Let me learn - I

Indian education system prepares students known for their perseverance and hard work. They are revered for their in-depth knowledge and self-designed solutions to problems. Still what bothers me is the rigidity of the system that limits the inventive imagination.

In this system, a child has to opt for the discipline that he wants to pursue when he is class 11. From this time onwards he has to study either mathematics, biology, economics or arts. The specialization becomes focused as he graduates, then masters and if desires can further go for a philosophy degree. Now he knows a lot about few things. Besides doing a degree student can also opt for a technical course. But what if he wants to study subjects that fall in categorically separate disciplines?

It is a high time that the system should mature to incorporate the wider perception. Efforts should be made to resolve the individuality of the disciplines and integrate them in a more meaningful manner. Students with diverse knowledge will make illustrious contributions to the research and development programs. As a popular trend, students do a MBA after doing B.Tech and invest extra time, money and resources. This shifting of profession leads to a decrease in the number of trained individuals in the concerned discipline too.

This has steered into a problem where choice of subject is symbolically related to the individual's intellect. The worst hit of this are the students studying arts as it is presumed that they are incapable of studying the other high priority subjects. What if a mathematics student wants to learn painting? He will have to take some time out and look for some other source to learn it from or rather the preferable route is to drop the idea, as it is not going to garner him a career.

All these various disciplines help us to visualize a bigger picture. The amenability of the system will allow them to evolve multidimensionally and study anything under the sun. As a genius like Leonardo da Vinci an avid painter, sculpture, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer if born in today's India will succumb to the system's rigidness.