Thik se padho varna kaun si naukri milegi tumhe..
What is it with today’s graduates… we need to teach them everything on the job…
Hello….
So I regularly meet parents who genuinely worry about their child’s marks and his academic performance is a cause of a large part of their stress. They believe that not acing the exam will ruin their career and that they will not be accepted in the workplace. But have you ever taken a moment to compare the workplace and the school and how different they are?
The schools and industries both were dependent on handwritten work a few decades ago but then industry moved to typewrite and then to computers and then to mobiles and now to voice commands. While the schools are still with the handwritten word!
In a school, you have a set curriculum and the exam is based on that part only. If a school asks a question beyond that, there is the outrage about “out of syllabus question”. But in the workplace, there is no syllabus but you are expected to be on the top of the game.
In a school, you have to work alone, do not collaborate, do not ask, do not share. In a workplace, you must work in a team, collaborate and learn from your peers. In a classroom, if you are the smartest, parents take immense pride. In the workplace, it is said, if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room!
In school, you are only allowed to use a pen and paper. Unless you are calligrapher, your relationship with writing with pen and paper ends with formal schooling. No workplace today exists without some sort of digital device. Even the local Kirana shop has a calculator or a till!
In school, you have to memorize and store information in your head. It will NOT be made available when you have exams. In the workplace, all information is always available. Your task is to choose, which one to look at when. To make critical decisions and to communicate them- two things completely forbidden in schools.
Industry and apps share things with us in fewer and minimal words. Short stories, short news, tiny tales, etc because the human of today has lesser attention than ever. But the Indian in us, still wants our children to write more and more. More than him, more than his sibling, more than his friends, more than he can understand. So that we can claim that we taught him!
Seriously, we adults need to relook at how much importance we give to academics. They have their own value and are not disappearing anytime soon, but they sure don’t count to be the MOST important thing… Time we realize it and hold our kids to higher standards than mark sheets.
So what is your take on the growing chasm between the industry or workplace and schools? Do share your views me and don’t forget to subscribe to Musings of A MasterNi
