SubscriberWrites: Why does India lag behind in computer science, artificial intelligence and machine learning?

The lack of practical computer science education in India’s primary and secondary schools hinders students’ growth. Practical exams and curiosity should be prioritized for future innovation.

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From my personal experience, I would like throw light on this issue. The root cause of this lies in computer science education at primary level. I still remember, in my 5th standard, we had computer science as a subject and we were evaluated based on theory exam instead of practical exam. It does not stop there, we had Linux operating system in 11th  and 12th standard and I still remember we were made to watch brand new computers with covers on them during practical sessions instead of learning by using it. The teacher used to read all theory and his focus is on multiple choice exam at the end of year. The reason for this type of negligence regarding practical learning is evaluation method set by higher secondary education board of respective state which is mostly based on theory.

Then I chose to do mechanical engineering at government education college and still there we had C and C++ programming language but since it is not required by mechanical engineer, it was given secondary importance as we need to pass the theory exam only! 

Finally, I learnt FORTRAN and MATLAB, when I reach to IIT Kanpur for masters to write my first finite element program. But it was not easy as I avoided programming language at undergrad and high school level.

So, we built IITs and IIMs early in 1950s and 1960s but we forgot to give equal importance to primary education and government universities of respective states. Now, time is changing but when I last time visited my village and asked the bright student of my school about programming language, he replied they still have theory exam and they mug up theory for the MCQ based exam!

To produce next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, we must enforce practical examination at all levels and inculcate natural tendency of curiosity among students at early stage in their career towards computer science. We should learn from China and the way they have given importance to their primary education staring from early 1980s!!!

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