Student vs Parrot

A professor of mine always equates our present education system to the banking clerk system. I rather equate it with being a parrot. Till I was in school, writing your own views was a sacrilege. Even if the system permitted it the examiner did not.


What other option do you have then in place of learning by rote? Since we are animals(the social ones) it seems okay if we imitate a humble bird - the parrot.


We rather curb young minds and alienate them from thinking than have them test their wings. What was school education like to you? How much of time did you send actually finding relevance in what you studied? Was it merely study for the exams or study to learn?


All this theory of interactive teaching, using learning aids and the like flies out of the window in the classroom atmosphere when  faced with a truckload of syllabus, a large group of students and a fixed number of sessions.


The burden in the end falls on the student to decide and later when they enter college and are expected to think on their own a majority find this sudden shift a curse instead of blessing.