Are our kids just pig ignorant!?

[Coito ergo sum]

Find out how pig ignorant you are at geography: http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq

[GenesForLife]

I think this gives me the opportunity to indulge in a rant that characterizes the Indian educational setup here, since it gives me the opportunity to vent some really pent up vitriol, to summarize the experience succintly, the only thing I will say is that it was utter tripe , at least for me , notwithstanding the fact that my "results" have been good so far, including a distinction at high school, a first at pre-uni and a distinction at uni.

Where I've studied there were just two things that were necessary, and were often emphasized to the detriment of learning in general and to critical thinking and asking questions in particular. One was [1] Memorize the textbook, do well in examinations and [2] was basically an argument from authority, the teacher is right, the textbook is right, and not to be questioned, and the blind learning of facts as defined by teachers is the end of things. The obsession with ranks and stuff being the issue of bragging rights for parents never helped, either.

The trouble with the metaphorical corsets the (already piss-poor and limited) curriculum introduced was that I had trouble buying it, since I was a voracious reader right from a very young age, tucking into The World Book Encyclopaedia, among other things, starting at age 7 and finishing the whole set in a matter of four years, this routinely got me into trouble, especially at high school, firstly when I clashed with a social science teacher over not being awarded marks for mentioning stuff she wasn't aware of (or present in the textbook, for that matter) in which her defense was to state "I have 17 years of teaching experience" which, looking on in hindsight, was nothing but what one would recognize here instantly as an appeal to authority, the next instance happened when I took my SSLC examinations (O level equivalents to the Englishmen reading this) when I was awarded just 65% in English when my scores in the rest of my subjects were all in the nineties, with three of those subjects being examined in English)
This was a trend that continued throughout Uni, as well, where English literature was the only subject in which I barely returned a first class score (it was a minor subject) and this happened when I concurrently held IELTS scores of 8.5 and 8.0 overall, the mind boggles as a result.

Tangential diversion aside, back to the nature of the system itself, the emphasis on "marks, marks and marks" was nearly responsible for driving me into a series of panic attacks at pre-uni, and my struggles with mathematics, exacerbated by rubbish teaching and lack of support threatening to send me into bouts of frustrated weeping with a sickening regularity, so much so that any love I had for mathematics disappeared. The fear of failure that is systematically instilled in the minds of students can turn anybody into a mental wreck, the fact that it is already a rat race here doesn't make things any easier, f**k learning, score marks, that is all that matters, and it did take a toll on my academic progress then, too , resulting in my scores dropping to a mere first class.

Bring on Uni and that illustrated a point wrt class size superbly, we had just six students in class, as opposed to 45 at pre-uni college and high school , and 70 at elementary and secondary school, but the lecturers were so insanely hopeless that class size meant sweet fuck all, other than allowing us to discuss things among ourselves, a necessary consequence of having lecturers like the one who taught biochemistry who didn't know how to calculate masses of solutes required to make solutions for titrations (I swear I am not making this up, but she did manage to prepare 100 ml of Oxalic acid using solute mass calculated for 250ml of solution, followed by incredulously asking why, after I worked it out properly for her, the per dm3 value had to be divided by 10 and not 4 to obtain the value for 100 ml of the solution, add to this lecturers insisting that turbidimetry (which doesn't discriminate between living and dead cells) should produce a sigmoidal curve and other such academic shenanigans and you will probably come to appreciate what I am talking about.

It didn't help, either , that these jokers didn't have any peer reviewed publications, or not even many conference presentations to their name, the fact that I, despite being a fresh graduate have had papers rejected due to the lack of facilities and the consequent inability to verify my empirically derived hypotheses and not due to any inherent flaws wrt the methology used and have had presentations at conferences in comparison surely must tell you something, ey?

Coming to the facilities themselves, they were rubbish, codswallop , bullshit <insert n adjectives here>, characterised by the fact that we never gained any experience with animal cell culture (not that the curriculum mandated it in the first place) and had to carry out rudimentary stuff like pipetting by mouth, even when dealing with cultures of potentially pathogenic organisms like S.aureus and E.coli, or the complete lack of safety guidelines when working with microbes (no masks, no gloves) or a curriculum where even rudimentary molecular biology techniques were not included, which prompted me to acquire those skills elsewhere, sometimes by lobbying to attend training courses meant for postgraduates, while having to take time out of Uni all are testament to the despairingly bad state of affairs.

However, the nascency of the field of biotechnology et cetera, and biological research here in general meant that whatever limited exposure I could obtain was always going to be inadequate when I was going to face up to my counterparts from the developed world, and it is also a fact that I didn't obtain a CRUK funded PhD studentship last year precisely due to lack of practical experience. A penchant for making ex recto assertions is rife amongst faculty here, too.

And to think all this nonsense took place at a Uni that is rated A+ in the country by the national accreditation body is an indicator of how bad things can get, IMO.

As far as the lack of critical thought is concerned, I think it stems from an environment where authority is to be respected at all costs and also from a systemic malaise that allows academic mediocrity to flourish, I have seen people being allowed to submit prints of wikipedia articles (including hyperlinks to the "edit" function and other things) for their assignments, allowing the principles of using one's head, and engaging in rigorous scientific writing to be well and truly fucked up the rear with a razor wire dildo.

I have probably learned more by reading on my own and by cultivating the habit of reading proper peer reviewed research papers instead of the appallingly homeopathic filtered gnat's piss that lecture handouts are, and some bloody good textbooks which I saved up to buy (the deplorable state of library services at the college I studied at and no institutional access from the University itself is another issue, and this led me to donate 34 volumes to the department, but that is an aside)

All in all, the systems I've come through are all a fine fucking example of fucked up fuckwitted thinking and organization, and I think I can genuinely claim to having learned more by myself in considerably less time than my experiences with formal education.

At least things are promising to be rosier with me scheduled to start Master's at UCL next year, where I expect the change in attitude and the level of scientific discourse involved to serve as a metaphorical intellectual rehydrant.

[Thinking Aloud]

I have a son of 28 also, who won a scholarship to Balliol college Oxford (one of the top five there) after getting four A levels in one year, is a currently joint director of a communications company and is studying to be a barrister in his spare time.

But does he know which way is north?

[stripes4]

I have a son of 28 also, who won a scholarship to Balliol college Oxford (one of the top five there) after getting four A levels in one year, is a currently joint director of a communications company and is studying to be a barrister in his spare time.

But does he know which way is north?

Sounds like he's your favourite then :sighsm:

[Thinking Aloud]

I have a son of 28 also, who won a scholarship to Balliol college Oxford (one of the top five there) after getting four A levels in one year, is a currently joint director of a communications company and is studying to be a barrister in his spare time.

But does he know which way is north?

Sounds like he's your favourite then :sighsm:

I've never met Rum's son.

[M]

If my kids end up with no interest in the world around them, or any basic general knowledge, I'll have a close look at myself before blaming the education system. You don't have to be an oxbridge graduate to have an interest in the world you live in; my wee ones have had globes, atlases, reference books for some time and we look at them together often. It's surprising how much I have learnt.

[Ronja]

M reports that when he today asked Elder Daughter (11) to fetch the pork tenderloin from the cold room, she became quite apprehensive and said that she did not know what that looks like. Managed the task, though, after getting a description.

Remedial studies are clearly called for!

[stripes4]

I have a son of 28 also, who won a scholarship to Balliol college Oxford (one of the top five there) after getting four A levels in one year, is a currently joint director of a communications company and is studying to be a barrister in his spare time.

But does he know which way is north?

Sounds like he's your favourite then :sighsm:

I've never met Rum's son.

Pedant

[Rum]

I have a son of 28 also, who won a scholarship to Balliol college Oxford (one of the top five there) after getting four A levels in one year, is a currently joint director of a communications company and is studying to be a barrister in his spare time.

But does he know which way is north?

Sounds like he's your favourite then :sighsm:

I've never met Rum's son.

Pedant

No he isn't.

[stripes4]

Good. I like your daughter the best. Geography sucks. She rocks

[FBM]

RUM!!! Are our kids pig ignorant???

I didn't even know we HAD kids!!!

My lovely, though pig ignorant daughter is 21. She has huge redeeming features I sincerely add!...

*bites tongue*

[stripes4]

RUM!!! Are our kids pig ignorant???

I didn't even know we HAD kids!!!

My lovely, though pig ignorant daughter is 21. She has huge redeeming features I sincerely add!...

*bites tongue*

Also bit tongue earlier and didn't even write *bites tongue*

[FBM]

I tried to stop myself, but I have limited self-control.

[Rum]

[FBM]

Oh, shit. Sorry, Rum...