41–50 of 72 posts
> reservation system for the admission of scheduled castes and others residing at the bottom of India's socioeconomic pyramid Correction: it's social pyramid only. Classification of SC/STs is purely based on caste alone, not on economic status -- and we must fight to make it economic -only pyramid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a random sample. How different was your lab session compared to http://engr.case.edu/merat_francis/eecs245/EECS%20245%20Syll... ?
> This is a random sample. Some pedantry: It was an anecdote. A random sample is multiple data points drawn randomly from a population. GP only provided one, and you suspected it might be an outlier.
> reservation system for the admission of scheduled castes and others residing at the bottom of India's socioeconomic pyramid Correction: it's social pyramid only. Classification of SC/STs is purely based on caste alone, not on economic status -- and we must fight to make it economic -only pyramid.
Why would an "economic-only pyramid" be a better thing? It's not obvious to me that this is an easier goal than not having a pyramid at all.
> reservation system for the admission of scheduled castes and others residing at the bottom of India's socioeconomic pyramid Correction: it's social pyramid only. Classification of SC/STs is purely based on caste alone, not on economic status -- and we must fight to make it economic -only pyramid.
As an outsider, I would certainly agree with your comment. Caste quotas seem like they would only strengthen the system... Still, how synonymous is caste with economic status? I would guess "very" but your post makes it seem like there are some interesting nuances. What are India's caste demographics, anyway?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an outsider, I would certainly agree with your comment. Caste quotas seem like they would only strengthen the system... Still, how synonymous is caste with economic status? I would guess "very" but your post makes it seem like there are some interesting nuances. What are India's caste demographics, anyway?
Initially caste based quota was chosen because they were discriminated against by the society for a really long time. The profession one would go in was based on the caste they were born into. A barber's son would be barber, a cleaner's son would be cleaner. Here is one example : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devadasi . People from certain caste are still socially backward while other caste have managed to come out. T…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll clarify. I'll make no comments about medicine - I know nothing about education in this field. The bachelors programs in the IITs are great, by global standards. IISc does some cool work too. Leaving those aside, a BS in engineering (called BE or BTech here) is not bad. We have some outdated courses, we don't have the freedom to choose courses, etc. But for most of our courses, we use the same textbooks as Americ…
> I suppose we have similar kinds of lab sessions too. No! Not by far. The "lab sessions" in a typical non-IIT Indian engineering institutes are a joke. Ever heard of the Borland Turbo C compiler? Yeah, that's still used to teach students C/C++, with outdated (and non-standard) code. I've had similarly horrible experience in any and all labs, be it circuits and systems, networking, or whatever else you might think of…
So THAT'S where all the bizarre Turbo C++ questions on Stack Overflow are coming from! I've always wondered.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I suppose we have similar kinds of lab sessions too. No! Not by far. The "lab sessions" in a typical non-IIT Indian engineering institutes are a joke. Ever heard of the Borland Turbo C compiler? Yeah, that's still used to teach students C/C++, with outdated (and non-standard) code. I've had similarly horrible experience in any and all labs, be it circuits and systems, networking, or whatever else you might think of…
This is a random sample. How different was your lab session compared to http://engr.case.edu/merat_francis/eecs245/EECS%20245%20Syll... ?
Lecturing from a book, or from notes, is sometimes the right thing to do, especially when teaching to students who will have trouble following the class otherwise (by lack of discipline, by just being unused to that way of teaching or simply if they can't afford the references book you are asking them to read, or don't have the time to do that).
The most important is what the student get from the class, not how elite or interactive the teacher is.
If most students understand better after rote learning some dictated notes - why not do that?
After all, it is a good way to ensure the majority of students will have a proper base material to learn from, without too many mistakes thrown in, especially if they can't offer books. If they can "do better", don't worry, top students will use their notes as what they truly are - base material, a list of keywords to build their knowledge from, with the help of google or books.
professor told us the entire Mahabharata epic from memory ... this professor exemplified passionate teaching.
See, memory can be helpful.
One needs both memory and understanding. The US system seems to overemphasize understanding. Other systems may overemphasize understanding.
I would not call either system "balanced".
real education being one that challenges the intellect and questions paradigms, not one of rote memorization and conformity
That's biased. How can you challenge the intellect and question paradigms if you don't know them in the first place?
There is a time for everything. Maybe a 3rd year college is not the best moment to question paradigms.
I had a history professor who attended Berkeley in the 60s. He recalled the instructional methods used by one of his own professors at Berkeley: He simply got up to the podium, opened a textbook, and started reading. There was no discussion or chances to ask questions. As I recall, he indicated that this was a method of lecturing that had its roots in European academia. A question for HNers from India: With such a lo…
Most of the US educated academicians who teach in India are normally at the IITs (engineering schools) and IIMs (management schools). The teaching styles of professors at these schools are identical to US schools, however their effectiveness is debatable. To be fair to them, they are usually ham-strung by institution-wide regulations such as a guideline that 80% of the grade be determined by a mid-term and a final (I…
Part of the reason why the best students used to go abroad was because there were a lot more job opportunities in the US after a graduate degree. This is changing now with MSR India, Intel Research India, GE Research, TCS Research and so on becoming well-established labs in their own right. The job scenario for academic jobs in India is way better than it is in the US and a moderately competent candidate can easily get jobs now at an IIT/IISER/ISI.
As someone who is keenly following higher education in India, I think the state of higher education is better than ever and rapidly improving. An easy way of judging this is to look at where our students are ending up. The best undergrads in India today invariably end up at the best schools in the world. This wasn't true 30 years and there are many examples of really high quality IIT graduates who studied in mid-tier US schools. Even students from second-tier schools like, say CEG Guindy or NIT Surathkul, now end up at very very good universities. The situation is less good in the humanities and social sciences, which btw are struggling the world over, but some of the newer IITs have social science and humanities departments and some progress is being made [1].
[1] http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/2013/01/sukhdeo-thorat-on-so...
The author of this article tweeted a response by a Professor from the same college: http://kafila.org/2013/05/06/the-golchakkar-of-premier-insti...