Communication Problems Of EAMCET Generation

One of the difficulties in Indian software industry is to make people talk and make them talk in English.    It is kind of a paradox.  One side we hear concerns of losing regional mother tongues (like Telugu) as everyone moved and moving to English medium.  And the other side we have to worry about not having English where it is needed.

It is disheartening to see some really good programmers, who studied throughout in English medium not being able to write a decent email describing what he/she has done in a day.   Nor can walk onto the board and explain what is in his/her mind about solving a problem.  Let alone picking up the phone and start conversing with their counterparts in USA, UK, Canada, Australia.

Other side of the coin, I had seen few who studied in Telugu medium (say until high school) yet have picked up great English and became very good presenters.

Irrespective of the medium they studied, there are a few who do not know any good English anyway… yet are very good communicators.   And yes, this is something we have to see to believe.   I had seen people who cannot write a single grammatically accurate sentence but can pick up the phone and  comfortably communicate to their counterparts.

Now, how do we understand this?  What is our exact problem here?

After mulling over this for a while, I started believing that the medium of education is not the issue at all.  It must be a direct result of  keeping an entire generation for the past 15+ years focusing only on math sciences & technology and making them completely unaware of arts and social sciences.

Medium Of Education Is Not The Issue!

Let me explain this taking Andhra Pradesh as the case.  The same may apply at different levels to other parts of India as well.

EAMCET is an entrance test in the state of Andhra Pradesh to get into any Engineering or Medical colleges in the state.  One need to get a real nice rank to get into this.  One is eligible for this test after 12 years of education and last two years must be on the specific areas like Math, Physics and Chemistry for Engineering and Life Sciences, Physics and Chemistry for Medical.    Few lacs of people write this every year and the competition is undestandably huge.   Before the explosive growth of Engineering colleges, it used to be extremely difficult to get a seat in a college.  Every kid and parent would aspire to get a “rank” in EAMCET.  Not getting a rank simply means that the student  is “not good enough”.

The middle class fever for EAMCET resulted in coaching centers.   The coaching starts as early as the kid reaches high school.  Almost 5+ years preparation for a 3 hour exam is not unusual.   Students in last two years would do nothing else but prepare for this test.   There is no dearth for  horror stories of corporate colleges making these kids study from early hours in the morning to the middle of the night.

But what do they study?  The exam has always been conducted in a multi choice objective type format.  Let alone having a test for language/communication in this exam, there is not even discriptive type questions in there.  All that one must be able to do is, solve the problem and pick one of A,B,C or D.  No need to explain to anyone on how you got that A, B, C, D.

While the regular Intermediate course has languages and descriptive type question papers,  they are not given importance.  For example the coaching centers teach languages (English, Telugu/Sanskrit, Hindi) only for few months before the fnal exams.  From what I learned, even that the students will be given specific questions and selected answers to prepare.  The minimal effort required to pass the language exam is what is to be “wasted” .  Because, a good performance in language is no way going to help anyone get a seat in Engineering.    Even those who are not studying in a corporate coaching center, it is still not much different where their priorities are.

(On a side note, similar to languages, the practicals are also completely ignored. Lab and experiments are also waste of time.  While this is also a serious issue, not relevant to the topic discussed in this post)

The state reached a situation where colleges didn’t have students in any arts, commerce and social sciences.  State’s then Chief Minister who earned an iconic image for his technical bias, openly remarked everything other than science subjects  a waste.   I didn’t find any fault with what he said, he said what most in the state he is ruling were believing at the time.

How does all this affect the communication?

Math & Science Have No Emotions

While math and science are the greatest of the aspects that distinguished humans from other species on earth, they fundamentally lack emotion.   They are ice cold.   2 + 2 = 4.   This does not change no matter what mood I am in.  On a day I am ecstatic about my girl friend saying “yes” to me, the day I lost my dearest friend,  this 2 plus 2 remains 4.

Science is brutally static.  It can solve problems sure. But it cannot show any empathy to me!

On the other side take any art.     I can resort to nice music, a peaceful book, a soothing poem etc., depending on my mood.  A poem reads differently depending on my mood. The same song can sound differently at different times.   Staying in touch with art prepares humans to deal with emotions.   While communicating to others, it teaches fine tuning to others based on their reactions.  These are very subtle but certain traits one gets by having exposed to art.

In a world where reading news paper is a waste of time,  listening to music is waste of time,  taking a peaceful walk in a park is waste of time…. where do we get people who can connect to others?

All that we are left with today are our movies.  Even the movie makers realized that the youth of this region never learned to put some effort to understand an emotion on the other side in any form.       Our movie comedy is so raw today, we lost the taste for simple satire or an intelligent joke.   Violence is so violent, unless there is blood all over the screen it is not violent enough.  Difficult to explain that Godfather is one of the most violent movies ever made even though there is not so much blood on the screen in the movie.  The romance and sensuality has degraded to nakedness and vulgarity.  All this is now termed as “mass”.   But the learned termed it as “crisis of taste”.

It is this roughness we developed and struggling from within is what is making us not been able to relate to others. That is our core issue why we are not able to communicate to people around us.

What To Do Now?

Where should we start to “improve communication skills” ?  Every manager in Indian industry faces this problem.  Sending everyone to English classes is the easiest thing to do.  But it does not make anyone any better communicator.

What needs to be done is a new model of trainings.  The personality change will not happen in a short class room session.   Employees must be made to interact with artists.  It may sound silly.  But this is worthy of an experiment.  These companies must enroll some of the writers, painters etc., as consultants.  Make them mentor the employees.  Employee should at least get about 3 to 4 hours monthly interaction with artists.   There are enough writers, painters and musicians that are so poor, would charge a fraction of what the corporates are spending on language trainings and communication trainings.   If my theory is right, it does not matter which language the artist talks/writes.

Any takers??