Special Update: I received one of my other assignment entitled "Whats in it for me" after it was graded and my professor made an observation that my writing style is a bit too harsh. He observed that my "tone is angry, perhaps even snide, but I cannot find any evidence in your article supporting your assertions." Well, the article above is supposed to be an opinion piece, and I have not cited, and will probably never be able to cite, any sources in a bibliography. This article just voices my own opinion. And opinions of mere mortals like me may change some time later - Only the fools and the gods dont change. Secondly I want to say something about my writing style. I never try to "make" any of my writings polished. All of the posts here on this blog are the first drafts. In fact all of my essays, project reports, articles, etc that I have ever written till date are the first and only drafts. I write in a "stream of conciousness" fashion. And I never proofread any of them. Also, I wasnt aware till now that my language is angry. Nobody ever told me that. Of course my previous professors called my articles "cold and hard-hitting", but I never drew any conclusions. I am sorry if I had ruffled a few feathers because of that.
The race for being the better one…
Hrishikesh Choudhari.
Champlain College, Burlington, VT, USA.
March, 2009.
Champlain College, Burlington, VT, USA.
March, 2009.
Coming from India, which many Westerners still think is a country of snake charmers and naked godmen, I had high respect for American education. I also had high expectations. I study in Champlain in the Software Engineering program. However, on the third day of classes itself I found that the professors are wasting my time. In many classes they were saying anything that I already knew, while in other classes I wouldn’t have any idea of what the professor is talking about. I spoke to my friends here and they too were in the same boat. I decided that I shall do something about it. Being an outsider, I was aware that I would be taken seriously by the authorities. I observed my classmates and my professors – why they were doing whatever they were doing. For two months I kept observing.
The students here don’t like the general studies courses. They think it is a waste of their precious time. They have all the more reasons to dislike these courses because their books are priced much higher than average, and they have to buy multiple books, ranging from 3 to 7. The books often have high literary value, but this is lost on the students.
I understand that the intent of the syllabus formulators must be noble, but the intent should be carried through in the implementation as well. Such courses often help creative people draw on inspiration in their field of work. Often the most overarching works in computers were accomplished by drawing on inspirations and metaphors from other fields. The reason why milestone products such as the Macintosh and the iPod are so intuitive is because their creators were artists - painters, singers, philosophers, dramatists. But they also happened to be the best computer engineers, and their creative influences enabled them to create products that are not just commodities but jewels in the industry. The students should be impressed upon by giving such examples. And it should be done repeatedly. Not only during the orientation sessions. Good professors often highlight this importance during the course of the program, but smart students are generally skeptical whenever a professor gets into “this-is-important-because..” mode. This should be done by some higher authority, or better still, someone from outside the institution.
My other observations led me to find that the teachers in C++ are very hands-on and make sure that each and every student’s queries are answered in the classroom itself. I say this at least with respect to the software professors. We have a code jamming session in every lecture. Code fills our class. During the class, the professor writes a program from scratch, exemplifying whatever concept / chapter we are doing. During this session, all of the syntax, libraries, and minor errors are discussed. The students (or at least myself) gain a full understanding of the concept. What happens at Champlain (and I guess in the whole the United States) is that during the class the professor just elaborates on the esoteric points of the concept, spending time on speaking about the rarest exceptions that occurred in his/her career before he/she became a professor. I just gaze at the professor and have no idea of the underlying concept.
Let me give you an example. Let’s saying I am learning a new language (computer or spoken). The first step should be to teach the alphabet of that language. Then the grammar. Then phrases. Then sentences. However in Champlain, after having breezed over the alphabet, the teacher then jumps to figures of speech, and as a real life example squeezes in Shakespeare’s exquisite work. As an assignment we get to write an essay. How, at the lord’s mercy, are we going to write a whole essay having just learned the alphabet? But we are left to figure it out and complete the assignment.
Maybe I am picking too much here. But I am highly dissatisfied with the way a technical class is being conducted by American professors. Maybe they were taught the same way. But then there isn’t much value coming from the teacher to the student. The real value then comes from the websites we get our answers from. And then, rightfully so, we start to respect that website more than the professor in the classroom. I don’t know if this is due to the cultural differences between the 2 countries (or is it because of my learning habits that are attuned to Indian habits).
At the end of the day, what we see are huge numbers of American students dropping off from American colleges, and the respect for professors declining. In India, either the students don’t make it to engineering colleges, or else become full blown delinquents. This difference in teaching has some sociological consequences too. Due to the Indian teaching pattern, Indian institutes produce a huge load of efficient software engineers. They students know what they are supposed to do, and they do it efficiently. This method has worked out well, and India now has reached critical mass of software engineers available. Maybe that’s why we get them cheap. On the other hand, the American method produces a few geniuses and a big mass of mediocre engineers who cannot compete with the engineers from India. The American geniuses who graduate know how to do new and innovative things. The mass produced Indian engineers know how to implement and maintain those new things. The average American software engineer is left in the dust.
In conclusion, the combination of Indian professors with American curriculum is utopia. Champlain has always tried to be at the cutting edge of education and has prepared the new CORE curriculum. I am taking one course with a legendary professor who also taught for one semester in India. But again, the intent of the formulators is indeed very noble, but this intent is lost on the students. Nowadays students don’t need to know only their books, but also why they are doing those books. Relevance is the key word here. Meritocratic education is the gift that American had given to the rest of the world. It is time the giver keeps up the value of the gift.
We can't afford mediocrity when competing with Indian kids: Obama 20 Mar, 2009 0051hrs IST IANS 
WASHINGTON: "We can't afford our kids to be mediocre at a time when they're competing against kids in China and kids in India," US President Barack Obama has said.
Interacting with local residents at California's Costa Mesa town hall Wednesday, Obama said, "It can't just be a single high-stakes standardized test — but we do need to have strong, powerful measures of performance, because schools are like anything else."
"We can't afford our kids to be mediocre at a time when they're competing against kids in China and kids in India who are actually in school about a month longer than our kids. So, there's a whole bunch of reforms that we're going to have to do," Los Angeles Times quoted him as saying.
He exhorted American parents not to put "all the burden on a teacher".
"If you're not making sure your child does his homework, if you're not reading to them, instilling a sense of excellence and a thirst for knowledge in them, then they're not going to do very well, no matter how good your teacher is. Okay, so that's very important," he said.
Referring to the AIG bonuses, Obama said: "I know a lot of you are outraged about this. I'm outraged, too. It's hard to understand that a company that is relying on extraordinary assistance from taxpayers to keep its doors open would be paying anyone lavish bonuses. It goes against our most basic sense of what is fair and what is right. It offends our values."
He went on to say that these bonuses, "outrageous as they are", are a symptom of a much larger problem.
"And that is the system and culture that made them possible - a culture where people made enormous sums for taking irresponsible risks that have now put the whole economy at risk. So we are going to do everything we can to deal with these specific bonuses."
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