When I was in school, I was always told by my teachers to memorize the solution/essay rather than understand them. And whenever I tried to answer a question using my own words I always got less marks because my answer was not as per what's in the book
Recently they introduced a new type of question in their exams, which are called High Order Thinking questions. They tend to test the knowledge and problem solving skills of an individual.
But yes, most of the state boards, do put much more emphasis on rote learning
But this was about 18 years ago so things may have changed (unfortunately for the worse) by now, especially to cater for a spike in demand for outsourcing.
Imagine going through 10-12 years of schooling in Spanish, where instead of making an effort to teach you to conversate in Spanish, you just memorize the words in the book with little emphasis on what they mean?
Crazy!! It's like no-child-left-behind times 100.
The chapter is online here http://randomgraphs.blogspot.com/2009/06/feynman-on-educatio...
Nah, there are guides for that.
Turbo C++ quirks. :)
(edit: not sure why I was modded down. Anyone who's gone through the system in India knows that most colleges are still stuck in 1992 and use an ancient version of Turbo C++ for everything.)
When these students start engineering studies, they are flabbergasted by lack of "guides" for problems. These students will fail the FizzBuzz test, however will be able to answer questions about C++ quirks. They can not ask intelligent questions because they can neither understand problem nor investigate the root cause. They are studying just to get a degree (which would help them get a job) not to get educated.
Even if we assume that only 50% of the students fit this criteria, there are over five hundred thousand students who are looking for shortcuts! Which should account for these kind of posts.
The education system in India is geared towards producing clerks not free thinking individuals. Sadly, this the is the end result.