At a time when the world is advancing towards Artificial Intelligence technology, university students in Bangladesh are still memorising unnecessary information to get good grades. The purpose of university education is twofold: to acquire discipline-oriented up-to-date knowledge and to foster students' curiosity to engage in the process of knowledge creation like conducting research. Are we, the university students, trained appropriately in this respect?
In our education system, we have to rely mostly on learning by rote. Before an exam, students consume traditional notes prepared by seniors. Although our teachers advise us to study more than just PowerPoint slides, we are comfortable with making most of the slides only. We are getting good grades by memorising just the slides solely because the question structure is directed in such a way that it needs cramming information from those slides rather than critically analysing the concepts that suggest real-world applications of what we learn. I think, time has come to rethink our entire education system if we want to keep pace with the changing world. Let rote learning not be the norm in our universities.
Hiron Khandaker,
Student of Geography and Environment Department,
University of Dhaka, Dhaka,
aalnoman21@gmail.com