Quality or Quantity ?

What would you choose? Quality of course! Even I would. But take the example of the style of education in AP. It's something I was noticing from the past many years, and this was bound to come. Where's the quality at any stage of learning?

I hear weird stuff like IIT coaching starting right from Class 6 in a few schools. That's sounds heavily impractical to me! As it is, there are schools that run upto 9PM when exams are round the corner. And they want to add this to that? Don't know what students could become after going through all this. This kinda stuff produces magical results! Like 99.9% score in the board exam. But ask the student where his house is, and he'll take a whole minute to say that... And had his school forced him to stay upto 10PM, he would have scored 100% and completely forgotten the way to his house!

The next stage being the ever-famous and ever-memorable Intermediate education. If it's intermediate, it's nothing but pressure. I could see that clearly in my own case. Coming out of a "normal" school, all these timings and competitions took me by surprise. The pressure turned me upside down and I flatly refused to study. Inspite of that, I could consider myself lucky for having good teachers (only 1-2 actually). We never had any rigorous EAMCET training or anything like that. But I used to hear from friends from other colleges about their timings and the hardcore training they underwent. Though it's true that I didn't score like the others, I wasn't far away. And considering the effort put in, maybe I did 10% of what the others did. Anyway, my case is totally off, compared to what's happening today. Colleges want to run even at night. Maybe they should stop sending students back home. They'd better setup camps in the college and live there for those 2 hectic years! The competition is cut-throat. Get a rank below 1000 or jump off the building! The colleges are like that, the students are like that and parents too! Everyone wants pressure, everyone wants success at the cost of anything. Maybe even health and life. I am happy I lived a very normal life during that phase. Attended college upto 5PM (which I felt was horrible), played soccer in the evening, watched TV at night and slept peacefully. No tension, no competition, no pressure and no nights-out. With the recent competitive exams' results being released, this post had to come! I read in the papers, students doing well in Intermediate, fared badly in the competitive exams and vice-versa. Both are not normal students. Infact, the ones who did 'ok' in both should be considered normal. Giving importance to all kinds of learning is the most important thing in life. If you live an EAMCET life for a whole year, you're bound to get the top result, but you'll remain a no-hoper in everything else. Ofcourse there'll be exceptions in every case. But the silliest thing I ever came across is the over-publicity of these corporate colleges on television. All of them declaring the stunning stuff they achieved and the students being made to look like superstars. Most of them cannot even talk properly and all they can say is, "It was because of the inspiration from the college and the materials they gave". Oh! We have a new Bible here, College Material. And the craziest thing is that, one college claims the student is from there and one more claims the same! I thought in competitive exams, students fight mental wars against examiners. But no! Students war against students and colleges war against colleges. That's the beautiful trend we are going through right now, and I am thankful I finished that phase without stepping a foot into that war. One paper rightly quoted an Einstein saying that goes something like, "A person who learns without feeling it, will end up like a well-trained dog"!!

And lastly comes our great Engineering ofcourse! We all know we can't live without those "All-in-One" books. And can't survive a test without copying. A day before the exam, we try to know about every cubic-inch of the Pacific Ocean, and write "Happy Days" stories on the exam paper. Maybe we were 'atleast' well-trained dogs until now (which in itself is an insult), and now we have turned into street dogs that deserve to be thrown into the City Pound...

I say, "Open Your Eyes, you wretched Mortals!!"