on topics of common interest. (This is not to belittle my friends at home, many of whom were also very intelligent; it is just that topics of common interest were rare.)
If anyone feels that the above is an exercise in pretentious self-glorification, I sincerely apologise. It is anything but that. Since I came here, I have heard many inspirational stories of students working a lot harder than me preparing for JEE, and being much more successful than me here. I am just telling my story, and the message I hope to convey to the reader is that the JEE is unparalleled as a great equaliser. To students like me, it was the only hope of escape from a tyrannical Board and the mentality that went with it; an ideal that, even if I did not clear it, would certainly inspire me and so many others that good things were possible. I will therefore fight tooth and nail against anyone who wishes to destroy that ideal.
I strongly believe that the MHRD's solution, if implemented even by a fraction of IITs or NITs, will be disastrous. In this and the following blog-posts, I shall try to explain why.
I had originally thought of collecting all arguments and publishing them in a single post, but it would have been far too long for one post; I felt that it my article could be divided into three logically distinct components:
1) Some background on myself, and my recollections of higher-secondary schoolteachers, preparing for the JEE and so on;
2) My opinion on the MHRD's suggested pattern; Also, an FAQ section which I may update from time to time.
3) Some constructive suggestions: How can the system be improved?
The following is Part 1. (Click on these links to access Part 2 and Part 3.)
I attended Rosary School, a good school in the city of Vadodara, the cultural capital of Gujarat. My schoolteachers in the primary section were excellent, and I shall always remain grateful to them for laying the foundations of a very good education. (I suppose I am privileged in this respect. My school was a Catholic institution run by the Jesuits, and discipline was a strong part of our ethos. Not all students imbibed this, of course, but the strict discipline ensured that there was an absolute absence of bullying or any similar puerile nonsense. Therefore, in spite of being diminutive in physique and rather shy, I was treated well by my teachers and peers because I was a reasonably good student.) My recollections of my primary and secondary schoolteachers are, however, irrelevant to the JEE question, and so I shall simply state that my primary teachers were excellent and my secondary teachers were, on an average, good.
I have always been interested in science from a very young age. The answers it provides are clear and testable, and so scientists have always been my role models. Luckily or unluckily, near my residence, there was no one near my age sharing similar interests, so I became a voracious reader. I used to devour books, and my fondest recollections include getting lost in good books for hours on end. (I remember that, one summer, I had to join three libraries!) Then, when I was in Class 8, I read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, and I was immediately captivated. I did not understand several things, of course (I still don't), but the idea that cosmological mysteries can have beautiful, clear, and testable answers, was fascinating. Ever since then, I have always wanted to become a physicist; I was not sure how much I would be able to contribute (maybe nothing at all), but I was sure of the fact that I wanted to learn the answers properly. So we approached, of all places, an MBA coaching centre that had recently opened in Vadodara, in the hope that they might provide us with some guidance. I was in class 9 at the time.
Today, awareness about the IITs has increased in Gujarat. But seven years ago, awareness was extremely poor: Believe me, I had not heard of the IITs till class 9. So when the director of the MBA coaching institute told us that there were places where the best students from all over India flocked to study, and that they had a Physics course as well, I was captivated. Our local university (the Maharaja Sayajirao University, MSU, named after an erstwhile Maratha ruler of the princely state) offered a Physics course as well, but the students who entered the course were those who had failed to gain admission absolutely anywhere else in an engineering course, and therefore tended not to be serious in their studies. There were reports of frequent strikes by the students, and it was not at all an attractive environment for me. So when I heard that IITK offered the best pure science course in the country at that time, I decided that was where I would try to go.
By the time I passed my class 10 exams, a new coaching centre run by IITians - Yukti Classes - had opened in my city. However, for several reasons, I decided to take the safe route. I knew that getting admission into an IIT was difficult, so (I decided) I would prepare properly for the Board for two years. (Which meant memorising the textbooks.) This would assure me admission in a good university in my state. Then I would, simultaneously with first-year studies, prepare for JEE as well. It seemed at that time to be a good plan.
But then, "The best-laid schemes of mice and men often go awry." Higher secondary teachers in schools affiliated with the Gujarat Board tend to be very poor on an average. I shall not take names here, but I remember the following incidences:
1) A mathematics teacher claimed that pi, being 22/7, is rational.
2) A chemistry teacher claimed that all seawater is a saturated solution of sodium chloride.
3) A physics teacher claimed that the units of resistivity changed if you changed the shape of the substance.
4) An English teacher pronounced 'fury' as 'furry'.
5) The "Thomson effect" was described in our physics textbook; it was predicted by Sir William Thomson, who later became Lord Kelvin - this little nugget of information was also mentioned in the textbook. So one teacher had the brilliant idea to ask in an exam: "Explain the Kelvin effect." (I guess the next question was: State Isaac's first law of motion!)
6) Most Board questions (about 90%) were, and continue to be, copied-and-pasted from the textbook. Of the remaining 10%, most are minor modifications, such as changing a number here and there or changing the ordering of options in MCQs. Just let this fact explode in your head for a moment: Students actually remember that the answer to so-and-so question is option B! Not just 10 microcoulomb - that is too much to remember - but option B! And if my Board exams were a joke, my practical exams were an utter and complete farce. The less said about them, the better.
[Update: When I read my own post recently, it seemed to me that these points pointed to a feeling of disrespect for teachers. Believe me, that was far from my mind. If there is a way these points can be stated without implying disrespect for teachers, I would do it. I have always felt that my schoolteachers were quite devoted and sincere. If few students were willing to learn at school, the transgression, I am afraid, was committed by us students - attendance was regularly very low. In spite of these circumstances, my teachers probably did the best they could.]
All this started getting to me. My Board coaching class teachers were better, but they too were bound, as if by an invisible hand, to the textbook. Any question even slightly different from anything in the textbook was deemed irrelevant and a wastage of valuable time. This was not their fault; this is just how the exams were constructed. Then something happened; Following the advice of a cousin, I gave the Olympiads without any preparation save my useless Board education, and I qualified for the Indian National Mathematics Olympiad (third in class 11 students in Gujarat, if I remember correctly), and the Indian National Astronomy Olympiad (the only one qualified from Vadodara, if I remember correctly). (Later, I did not clear the National level tests for either.) Noticing my performance in both, the director of Yukti Classes, Amit Sir (Amit Dixit, an alumnus of IITB), called me and told me I stood a reasonable chance of clearing JEE. So at the beginning of my class 12, I started attending Yukti Classes.
As I prepared more and more for JEE, my disillusionment with the Board grew. Preparing for JEE was enjoyable! Here, at last, was an exam where your handwriting would not count; where no question was ever repeated; where concepts were tested relentlessly; where questions were always challenging; in short, a complete and utter meritocracy! I enjoyed learning from my coaching teachers too. Questions were encouraged, and answered! Challenges, many of which I could not meet, were set! Concepts were clarified! In short, I received at Yukti classes an education that I would have received at an ideal school.
At this point, let me put in a good word for Yukti Classes. Since I had joined too late, I could not sit in the same class as regular 2-year students. So I sat in the 1-year batch, but feeling that this was not sufficient, Amit Sir (who taught Maths) coached me personally several days a week, as did Kamal Sir (IITD Mechanical Engineering), who taught Physics. Kamal Sir, by the way, is one of the best teachers from whom I have had the privilege of learning Physics. And for all this extra effort (for which I should have paid double), Amit Sir accepted only about one-fourth of the regular 2-year batch fees (and probably one-eighth of what he charges now), and that too at our insistence! Let this fact be absorbed by all those who claim that coaching institutes are money-making factories headed by ruthless businessmen.
To anyone who has recently given the Board exams, it will be clear that my life then was not very easy. I simultaneously prepared for the Boards (in coaching classes as well as in school), and for the JEE - although, as time progressed, I gave disproportionately more attention to JEE. The long and short of it is that I finally cleared JEE at my first attempt, and received admission in IITK - M.Sc. (Integrated) Physics.
Since then, I have enjoyed every moment of my life here (well, mostly). I have excellent teachers who understand their subjects well, and I have friends with whom I can carry out intelligent conversations on topics of common interest. (This is not to belittle my friends at home, many of whom were also very intelligent; it is just that topics of common interest were rare.)
If anyone feels that the above is an exercise in pretentious self-glorification, I sincerely apologise. It is anything but that. Since I came here, I have heard many inspirational stories of students working a lot harder than me preparing for JEE, and being much more successful than me here. I am just telling my story, and the message I hope to convey to the reader is that the JEE is unparalleled as a great equaliser. To students like me, it was the only hope of escape from a tyrannical Board and the mentality that went with it; an ideal that, even if I did not clear it, would certainly inspire me and so many others that good things were possible. I will therefore fight tooth and nail against anyone who wishes to destroy that ideal.
If you do not mind, could you please tell what you are doing in life after your IIT education?
ReplyDeleteAlso please make a note in your life calendar to write a blog post when you are 35-40yrs old on what you think about the other teachers (especially the class 1-10) and if what they taught was of any use.
Thanks in advance.
@RamaY:
DeleteI have not yet completed my education. Next year, I will graduate with an Integrated M.Sc. degree in Physics. After I get the degree, I intend to study further for a PhD.
Also, thanks for the other tip.
May I ask how any of this is relevant to the JEE issue? I request you to post only those comments relevant to the JEE issue here. Any other questions should be communicated to me via e-mail: t.k.mudholkar@gmail.com. I will reply to each as and when time permits.
You have been lucky in your coaching classes, and unlucky in your school teachers. While I agree many school teachers are like your teachers, most coaching classes are not as good as yours. Most coaching classes do not teach concepts, they grill children by making them repeatedly solve problems till they are programmed to do so. The students who go through this kind of coaching, lose their ability to think, but can plug in formulae and solve problems!
ReplyDelete@L: I have some points related to your response:
Delete1) As you have pointed out yourself, Board teachers are worse. The question is not JEE v/s Improved JEE - I think there is near-unanimous agreement that JEE needs to be improved. The question is regarding the wisdom of using Board marks as a criterion - either direct or indirect.
2) I only wish it were possible for people to be able to solve unseen problems through practice. Remember, JEE problems are never repeated, and they are posed at a level such that the probability of a student having encountered an exactly similar problem before is minute. Even if the student has encountered such a problem before, it is unlikely he will remember it, given the volume of problems that he typically solves. If indeed it were possible to train people to solve new problems, all the world's problems in every field would have been solved by now. What the JEE tests - and what it should test - is a combination of the ability to understand concepts and the capacity to work hard.
3) Students who attend those coaching classes which teach their students to 'plug in formulae' generally tend to perform poorly at JEE (whose problems frequently involve far more than plugging in formulae). Moreover, I think you have underestimated the number of good JEE coaching classes; in any case, Board coaching classes (and Board teachers) are forced, in many cases against their desire, to focus on formulae.
@L : Well I can only sympathize with you here. But I would like to make few clarifications from my side.
Delete1. As far as grilling a student is concerned, a coaching is not responsible for making a student intelligent. Everyone has different capabilities. One can enjoy the tyrannous sums and assignment where sm1 else would find him/her self to be incompetent. I myself being from a coaching background can very confidently state that, "Each and every question that I asked had been answered satisfactorily ". The only thing that lacked was the no. of people asking questions. What I learned (being an average student) in my coaching at Kota, was to work hard which eventually resulted in solving more problems.
2. I would agree with you on the point that students are becoming used to solving problems repeatedly. But I am sorry again if sm1 unfortunately loses their ability to think. What I personally feel is solving more problems on a particular concepts helps to make more clarity about it.