What Did Lod Macalay Intent to Do?
Macaulay didn’t want Indians use their brains. He intended to “form a class who may be interpreters between us & the millions we govern.” His education policy did the same. It pushed us to the lowest layer of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Those “slave-forming” concepts crept into engineering education as well..
TWELVE Macaulay-Aftereffects that Slow Down Atmanirbhar Bharat. i-Max is All about Rectifying Them!
1. We Lack a Do-it-Yourself (DIY) Culture. Children in industrialised nations regularly join their parents to repair their car, fix appliances, furniture at home. They ingrain engineering ideas well before they join an engineering course & easily associate theory with practical things. Our students lack this home-training, and can’t associate theory-intense syllabus with anything.
2. The Concept of Efficiency & Waste Reduction is Alien to Us. Engineering innovations are all about increasing efficiency, reducing wastage, & improving convenience. Students abroad hold these axioms in their DNA, and look for ways and means to identify opportunities to apply them.
3. We Fail to Appreciate Our Own New Ideas. Developed countries visibly applaud new ideas for their own merits. They create an ecosystem where even students think they too can develop ideas. Most of us are reluctant to look into a new idea on merit – especially if its origin is in India.
4. We Usually Ignore ‘Qualitative Analysis’. Most of the competing products in the market are commoditized and meet the same “tangible” technical specs. But the real success of products and services are in their “intangibles” values. We don’t think of the ways to build “intangibles.”
5. We don’t Create or Follow Systems, Processes & Procedures. In developed countries, they are of paramount importance. We visibly take pride in “Jugaad” – or workaround. Jugaad is a concept against principles of engineering, as there is no process to ensure consistent outcomes.
6. We Believe ‘Remembering’ is ‘Knowledge’. Even though the ancient Indian educational system never considered rote-learning as knowledge, the British system of creating clerks made us believe it. We put all efforts into mug-up more, more – believing that is THE “Knowledge.”
7. We Don’t Speak or Ask. We Use Dumb Read-Write System. We are stuck with “reading” & “writing” – passive activities instead of “listening & speaking”, most active homo sapien actions. Other countries use oral exams to elicit critical thinking – not to parrot known definitions.
8. We Believe All Innovations are Purely Technical. We don’t show any interest beyond definitions, derivations, equations and solved problems. We think everything else is “blah-blah”. We miss the essence – its logic, origination, evolution, processes, why it exists, its applications, its economics, its potential – in reality, we miss seeds for further innovations & new applications.
9. We Shun Cross-Functional Knowledge. We put ourselves to water-tight compartments of our domains. However, the modern world is ruled by cross-functional product/project specialists who focus on inventing targeted solutions. No product/solution comes from a single domain.
10. We Believe Entrepreneurship is only for the Unemployed. In reality, entrepreneurship is the ultimate expression of one’s all-round knowledge. With our day-to-day conduct, we glorify salaried job, vilify entrepreneurship & don’t do much to reverse the trend.
11. We Think ‘Language’ is ONLY for Literature Students. “Engineering-wisdom” can be acquired only by ingraining the essence of key subjects. It needs a good command of language to comprehend reference books, research papers, technical videos, interviews, forums, blogs etc.
12. We Think Every Student is Destined to be a Researcher: This approach makes almost every student unemployable as they are conditioned to avoid the “active” professional skills industry seeks. In fact, only 0.3% of jobs are in research. Other countries find successes in research by building passion for the subject, & by offering professional challenges.
How Does i-Max Modify the Above Concepts?
i-Max is transformatory. It is created based on latest learning theories, and delivered using the appropriate technologies. i-Max has over one hundred intereactive learning modules that students can imbibe during the tenure of their course without faculty intervention.
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