They did it. They went and trashed IIT-JEE. The one sense of pride I had in qualifying arguably the “toughest undergraduate selection procedure in the world” has been taken from me. What is being touted as a replacement is nothing less than a slap on the face of all those who spent restless hours spread over innumerable nights trembling with trepidation over what was going to confront them inside the examination hall on that fateful day. The day you gave the JEE. There was no escaping the gravity of the moment. The absolute elation of coming out of the hall and discovering that you got at least one of the 10 questions right and that put you right in the top percentile of all the gawking trembling guys on the campus. I ask you, will the guys giving JEE now have any of the amazing memories to share that we have? Will they ever understand the joy of spending an entire weekend to solve just one question of Irodov and exulting at the thought that they had just entered the Physics’ extremely-long-walk-to-the-hall-of-fame?
And I haven’t even started to trash the explanation that they have come up with to justify this travesty. Apparently they feel that this drastic (try foolhardy) measure is absolutely necessary to cull the “Influence of Coaching Classes”. They are trying to tell me that all my God level friends who made it to the topmost percentile among all of us (try top 100 AIR) were bumbling idiots who made it across the hurdle of those measly 30 questions (10 each in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) just because they got together in some stupid little classroom for 2 years and practiced hard to crack the paper. Let me tell the esteemed people right up there trying to make life easier for poor little students that if I had strained all the muscles that make up my brain and added the ones in my peripheral nervous system just for extra effect and just as a contingency plan prayed standing on one foot to the entire Hindu pantheon for 2 continuous years and then gone to give the paper while my friend had just woken up from a year long slumber and come to give the paper in his nightgown, his position would still have been AIR 1 and I would still be passing off mine as my ELO rating! The people who made it across did not do it because they were coached to do so! They did it because they had it in themselves to understand the magic of complex numbers and the beauty of interfering light waves. These geniuses (and I am proud just to have been able to hang out with some of them) could solve linear differential equations in their sleep. Now I went to these so called “Education Sweat shops” myself and believe me that it took me an entire day to close my jaw once I saw an AIR 3 give the correct answers to 10 straight integrals in a MATHS QUIZ RAPID FIRE ROUND. If the gravity of the above situation doesn’t strike you, consider this. The time span for the answers was 60 seconds. That means that the guy heard and answered 10 integrals at the rate of one per 6 seconds! Hell, I can’t draw the integral sign that quick.
If anyone benefited from these coaching classes, then yes I raise my hand. My muddled wits were cleared by attending these places where just by being around smart people made me take a peek into the fascinating world of Organic bio-molecules and their electron affinities. Kind of the best example of a Pygmalion effect. And I ask you – is that so wrong? Just because I got “tutored” and got better at science through hard labor with some guidance, is it justification enough to turn a winner’s circle into a dance floor for all? By this particular argument, I would recommend that all Corporates roll up their HR departments and ask them to go home because isn’t skill improvement of employees through relevant coaching an integral condition of their employment? Hell, by that same argument, I would call upon the Government to close up first its HRD ministry and then the entire education system so that only the meritorious shall rise to the required positions by displaying their ingenuity. By that same argument every person should rediscover the wheel and the theory of relativity in his lifetime. If coaching were so bad, then we should abhor transfer of knowledge. Every wannabe engineer might just as well stay back home and demonstrate that he can understand the meshing of gears and then he wouldn’t need to go to the college to become a certified Mechanical Engineer would he? And it is not that these Coaching Classes are running a Mafia racket or anything where either you go to them or leave your dream in the garbage. Last I checked they still operated within the limits of democratic principles where the choice of enrollment was with the student! I have myself known quite a lot of people who have made it through the hallowed portals on their very own. So where is the all pervasive problem I ask you?
This entire situation is like hacking away at the problem that never was. If you wanted to reduce the stress associated with the exam, try and reduce the exclusivity that is so associated with being an Engineer or a Doctor in this country. Try to make a scientist as glamorous as a Computer Engineer and you will have a good start to a healthy solution. You cannot hope to reduce stress at the cost of meritocracy. It is like giving the same passing grade irrespective of whether you scored 100% or 80% or 50% because the criteria was that you need to get more than 40%. How do you separate the geniuses from me?
If only parents would realize that the IITs weren’t the end of the world and that my friend who went to DU is earning the same big bucks as my other friend who graduated Summa-cum-Laude CSE IITD some 10 years into their respective careers, there would be lesser hue and cry about exam stress. There would be a more level playing field. There would be happier faces inside each home and lesser phone calls to the psychiatrist! If only the Government would decide to make other fields more lucrative by giving them the necessary infrastructure instead of having meetings on how to reduce examination standards, we would retain the best of both worlds. What we are witnessing today is an attempt to scale Mount Everest. Only, instead of climbing the required 8848 metres a la Tenzing and Hillary, we are trying to blow up the mountain base to bring the peak to the ground.
Happy selecting. May the best brains still win!!!!
And I haven’t even started to trash the explanation that they have come up with to justify this travesty. Apparently they feel that this drastic (try foolhardy) measure is absolutely necessary to cull the “Influence of Coaching Classes”. They are trying to tell me that all my God level friends who made it to the topmost percentile among all of us (try top 100 AIR) were bumbling idiots who made it across the hurdle of those measly 30 questions (10 each in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) just because they got together in some stupid little classroom for 2 years and practiced hard to crack the paper. Let me tell the esteemed people right up there trying to make life easier for poor little students that if I had strained all the muscles that make up my brain and added the ones in my peripheral nervous system just for extra effect and just as a contingency plan prayed standing on one foot to the entire Hindu pantheon for 2 continuous years and then gone to give the paper while my friend had just woken up from a year long slumber and come to give the paper in his nightgown, his position would still have been AIR 1 and I would still be passing off mine as my ELO rating! The people who made it across did not do it because they were coached to do so! They did it because they had it in themselves to understand the magic of complex numbers and the beauty of interfering light waves. These geniuses (and I am proud just to have been able to hang out with some of them) could solve linear differential equations in their sleep. Now I went to these so called “Education Sweat shops” myself and believe me that it took me an entire day to close my jaw once I saw an AIR 3 give the correct answers to 10 straight integrals in a MATHS QUIZ RAPID FIRE ROUND. If the gravity of the above situation doesn’t strike you, consider this. The time span for the answers was 60 seconds. That means that the guy heard and answered 10 integrals at the rate of one per 6 seconds! Hell, I can’t draw the integral sign that quick.
If anyone benefited from these coaching classes, then yes I raise my hand. My muddled wits were cleared by attending these places where just by being around smart people made me take a peek into the fascinating world of Organic bio-molecules and their electron affinities. Kind of the best example of a Pygmalion effect. And I ask you – is that so wrong? Just because I got “tutored” and got better at science through hard labor with some guidance, is it justification enough to turn a winner’s circle into a dance floor for all? By this particular argument, I would recommend that all Corporates roll up their HR departments and ask them to go home because isn’t skill improvement of employees through relevant coaching an integral condition of their employment? Hell, by that same argument, I would call upon the Government to close up first its HRD ministry and then the entire education system so that only the meritorious shall rise to the required positions by displaying their ingenuity. By that same argument every person should rediscover the wheel and the theory of relativity in his lifetime. If coaching were so bad, then we should abhor transfer of knowledge. Every wannabe engineer might just as well stay back home and demonstrate that he can understand the meshing of gears and then he wouldn’t need to go to the college to become a certified Mechanical Engineer would he? And it is not that these Coaching Classes are running a Mafia racket or anything where either you go to them or leave your dream in the garbage. Last I checked they still operated within the limits of democratic principles where the choice of enrollment was with the student! I have myself known quite a lot of people who have made it through the hallowed portals on their very own. So where is the all pervasive problem I ask you?
This entire situation is like hacking away at the problem that never was. If you wanted to reduce the stress associated with the exam, try and reduce the exclusivity that is so associated with being an Engineer or a Doctor in this country. Try to make a scientist as glamorous as a Computer Engineer and you will have a good start to a healthy solution. You cannot hope to reduce stress at the cost of meritocracy. It is like giving the same passing grade irrespective of whether you scored 100% or 80% or 50% because the criteria was that you need to get more than 40%. How do you separate the geniuses from me?
If only parents would realize that the IITs weren’t the end of the world and that my friend who went to DU is earning the same big bucks as my other friend who graduated Summa-cum-Laude CSE IITD some 10 years into their respective careers, there would be lesser hue and cry about exam stress. There would be a more level playing field. There would be happier faces inside each home and lesser phone calls to the psychiatrist! If only the Government would decide to make other fields more lucrative by giving them the necessary infrastructure instead of having meetings on how to reduce examination standards, we would retain the best of both worlds. What we are witnessing today is an attempt to scale Mount Everest. Only, instead of climbing the required 8848 metres a la Tenzing and Hillary, we are trying to blow up the mountain base to bring the peak to the ground.
Happy selecting. May the best brains still win!!!!
1 comment:
always felt that it took something to be 1000 ranks ahead of AIR 2000 and something else to be in top 100 and something else to be in top 10 and something else to be top 1!!
Don't know what the situation might be ! But I feel- However the filter be, The residue always is left back...Nice post....keep posting more..
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