Computer science is good, but if you love your kids, set them free – Yurika.R

Computer science engineering (CSE), artificial intelligence (AI) and information technology (IT) remain the top draws for students seeking admission to engineering courses, TOI reported on Sunday. No surprises there. Most children are conditioned to think these are the best courses to land a job. What they are not told is that many of them wouldn’t be happy doing the job they are almost certain to get into by pursuing these courses.

Again, are these the courses that offer the most jobs, the best jobs? IIT Madras director V Kamakoti asked this question to a bunch of high school students TOI had brought together as part of our ‘Ask the experts’ programme on Aug 2. Most of the students gave the obvious answers: CSE, AI, IT. After a teasing pause, Kamakoti said: Ocean sciences and metallurgy offer the best opportunities. Don’t blindly chase computer science, said the computer scientist who is the brain behind Shakti, India’s first indigenous microprocessor.

Indeed, a student with the aptitude for and interest in CSE should pursue that subject, but the problem is there are not many experts like Kamakoti to guide our students to break the herd mentality. And he was talking only about engineering-related courses. Think about the immense opportunities in arts, pure science and humanities that await a blooming mind. On a broader note, Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor echoed Kamakoti’s thought when he told teachers at a Chennai school on Saturday: Don’t teach children what to think; teach them how to think. What one needs is not a well-filled mind, but a well-informed mind.

Tharoor’s advice serves well for parents too. I am not particularly proud of my parenting skills (I have none of those, if they exist at all). When our son started raiding my home library at an early age and showed signs of good writing in high school, I thought he would pursue a career like mine. I was wrong: After school, he chose CSE. He graduated from a reputable institution with decent grades and, when campus placement came, he dropped the bomb: I don’t want to be an engineer. Later we realised that he had chosen CSE because most of his football mates in school opted for it. After a break year during which he wrote podcast scripts for some portals abroad, he went to a journalism school. Today he writes on sports, his passion. I was right. As for parenting – if a child’s career option is a bigger yardstick than some basic life values our children subconsciously imbibe from us – we just got lucky.

I don’t present this personal experience (which resonates with many parents I know) as ‘best practice’ but am convinced that today’s ‘average’ child is more intelligent and capable of choosing his career path than the one from the previous generations. I am happy that there are still children who think outside the academic echo chambers. Chatting with school students at the ‘Ask the experts’ programme, I was delighted to hear a girl talk about her ambition to teach, another to fly a plane. And neither of them was a topper in their class. I don’t dislike toppers just because I was an ‘average’ student in school (but for some accidental high scores in biology). But I detest rank factories – schools, parents, teachers – which numb otherwise absorbent minds in a misguided and cruel endeavour to make them toppers.

Here, too, Kamakoti’s advice is a gem: The kick of getting a top rank lasts for a day, and it means nothing. Forget all those stories about freshers getting multi-crore-rupee offers, what matters is how much your employer values you after six months and how much you enjoy the job.  A rank is just an integer. Do what you love.

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