Standardizing Education

Standardizing has been a common practice across industries primarily because it enables a better control and understanding of the organization.A similar intent when extrapolated to education, would be worth an effort.Standardizing educational curriculum would,just as in industries, allow better decision making, better understanding of the educational capability of the nation and also enables the nation to focus on their weakness areas with more thrust.A decision on making the same national curriculum may come with some assumptions such as uniform infrastructure, teaching, Intelligent Quotient which may not be realistic.

In countries such as India with a vast diversity in Infrastructure, Teaching,  Standard of living, Regional languages,Intelligent Quotient and varied environment; it is very difficult to visualize such a standardized environment.Assuming we have a standard mathematics syllabus, a problem may be very easy for a student studying in South India which may be attributed to qualified teachers and better infrastructure .This may not be the scenario with the rest of the country. There are places where there are schools without teachers, teachers who aren't qualified and students with language barriers in which case this recommendation may not be appropriate.

In spite of such factors, standardization may bring in some benefits on the long run through uniform knowledge base,.better synergy between students across the country and also better assessment of students for college education. Under VT University Belgaum in India, around 113 engineering colleges share the same syllabus for a given branch. This has resulted in easier working environment for peers from different colleges under the university.Also, it is easier for the university to improvise on its present syllabus. Training program of the Tata consultancy Services also enjoys such benefits through a common syllabus. Although we are talking about education before college, we may take stock of these examples and implement a standard curriculum across the nation.There may be some hiccups initially but on the long run it seems to be advantageous.

Impact of Technology on Human Intellectual Development

The impact of technology on the intellectual prowess of human has always been an aspect to be concerned about.Technology has evolved and made a lot of things easier to us. However, we can't deny over reliance on technology .Today, our world is completely dependent on technology right from Space program, Stock Market, Grocery store e.t.c.There are two aspects of looking at it, one- that we are progressing and focusing more on the bigger picture and passing all the redundant work to the computer, on the other hand we are so much dependent on technology that we neither have any alternatives nor we have the practice of doing it.

A space program for instance has so many decisions such as constant tracking of the trajectory, monitoring the health of the external structure,feedback from the fuel chamber e.t.c. These tasks are virtually impossible for human being who is right now working on the bigger picture of successful payload deployment, experiments in outer space and more such holistic milestones. Someday technology may make these task easier when man will be working on a bigger problem than this.Today, we boast of long distance medical support. When we look at this in the perspective of its impact on human development, we find that technology has only reduced the problem related to accessibility.Further, it has given the doctor to work on  the new disease and eventually contributing to intellectual development.

On the other side, the use of technology to simple calculations and aspects where decisions are made just by the results from machines are also increasing. This has resulted in people not understanding the reality . During a structural analysis class, we were asked to use Finite element analysis for solving a problem. The Software package threw  us a value which was impractical but it did not create a shock in us.We did not understand the practical numbers that we have to expect and also the underlying error in calculation . These instances may be indicative of such a conclusion made by this statement.But when I have to weigh the technology's impact on intellectual development, I would conclude that the use and misuse of technology lies with us.Whether we want to use it to our advantage and work on more complex problems or rely on it for simple problems and escape the mental exercise is a decision that we have to take.