[Ilugc] Regarding projects for engineers
- From: prem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Prem Kurian Philip)
- Date: Thu Aug 31 14:58:25 2006
Our education system for professional disciplines is a mess - it stresses
theory and does not stress applied skills nearly as much as it should.
I started a small program 3 years ago and have been pretty successful.
Identify an worthy apprentice and train one-on-one for about a year.
Aim for excellence, and teach the apprentice everything you know. So
far, I've "trained" 4 people and they have now found bigger and better
opportunities else where (some of them may be lurking on this list).
Hopefully, your apprentice will imbibe the same culture and start
training others in the same fashion. If you've seen the movie
"Pay it Forward", you'll understand the philosophy.
- Raja
Great to hear that you are doing something like that. It is perhaps the
best way to impart skills - the old gurukul system primarily worked that
way where a senior person with experience and skill taught younger
aspirants the skills. No education system can beat the one you have
described.
In this modern age with the vast numbers of students, we will perhaps need
a more formalized system which perhaps doesn't work as well as the
one-on-one system you are using at present - but nonetheless, one which is
better than the current system. CA is an example of such a system - you
will rarely find a CA who doesn't know his job.
I believe firmly that engineering students must start working in
engineering companies in core engineering jobs starting from perhaps the
third semester (2nd year) and attend classes in the evenings. It won't be
easy working on the shop floor for 3 years straight; and this will keep
out those "engineers" who are there for the glamour but want none of the
hands-on toil. At the end of 3 years, these students will have a far
better grasp of the subject and also an understanding of what
specialization interests them. Also, the experience will go a long way in
making them suitable for employment.
PK
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