WHY DO PEOPLE FAIL ?

WHEN SO MUCH EXCELLENT ADVICE IS AVAILABLE !

. Recently,as a part of my course on basic biochemistry for our undergraduates in biotechnology,I conducted an exam.As I generally do,I had inserted a note on the top of the question paper that answer to every question should be started on a fresh page of the answer-sheet.To my surprise,as many as 60% of the students failed to comply.Few years back,this % used to be around 10%.Just to provide some perspective,these students have been admitted after clearing our joint entrance examination for admission ;the rejection rate in this examination is reported to be among the highest in the world.Also,this is not a particularly bad batch.So,this set me thinking :

-why a fairly bright set of persons had chosen to ignore the clear guideline?

– Why there is a trend that increasingly people seem to ignore a simple and easy to comply guideline.

These interrelated issues seem to be parts of a broader malaise.

. When I look at the blogs/posts in the two social media[LinkedIn and Medium] which I read;I find that a very large number of these write ups belong to ‘’self help’’ genre.Many of these say the same things same way;some say the same things differently.Some are really good.So much wisdom is available free and easily on practically everything:how to move along after a heart break,how to deal with a bad boss,how to deal with a bad employee..?For quite some time,we had books by Peale and Hill;than came McCormack followed by Covey.After that,it is almost a flood of books.Obviously,people have insatiable hunger for advice.As somebody said,information comes,wisdom lingers!It seems that not much lingers anymore!

so,why are we not equipped better to succeed?

Let me offer some possible explanations.

1]We are letting our cognitive and many other abilities atrophy.

It started slowly.Earlier decades,nobody needed to tell us the benefit of walking.We now have millions of words in print and on the internet which tells us how to ensure that we are able to walk at least so many steps.My iphone monitors how many steps I walked per day,per week and per month.

. People no longer find it easy to carry out simple four arithmetical operations.First came calculators and than the ubiquitous cell phones to do it for us.

. Students no longer bother to take notes in a class,they just request a copy of the power point presentation.

Our attention spans have decreased[ which perhaps explains the popularity of twitter].We no longer read,we skim through.There are,actually,self help articles on how to read fast!

2]We live in a world which is much more noisy in every sense of the word.24x7 news cycles,deluge of emails,so much on the social media…As medical people tell us,constant exposure leads to deafness.With the information load consisting of mostly noise,we have declining abilities to listen or grasp what is written.

What used to be essential parts of education have disappeared from the system.The preoccupations ,instead are:

*how to force education or even literacy on unwilling students.

*how to make money by selling educational tools.

If the same set of students were to be given exam online,they would have been forced to comply as the system can be configured not to accept an answer unless the next ‘’page’’[screen] is used.

So, we all have become adapted to being forced to comply and given no choice in applying our mind to any action.This is frightening.Are we heading towards a future where we will be asked [by an App?]:

Do you really want to jump out of the window?Your jumping out of the window may ‘’delete’’ you from this earth.[perhaps window 420 from Microsoft will be able to run this App?!]