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Tamil Nadu

Stress on diversity in education

Photo: M. Govarthan

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There are several positive attributes to this academic of over 30 years, but the reason why his ideas find a mention in these columns is because he gets to guide, teach and move with some of the country’s best young minds, who come to him at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, of which he is the Director. As somebody who builds upon students’ school-acquired knowledge, M.S. Ananth says he is worried about the State Government’s proposed move to bring in uniformity in education. “I’m worried about it because like biodiversity there has to be diversity in education. It is like evolution, where the best automatically survives,” he tells Karthik Madhavan.

“And, just because someone has power, he or she cannot arbitrarily decide what is best for others. In fact, it will turn counterproductive. The long and short of is that we need democracy in education.” While calling for retention of democracy in education, Dr. Ananth likes to see a few changes in the system. The first, West-induced myth about our education system is that rote learning is bad. “I disagree. Rote learning per se is not bad. And, is also not the root cause of evil in education system, as is portrayed. In fact, what it is does is it puts a lot of things in students’ memory, which they must think, analyse and correlate, and which is what education is all about. Like cow chewing the cud the students must be taught to sit and analyse.”

The education system has not given students enough time to sit and digest, because there is so much to be learnt and the teaching happens quickly, he points out and suggests that students be given enough time to digest what they have learnt. The academic further defends rote learning saying it comes easily to the students, particularly those in the Orient. “It is quite natural to us because it is in our cultures. It is like slokas or other useful messages put in to us through fables at a young age when we may not understand. But it strikes us at a later age, when we will understand the wisdom of it. Besides, by stopping rote learning, we are not going to make the students intelligent.”

The second of his suggestion for change is in the examination pattern. “Unfortunately, education has come to be equated with exam, and the widely prevalent notion in the society is that the purpose of education is to take an exam and get a certificate,” he says and quips, “If you give post-dated certificates to students, most will not come to college.” Further he says, “The method of evaluating answer papers, particularly in State Board, is a cause for concern, because the time is short. It depends on keywords. Say for example, if the answer has to have keywords A and B, a student will get marks if he writes A is the cause of B and also A is not the cause of B.”

He suggests an examination system that tests students’ understanding and not memory. Dr. Ananth shares his views on the issue of not many students opting for research as well. “If a candidate comes with an eye on making money, I don’t want him. I want him to be genuinely interested in research, and as in Hindu mythology Lakshmi, the goddess of money, and Saraswathi, the goddess of learning, do not go together.”

Sharing his IIT experience, he says though some provisions were made for research scholars to earn, they did not avail it for long; they returned to academics. “I think we are passing through a phase where there is shortage of research scholars. I think we are also being a little impatient,” he points out. In the same breath, the director of one the Country’s premier institution also takes head on the industry’s harp of engineering graduates not being employable. “I am not training graduates to be ready for employment by industry. I am training them to refine their mind, to give them fundamentals,” he says.

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