Back here again. Its been a while. Around one and a half months more and I'll be done with my grads. Nice !!
Gotta talk a bit about college now. Last sem has been nice so far. Class hours are very convenient for me, unlike most of the classmates, who signed up for a different optional.JUDE has been a nice place... Just remembered the day I got admitted to JU. We all were busy saying hi to each other and discussing our board exams. One girl and I were talking about our WBJEE ranks, when another young lady overheard us and let out a gasp "you people are from the Science stream???". "Yea", we said. She gave us an irritated look that seemed to convey something like "why do these people fill up the arts seats?" Afterwards I found out that quite a few people from my class have switched streams. In fact it was a mixture of people from all streams which is really good- proves that language and literature can be loved by all.
But still, why do we need to change streams? Or for that matter, why is this stream thing an issue? Have we divided the streams into absolutely isolated segments and raised walls to prevent them from coming in contact with one another? The answer is painfully close to "yes". Our school system is all wrong. Our dear old West Bengal Board, for one, has an education system where the ones with the highest marks are destined to take up science. But one has to keep in mind, that a person who has good marks in class 10 boards need not be a good science student. In fact Madhyamik or its parallel examinations are absolutely unsuitable to rely on, when you are about to choose your stream that will go on to build your career. Thus this model: "
best=science, second best=commerce,last choice=arts, in +2", has to be stamped out and replaced with dividing the students into these groups:
best for science, best for commerce, best for arts in school. This will ensure that a student who is really interested in literature, but loves maths too, does not end up straight jacketed in a suffocating chemistry-bio-physics setup and finally go on to study English hons. and cause the arts students to frown with irritation. I would ideally want to study English and Bangla literature, maths,physics, and biology as a light additional in my +2. But this stupid education system wont tailor your perfect courses for you. I know its unthinkable to have any such thing at the moment when one looks at the scary structure of the courses. I got absolutely NO chance to explore the spheres of literature or maths in my +2, and spent all my time trying to mug up chemistry. Thus instead of being a pleasure studying became a burden... all because of this weird system which puts in thousands of students under one category- the "science" group!! It is quite impossible to believe that all these people have the same capabilities and interests!! The very fact that people get into JUDE after two years in the "science" stream is proof that their intellect would have been better utilized in school if only we had a very different stream division and a better mixture of subjects and options instead of the rigid divisions, into science, commerce and arts, with no relation to each other whatsoever. Also, some of us are yet to come to terms with the fact that a person who loves English may equally love Maths, or Chemistry or Bengali or anything else. Thus isolating a group of subjects as one separate category only leads to the deaths of many possible bright careers and interests. Everyone cannot afford the courage to go against the tide and take up his or her area of interest. One has to have support from the education system too, but I wonder when we shall finally get to see that...
