IIT Ramaiah interview about the students, mothers and INDIA

I was fortunate to listen to an interview with Sri Ramaiah broadcasted in Radio. I should thank my roommie sandeep, who made this new habit of listening to Radio. This was broadcasted on Independence Day, August 15th. Below are the excerpts from the interview.

First Let me introduce who is Ramaiah. He is an educationalish. You can find more information about him Here.

Can we call our progress on BPO as a development?

No, certainly. India has the capability of producing the real researchers. We should not be stopped and satisfied by the BPO work that we are getting from the foreign countries. This work is a mechanical work. It does not demand the use of the intelligence of our country man.

We need to establish the true companies which will work on the technology and get the break through in the technology.

When can a mother know her child is intelligent?

He answered this question very beautifully. What is the meaning of intelligence?

At the early days of independence our people considered the person who is able to talk English fluently as intelligent.

Now the meaning of intelligence is changed. Intelligence is the ability to question why. And able to get the answer, understand it and use it.

The problem with the students from the Indian origin is they fear to question..!

The role of mothers in this modern India is to encourage the children to question. They should not discourage them when they ask the questions. This education system should not be a bottleneck to the natural thinking process of a child.

What does the Indian education system should do …? What is the direction in which the student should work?

Here he gave an example, when he went to USA. He talked with some of the professors in the university. He asked a question. What is the difference that you have observed between the Indian student, Chinese student and an American one?

The professor said. When I give a problem to solve, Indian student will try to formulate the problem in Math and then solves the problem. Also gives a decent proof to it.

Where as a Chinese student he directly goes to an apparatus and does number of experiments and gets the result. Then he tries to correlate it with the math and tries to achieve the mathematical proof to it.

Where as an American one he talks with both these fellows and goes to the professor along with them and explains the concept to the professor in a much better way than the Indian and Chinese.

So what we can observe here is Indian education system needs to give more importance to the practical knowledge. Just giving a proof in math is not enough. We also need to look into the practical view how it is really working.

What India needed?

India needs good teachers and mothers, who can encourage the students to learn, to experiment.