Sridhar Vembu’s Blog

OK, answer this without consulting Google: Explain the principle of operation of the galvanometer.

That is part of the standard syllabus for our public exams in Physics for 12th standard students. I saw that question in a newspaper supplement, which provides sample question papers to prepare students for the all-important public exams.

I definitely should have studied this. In fact, I did well in the exam too. Except that I remember absolutely nothing. I could almost swear I had never heard of galvanometer, whatever it is, until I came across it in the sample question paper today. I am supposed to have an Electrical Engineering degree too, which makes it, well, more interesting.

Let’s agree that the purpose of education is teaching students how to learn, rather than fill their heads with facts and figures. Especially in the post-Google era, filling the head with such facts and figures does one absolutely no good.

Let’s also agree that the best way to learn how to learn is by actually learning something concrete. So that explains trying to teach galvanometer, which is a pretty concrete device. Except that it is impossible to explain a galvanometer (or object oriented programming or thermodynamics) in a high school setting well without really good faculty that understands these subjects, and such faculty is exceptionally rare. Galvanometer, which sounds like a fun device that I really have to learn about some day will become another water torture routine for kids. It would be a different matter if they were actually taught how to build such a device, use it to measure something, and so on. And it would help if they are not asked such dumb questions in exams, because then teachers would “teach to the test”, and no one will actually focus on learning how to build or use that device.

We are better off teaching kids bicycle repair, because that is a subject that can be taught well, and it also teaches kids how to learn. At least a question like “Explain how you would repair a bicycle” in an exam would be more obviously idiotic than a question like “Explain how a galvanometer works”, so at least it won’t get asked.

The point is not that everyone needs to know bicycle repair, but that they won’t remember anything about the galvanometer the way it is currently taught, while they will remember repairing a bicycle. And for those theoretically minded, bicycle repair can naturally lead to gear ratios and such. Of course the fastest way to kill any interest for kids in bicycles is to ask about gear ratios in exams.

Coming to the galvanometer, kids memorize something like (thanks Wikipedia!)

That is merely an empty collection of words, with no particular feeling or experience associated with it, to a kid in school who is facing that all important exam. All that the kids get tested on is how well they can memorize that definition. I must have memorized something like that, and that was promptly flushed out of the system when those exams were mercifully over.

And the tragedy of it is that based on how they do in such exams, important decisions like which college, and what branch of study and so on get decided, and that in turn, plays a crucial role in the kind of jobs that are open.

Millions of kids in India are memorizing the galvanometer as you read this. I feel sorry for them. It is not just a monumental waste of time, it is much worse than that - kids that don’t do well in these exams are deemed unfit to hold any interesting job, because pretty much all such jobs will have stringent credential requirements.