What is wrong with the Indian education system?
9th standard:PTA meetingPhysics Teacher: Your son is very smart. He is hardworking too. Dad: Thanks sir! He studies well. He is passionate about physics.Physics Teacher: Yes. He has what it takes to be an IAS Officer. Prepare him for Civil Services. He would be a great officer.Dad: That's good to hear sir. I am just a 9th standard guy. All I knew was that I loved applying physics to daily life activities. I knew I loved Maths too. But I did not know about my future. I did not know what I would be or what I wanted to be. I approached my teacher the next day.Class - the next day:Me: Sir. I like physics. What is its future.Physics Teacher: The future of physics is full of possibilities. There is infinite scope for exploring the field.Me: Then why did you want me to be an IAS Officer.Physics Teacher: Its a very stable job. You get security. You can get others to do your work for you. You will have many servants. You can earn very much. Even though the salary from government is less, you get lots of gifts (not so subtle). If you pursue physics, you can't earn much. Home:Mom: How did the meeting go. Dad: Great! His teacher told me that he has what it takes to even crack Civil Services.Mom: He's too young. Let us give him a few years before we push him towards his goals. (My mother is a professor. I am lucky. Not all are lucky to be afforded this freedom.)Conclusion:I tell my teacher I like his subject. He tells me it has good future. But money is the ultimate objective and it has less scope to earn money. He tells me to pursue another field. I feel there is something fundamentally wrong if we educate our younger generation that one field has more priority over another. All are equal. It just depends on one's passion towards a field and a drive to pursue it.As someone said: "Where would they be if Lata Mangeshkar picked up a cricket bat and Sachin Tendulkar became a singer."
Will liberal college professors give a student worse grades if they know they are conservative?
Professors are less inclined to but I have a problem in my tutorials where we break up into smaller groups and work on assignments and reading. My tutor will do her best to present all arguments from a liberal stand point. Example being X war had no justification at all or Y leader was terrible because he did one thing bad. So one day we have to write an essay on something. I won't say what. But we had to talk about whether an event was a good thing or not. I said yes while everyone else said no. I backed up every point, read through half a dozen books and articles, wrote 2100 words on a 2000 word essay (no one else got above 2000), handed it in and got the lowest grade in the group. So a week later I just had to ask why. Well, it turns out I had given the wrong answer. By the way, our whole first lecture was basically the professor telling us how as long as you support your conclusion with evidence then certain events are open to interpretationSo I asked her which bits I got wrong so I could repeat the assignment.“All of it” she said (FYI she is technically a qualified lecturer with a PhD)“But which bits I mean if it's wrong I need to know so I can stop reading from the books”“Look. You got it wrong. You're supposed to explain why it was wrong”The title of the question What were the positive and negative impacts of X in the following time period and do you think overall it was good for the country or not? Please use at least 5 sources (slightly paraphrased)So my classmates who all told me they only used 3 sources and bragged about getting away with a B for it, and from what I could see had bad punctuation and spelling just by a momentary glance as they showed me their grade. Yet I only got a C. I had no constructive criticism or comments on my essay, no real explanation and a low grade. The only explanation left is she didn't agree with the content. None of it was factually incorrect. Half my essay talked about why it was good, the other half why it was bad. There was no bias. And one could easily arrive at either conclusion. Yet, mine was doomed for it had been written by a conservative.Yes you may well get slightly downgraded if you present a liberal professor with an essay on a conservative viewpoint that doesn't fit in with their “facts”, even if you use evidence and cite it every way you can