You thought your school was bad?

[mdrnprometheus]

Girl dies after allegedly being made to stand outside in sun as punishment

My comments about the state of primary/secondary education in India would fill a small book. It ain't good.

Comments

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Disheartening -- our Indian students come to CMU-Q so much more prepared than their non-Indian counterparts, I felt the Indian education system must be doing something right.

[mdrnprometheus]

Well, OK. I should clarify "It ain't good." It does, in fact, have higher expectations in terms of factual knowledge than US secondary education. This is consistent with the perception that "Asian" students do better on standardized tests.

Where it falls down, IMHO, is in teaching anything resembling true functional skills. There seems to me to be a high emphasis on rote memorization and factual knowledge, as opposed to understanding things on a conceptual level. It's also very much a "an authority says this" model, which doesn't really work well given how fast scientific knowledge changes.

So, you'll get people who can handle any CMU programming assignment with ease, but who would not necessarily do well at, say, trying to invent a new kind of application or adapt easily to technology they hadn't trained with.

[shmike95]

I hate people.