Story of a top class student from a top class university: How the instructors are destroying our younger generation: I have removed names to hide the identity of the author and the institute: It is criminal to tolerate and promote such mediocrity? ________________________________________________________ I used to love calculus in my A-levels before coming to XXX because I was very motivated with the fact how it helped us solve real life problems so easily by modeling situations. Similarly, I was really excited of joining university but after coming here I was surprised to see our teachers just insisting on memorizing and rote-learning formulas that would help us in solving differentiation and integration numericals without explaining why we were doing them. And the same tradition followed in almost all other mathematical and engineering courses such as Complex Variables and Transforms, Electronics, etc. The highest grades were achieved by those who were best at memorizing those formulae even if they did not have a slightest idea of the concepts. This resulted in a lack of interest in students for studying the courses and most of them took it as a burden and had no other choice. On a personal level, I put in a lot of effort for convincing teachers for open book exams or formula sheets but rarely a few took interest and most of them started holding grudges against me. A few of my other batch fellows who supported me were relegated and finally withdrawn from the university because they did not want to memorize. I barely passed all such courses too, was very demotivated and although I tried my best to keep up with watching lectures from other universities such as MIT, but in true essence I personally have lost even the slightest knowledge of mathematics and science I had before coming here. I respect XXX a lot and appreciate all its efforts, it has still given me a lot more than I could ask for, but I wish the management was more concerned with the quality of education we are receiving and putting faith into making us think critically and discouraging memorization. The most shocking thing is that even at such a high level of education, our mathematics and science exams are mostly questions that have been already been solved in class that students just memorize answers and eventually learn nothing. Without naming anyone, our teacher in Calculus I class would come with a set of papers with mathematical problems in his hand that he would copy onto the board and leave after 50 minutes. No explanation of any sort and we would simply just be asked to note them down. We had to memorize whole lists of formula sheets in order to attempt the questions in the exam. There was no need to understand how those formulas were derived or why they were used. The love for Calculus I had because it could help you find the maximum volume of a box or understand how three-dimensional models behave for creating game environments had now vanished. The story still continues in most classrooms of our country. Most teachers avoid explaining through any word problems, pictures or graphs resulting in the disappointment that we are asked to memorize 2+2=4; and not know why.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 11:20:10 +0000