Education - Just Marks/Grades or Acquiring Real Knowledge?

[AkshayS]

Though I think Homework should be reduced but I don't really think it's a waste of time and it should be abolished.
Many a times I have got homework which increases my knowledge but my classmates rather than seeing the good aspect of it just copy it from others who themselves copy it from refreshers.
That's our poor mentality, no need to blame homework.
Our teachers aren't fools to give us weeks to submit our homework or just make us do Q-A in classes.
It's our poor mentality that we take homework as granted and only sit to do it a day before we have to actually submit it and spend the earlier days chatting on facebook and orkut (Waste of time) and trying to impress our friends.
We need to manage our time ourselves, no one other is gonna do it for us.

Well I couldn't remember the last day when I hadn't got a massive load of homework.

I agree that Homeworks should be only to the limit so that student have time to go through what he's written in his notebook till now.

But teacher are to blame because they always give massive loads of hW.

 

[Varun]

But teacher are to blame because they always give massive loads of hW.

Education Board is to blame.

 

[AkshayS]

Education Board is to blame.

bah !!!!!!
Whatever.

 

[King Cricket]

Though I think Homework should be reduced but I don't really think it's a waste of time and it should be abolished.

Agree. If the homework given to the students is creative and has space for innovation or encourages analytical thinking, I'm always for it. But tbh, our schools do just the opposite. If I take History as an example, most of the time we are given questions directly quoted from books as homeworks, with the teacher herself telling us to adhere to the book whilst writing answers. What is the point of that? If you are going to set homeworks, then set something 'new'- like, instead of telling students to "write a short essay on Adolf Hitler", if a teacher tells them to "write a short esssay on the relation between Pope Pius XII and Hitler in course of World War II" it not only increases the interest of students ten folds, but also gives them ample scope to research and actually incorporate their own ideas. It's these type of homeworks which should be encouraged.

King Cricket added 1 Minutes and 1 Seconds later...

Education Board is to blame.

It's our mentality which is to blame.

 

[sohum]

Brain surgery is far more complicated than computer programming. If you mess up a brain surgery, somebody is going to die. The penalty for writing a buggy program is far less severe.

1. It was an analogy.
2. Not necessarily, especially with the field of biotechnology growing as it is. Computer science is becoming increasingly relevant in the field of medicine and if you have an army of codemonkeys powering it, you're invariably going to encounter calamities.

The information on the internet isn't always accuracte but that is the case with every other method of learning. You'll find a lot of rubbish in books. You'll find teachers who don't know what they are talking about. You have to choose the source you are going to learn from with care.

If the teachers are rubbish then obviously you may be better off with some other source of information. However, the point I was arguing against was someone suggesting that you can learn computer science by going on the internet and learning how to code. That's absolutely incorrect. Programming is just one (tiny) aspect of computer science. In fact, we wouldn't even have programming languages if we didn't have the math to be able to translate them into a computer understanding them.

The programs you are asked to write in exams sometimes ask you to implement a solution in a fundamentally wrong way. I can only speak about Mumbai University, but I think the case is similar all across India.

Well that is a problem with the system. During my 4 years at Rice I can only remember one class where I had to actually write a program for an examination and even then pseudocode was encouraged. It's just more proof that computer science isn't about programming--it's about understanding the theory and concepts, the data structures and algorithms, etc. Understanding how to use recursion or closures is far more useful than knowing how to use C++ or C#. You can learn a new programming language in a day, but you don't really know how to use it efficiently without having knowledge of design patterns, the whole OOP spectrum and a bunch of other theoretical concepts.

You aren't meant to be able to write programs on paper. That's the whole reason that you have a compiler. The standard development process includes several steps, including research, design, prototyping, implementation and testing. Writing a program on a piece of paper doesn't demonstrate anything except implementation and if one spends all their time trying to memorize stuff that the compiler alerts them for cheap, one's not really grasping the real knowledge.

 

[Varun]

"write a short essay on Adolf Hitler", if a teacher tells them to "write a short esssay on the relation between Pope Pius XII and Hitler in course of World War II" it not only increases the interest of students ten folds, but also gives them ample scope to research and actually incorporate their own ideas. It's these type of homeworks which should be encouraged.

I'm pretty sure half of the students would copy other's work.
Indian mentality needs to be changed.
Actually the problem is that we're just copying the partyful part of Western culture. The children never notice that though English people are party-loving, they are twice as hardworking as us. They just copy the party-fun-loving aspect of them and not the hardworking.

 

[AkshayS]

I'm pretty sure half of the students would copy other's work.
Indian mentality needs to be changed.

not really. You're true that half of the students will copy other's work.

But the other half who are brilliant and can do it will copy it too from reference books. See if the teacher gives them only 1 day and it's impossible to not get any other HW, then the student would copy it to save his time without doing any research.

 

[Varun]

not really. You're true that half of the students will copy other's work.

But the other half who are brilliant and can do it will copy it too from reference books. See if the teacher gives them only 1 day and it's impossible to not get any other HW, then the student would copy it to save his time without doing any research.

Hmmm... I agree. We only get 1-2 days to write "Letters or Articles" in English but it is not always applicable. Sometimes we get 1 week, then too nobody does the work.

 

[AkshayS]

Sometimes we get 1 week, then too nobody does the work.

If somebody has a plan to suicide, we can't stop him and that's all I can say.

 

[King Cricket]

Indian mentality needs to be changed.

Yep, that's what I said in my post.

I've always felt that it's kind of a side-effect of the tradition of cramming stuff to youur head. You just don't feel that urge inside you anymore to actually do the hard work and think deeply about a subject.

 

[Sureshot]

Quite interesting reading in this thread, particularly of the Indian system and how it so differs from the UK. Completely agree with dutchad's sentiments, there is so much more to education than the grades you get.

From my own experience, I got an offer on a well established (and internationally recognised) hotel management training scheme, the interview went so well and without sounding arrogant (/me strokes ego) I pretty much walked an interview when there are probably 5 times the amount of positions available, yet that was because how I was speaking to him during the interview, my knowledge of what a good manager is and an understanding of what I'd need to do to achieve my goals, I only need to pass my course, truth be told, anyone could pass it, it's a level below University, not only that, but there is a lot of help to reach a Pass (three levels of grade, Pass, Merit and Distinction.).

Thing is, I hold what I've learnt from the tutors outside the syllabus as much as I do from the units we've done, I've built a solid working relationship with all of them and have been able to learn a lot, as well as maturing as a person.

I think it is certainly the case, that in the UK, employers aren't looking just for grades.

After all, there are many things you can't teach. I'd also point out that going back to college as a mature (as in age, not mentally ) student was the best decision I've ever made, you can get so much more out of something if you genuinely know it is what you want to do.

 

[Neo95]

It has been such a pleasure reading these innovative ideas.If these are implemented in our educational system,I am quite sure learning would be a more joyful experience.

 

[ARay]

Well they are implementing changes slowly. I read a few days back they were introducing grading system rather percentages. Is it true by any chance?

 

[King Cricket]

^ Yes, it is. The grading system was introduced in WBBSE (West Bengal Board of Secondary Education) in 2007 I think, and now the other two boards we have in the country (CBSE and ICSE) are planning its implementation as well.

 

[P Squared]

They have implemented the grades system but its of no use since its still based on the marks system. You'll have 40 questions each with different weightage of marks. The examiners will just add them up and if you get between 90-100 you get A+.

This isnt good.