Watch Ken Robinson’s brilliant, inspiring and persuasive talk at TED 2006 about how our schools are educating people out of their creativity. He also has a great sense of humor.

It’s been two years since I graduated from IIT Madras. I don’t remember much of what was taught in the classroom. I do remember fragments of concepts and names of theories that I still throw around to impress people. I was good at the workshops. At the lathe machine, I fashioned a cylindrical lump of iron into a work of art. In the physics department I learned the mathematics of the motions of planets and molecules. I wrote a computer program to predict tsunamis; it’s still somewhere on my hard-drive. At the humanities department, I learned French and took to watching foreign films. I learned about industry and commerce and how to optimize everything from portfolios to the weight of a ship’s girder. All this i learned and forgot. Read more »

I am throwing in the towel. After two failed attempts at the CAT I won’t be writing the test this year. On my second attempt I had embarked on the battle with renewed strength and vigor, only to fail even more miserably. Is this someone’s idea of a joke?  It is beyond me how you can get worse at something with more practice and experience. The CAT simply defies conventional wisdom, and while that is often a good thing, such a high element of unpredictability is frustrating to say the least. Your CAT score is by no means a fair estimate of your potential to succeed in a business environment or even at a B School. As far as I’m aware, the test makers have never undertaken a research to measure the relevance or the effectiveness of the test. It is assumed that the test works simply because it assigns a range of scores and those who pass receive handsome pay packets after graduation. You may say I’m whining here only because I failed the test and its a case of sour grapes. I won’t argue with that, but I will argue that the grapes are wrapped in plastic. Read more »