A question mark '?'

Today, after returning from the college, i asked a question to my mom,

"Whats the use of studying?"

"To gain knowledge" was her answer

Do we really gain knowledge by studying? Being a so called PERFECT student, we all know how to solve a problem but how many of us know why we are solving? To get marks? Whats the use of getting marks by solving a problem without knowing its applications? Being a so called OUTSTANDING student, we know the formula for area of a circle, but how many of us know how the formula arrived? How many of us know the meaning of pi? Being a so called TOPPER, we know the value of Pi, 3.141592654, but do we really know why the hell we are using that particular value? only few of us know the reason behind this value. Being a so called ATTENTIVE student in the class, we all know how to differentiate or integrate an equation, but do we really know the real time application of partial differentiation?  What is the use of mugging up things blindly? We need to understand things before we study. But sadly our curriculum does not allow us to understand things. Our university gives only four to five odd months to finish 30 lessons and 30 experiments in nine papers, so lecturers have to rush their fullest and we never understand things!! Sometimes i doubt whether my lecturers know those things!

Let it be. During placements, why they are testing our aptitude skills? the company want to know what we are having in our brain. But today in the name of placement training, we are forced to mug up things blindly.

Today our lecturer Mr.Kumaresan gave as this question. "A train 240m long, passes a pole in 24sec. How long will it take to pass a 650m long platform ?" we are just advised to divide 240 by 24 and divide the sum of 650 and 240 by the answer and to show the result as 89 seconds. But he never explained why we are following that procedure. Is this called aptitude skill??

Worst part of it is, we are supposed to mug up a paragraph just to introduce ourself!! Why a company ask us to introduce ourself? Don't they have eyes? Cant they see our history in our resume or certificates? They want to know about our communication skills. That's why they ask us to give an intro. As most of my class mates are from tamil medium schools, they dont even know the meaning of that lengthy paragraph! but whats the use of using unknown words? As a trainer we need them to shape our communication skills and not the mugging up skills!!

To conclude, i just want to convey one thing. Dr.Kalam said India will be a well developed nation by 2020. We need to change and our educational system should change and our mind set of mugging things should change, otherwise India will never grow!!