I recently watched the hindi Movie “Three Idiots”. The film is a satire depicting the deficiencies of the education system that stifles innovation and promotes rote learning and the culture of rat race. In fact, the race to destination is shown to be so hectic that one fails to look at the richness offered by the route. As a result, learning becomes a means of getting a good job, it detaches itself from knowledge. The three idiots were exceoptions, and hence misfits in a reputed engineering college that had perfected the art of chrning out human machines. With their humane endeavours, the trio makes an undeliable impact on the community and with their originality, succeeeds in life, defying the scheme of things.
Not all kids in real life are like the three idiots in their attitude. They become pawns of the productisation of skills and vehicles of standardised norms of accepted behaviour in society. With certainty they earn good grades and plum jobs . by passing the engineering schools and then doing MBA, they constitute the cream of the student community to be lapped up by multinational companies with astronomical salaries. They stride into the best of investment houses and hedge funds well known for bonuses and they deal in structured products with aplomb, given their strong grounding in a well crafted syllabus. Unfortunately, as they ignore the knowledge that lies beyond the texts and syllabuses, they see the treses and not the jungle. They exhibit classic correlated behaviour typical of robots, and such co-movement completely ignores the unknown, the possibility of the unforeseen. The education system had by then taken out the capacity to move against the tide.
In the run up to the recession,this bunch of professionals got maximum bonuses and did set the stage for the turmoil by adopting mechanical behaviour in their work. This backfired badly as housing markets collapsed in a manner unprecedented in recent history. The structures of derivatives crumbled exposing the limitations of our educational syastem that values degrees ahead of true knowledge. a few idiots here and there could not save the day for the global financial system. The efficiency of educational machine had ensured that their were few outliers who can conveniently be ignored. The recession was triggered by the rest, the products of a faulty education system.
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