Weak foundation hits students hard

COIMBATORE: Weak academic foundation in schools affects students hard when they enter the portals of higher education. Recent sample surveys in Tamil Nadu’s engineering colleges had revealed that top scoring students were unable to solve basic mathematics.Anna University of Technology (AUT Chennai) Vice Chancellor C Thangaraj said “Education at school level is like a foundation for a building. When they fail to learn the subject well in schools, they are unable to follow and understand the subjects at the college level. Memorising the subject without understanding it is a mistake.”A major handicap, he said, is that in schools a standard pattern of questions for examination is followed. “This suppresses the thinking ability of the students, who know what type of question will be asked in the examination and from which chapter. So they simply mug up the portions and reproduce them in the examination and get full marks,” Thangaraj said.“Students are unable to answer questions if they are slightly twisted. We have to change the school examination system with open ended questions to address this,” the V-C argued.An engineering professor ridiculed the internal assessment system, calling it an “academic subsidy.”