Annap, your story is not all that unusual...and more's the pity. The brilliant and wonderful Richard Feynman was a visiting prof in Brazil and found that the students were outstanding parrots but truly had no idea how the principles of physics they knew so well by rote applied to real world phenomena. Sadly, we have a huge number of teachers and administrators in the US who run their classes in the same manner. We invest in all the modern aids, computers, buildings, etc., but education does not occur. We confuse memory with intelligence and the latest tools for real learning.

Are you familiar with the "Cargo Cult?" On a small island in the pacific lived a tribe of people never exposed to "modern civilization." During the island hopping Pacific campaign of WWII we established a supply depot and an airstrip on their island. Along with the airstrip came all the supplies and things associated with it. The islanders were completely overcome with the new things that arrived out of the sky every day. The war ended and we left the islanders to themselves. The "Sky Gods" no longer brought the fine things they were enjoying. So they went to work. They fixed up the landing strip and put brightly colored cloths where the lights had been. Out of thatch and bamboo, they repaired the facility and even built crude boxes that looked like radios with bamboo earphones and vines for cords. They had all the trappings but the Sky Gods did not return with any more cargo. For many years they kept this up including having someone on the "Earphones" every day......but the Sky Gods did not come back. True story.

Its not hard to see the analogy here. I fear that much of our educational system is "Cargo Cult Education," a phrase I've used for years, especially when I was teaching.

Spaw