> A few years back, when complaints were made against rote learning, schools have begun to give 'home projects' to kids, ostensibly to improve their creative skills. However, these projects devolved into internet searches, copy-pasting online articles and pictures and calling it a day.
That's not really unique, many American school children do the same for their homework. It's a time-honored tradition (at least since the internet has existed).
Sometimes I wonder if the whole point of school isn't just to teach children how to game systems, which will be a useful skill in corporate jobs.
You can design homework in a way that it's easier to solve yourself than copy the answer. Unfortunately, that's a lot of work so that few teachers do it. But I had several where copy-pasting never worked.
I was relatively young in the long-long-ago when there was no internet. I rephrased things from encyclopedias and biographies because the original wording was long and I was lazy. I'm unsure if that counts the same as copy-pasting because I still had to read and have a basic understand of what I'd read.
It's possible people who were older at the time just straight-up copied the text though. I wouldn't be surprised.
No - foreigners (ie non Indians / Chinese etc) are missing this fact : there’s 40 students to 1 teacher in india, or more.
The exam and grading workload is unserviceable.
This is the crux of it.
And it’s the crux of MANY MANY other problems human beings face every day!
Recruitment ? How do you prove that this person is actually an expert in his field/as good as he says he is withiut tying up my entire tech team in test checking?
Online communication ? How do I know this information is correct? Who can provide proof of work for this comment?
Testing is onerous- And when incentives and resources are inverted/out of Sync, it’s not possible to test effectively.
This is the hidden factor.
If all Indian/Chinese teachers could turn around tomorrow and complete assessments accurately, rote learning would drop dramatically.
Failing that you must resort to large scale standardized testing. Which humans optimize for by just learning the test.
The standard testing in India, at-least for engineering, medicine, civil services and CA is unforgivingly fierce. Kids sacrifice everything, like everything to qualify for a seat at engineering colleges. Even in so called tier-2/3 colleges seats for Electronics/Electrical/CS go like hot cakes. I remember in my batch all students were the top most Math students in their individual pre-university colleges.
In many ways these exams are a giant filter to select people into STEM careers. The effects last way after. Even the most successful non-STEM desk job guy will tell you the immense difference STEM and non-STEM salaries, overall job perks and career quality in general. And kids watch their uncles and elder cousins in these situations all the time. And are forced to work hard.
Every year these tests get harder, and kids train even more harder.
I have younger cousins in US, and I jokingly tell them they won't last a few months in the fierce competition here in India.
But like everything, continuity is required. Once people arrive at jobs. They sort of lose all the momentum, coast around and eventually to settle to mediocrity. Or worse resort to politics and things like that.
>No - foreigners (ie non Indians / Chinese etc) are missing this fact : there’s 40 students to 1 teacher in india, or more.
Growing up in a poor Seattle suburb in the '80s, that was very close to the (public school) student-teacher ratio we had as well. The school my youngest two attend now is significantly improved in this regard, but I suspect 30+ to one is still not uncommon around the country.
Well, you always had to rephrase it. Being that the number of possible sources were pretty limited it would be easy for the teacher to catch you plagiarizing heh.
That's not really unique, many American school children do the same for their homework. It's a time-honored tradition (at least since the internet has existed).
Sometimes I wonder if the whole point of school isn't just to teach children how to game systems, which will be a useful skill in corporate jobs.