Mismatch of Curriculum with Realities at Stanford, MIT and other Ivory Towers

From ivory towers to realities 

By Dr Asad Zaman

Published: June 28, 2015

Curriculum Mismatch with Real Life

As MIT freshmen are wont to do, we were up way past midnight discussing big absorbing questions like the meaning of life. We realised that none of us had a clue and decided to ask our professors. A natural candidate was our history professor, who seemed approachable and had engaged us in interesting discussions in class. He gave us an answer which seemed satisfying at the time. He said that we had to learn the basics we were being taught, before we could tackle the big questions. It was many decades later when I realised that we had been swindled. In a classic bait-and-switch manoeuvre, we were tempted with the possibility of learning wisdom and sold an entirely different package.

From Disposable Cups to Throwaway Relationships: Costs of Disposable Culture

Transforming a Disposable Culture

By Dr. Irfan Hyder

Disposable Relationships

The emerging lifestyle of today requires that we restrict ourselves to a small cocoon. We are sold that we should gain expertise in only one particular subject. Our occupations are specialised, limiting our view to a narrowly focused area, and our daily chores revolve around our jobs, which we dutifully report to every day of our lives until the time to leave this world comes. The chimera of “convenience” has made “consumerism” the purpose of our lives, where our only objective is to buy, consume and throw away. It is not important to know how something is produced, nor what feelings, culture and tradition is associated with it. The importance of things is devalued, as we focus only on the short-term utility and not the extensive process of its development and nurturing. We forget that in life, the value of a goal is not just in its final output, but also in the process – the effort, toil and struggle for that goal.