Parth JEE-Coaching's mission

In other words, what does it mean to be 'good at' your job? And, how has the answer to this question changed over the years? What was it 40 years ago, vs 20 years ago, vs 10 years ago, vs today? 

Is it to get good at one skill, through a lot of repeated practice? Is it to know all there is to know about that thing, such that you are an expert on it? Is it to have a valuable degree from the best university? Is it to be original, as opposed to being a copycat? Is it to be creative and be doing something 'out of the box'? Is it to be technically accurate and conscientious? Before I give my answers, I would like you to seriously contemplate these questions. Because, as someone preparing to be a professional in today's world, this is the most important question for you to answer before making big commitments. 

Now, here are my answers - 40 years ago, technology was not as developed as it is right now. So, there was a lot of value to being good at performing a certain procedure, such as knowing how to do a certain bureaucratic procedure and having the knowledge of technical terms to do so, or being an accountant, or being a cashier who writes receipts by hand and counts cash. There was more focus on practice and years of experience than technical prowess. 

As time progressed, technology developed more and more and computers came to the forefront of economic decision-making. Bills started to get printed by computer, calculations started to be performed by computer-software, bureaucratic procedures started to become automated and systematized. And, because of the rise in complexity of tasks that came about due to complex technology, what it started to mean to be 'competent', was that you were an 'expert' in your field. Meaning, you knew more than others. People with more degrees, who knew more than their counterparts, started to outperform everyone else. Specialization started to be valued more and more, technical prowess started to be valued more and more. There was a lot of demand for 'experts'. 20 years ago, there was a lot of focus on 'expertise' as the marker of competence.

Then, as time progressed even more, today's technology is so complex that no one person can fully make sense of it. In order to perform a comprehensive study of how any big tech company works, you need massive teams of highly qualified engineers. Having a PhD is not the gold-standard of knowledge that it once was. If you look at the average PhD thesis today, it is on something so hyper-specific that it loses sight of the big-picture. Getting a PhD in today's world is a shot in the dark, it may or may not be applicable in any other context. 

Which is why, in today's world, interdisciplinary work is the rage. It is very important for you to be able to look at the big-picture, identify the problems in the world and see what you can do and how you can use your resources and the magnificent technology at your disposal to solve them. Now, there are certain norms by which society has run for a long while and to solve the big problems of the world (like problems with the environment, the climate-crisis, the energy-crisis, world hunger, water-shortages), you would have to change the existing norms of doing things. And, this would require you to use your creativity to come up with better ways of doing things than the existing norms. Use Google (i.e. technology that wasn't there 30 years ago) to stay up to date with different disciplines and use your creativity to resource these technological developments to construct better solutions to these big global problems. All brand-creation will have to rely on awareness-based marketing in the future, because the internet is giving people more and more inside-information about the corruption of big corporations. There is a bigger and bigger push for transparency, people are more educated than ever. There will be a push for corporations who actually solve these problems! 

The formula for financial-security in the future is changing and it will be the people who work towards something greater than themselves, who take responsibility for the world who will be the most secure in the future. It is imperative that you use the internet to stay tapped into world-events and understand how society's values are changing, how the definition of 'value' is changing and you will have to develop the ability to create and sell this value. The stronger your vision for the world, the better you will be at creating value the better you will do for yourself, the more 'competent' you will be considered and the better our world and society will become. So, in today's world and into the future, the ability to create value is everything. This requires creativity. 

The biggest function of today's education-system (and the primary reason people go to college) is to prepare students for the professional world. To give them the knowledge, to instill a professional attitude, to give them the necessary tools to become competent professionals. 

One of the biggest, most reasonable complaints that people have with the education-system is that 'the textbooks are very outdated, what's written in the textbooks has nothing to do with how the world works today'. This is true. But, this was the biggest problem with it 10-20 years ago. It has not been solved. And today, it's not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is even worse. 

This current education-system was good 40 years ago. There was not that much of a rapid increase in democratized knowledge (through something like the internet), very specific systems were in charge of specific types of knowledge. For example, religious institutions were the sole authorities on 'the word of God', the media was the sole authority on news and yes, the education-system was the sole authority on the norms of how things work in each discipline. If you had an engineering-degree, you 'knew engineering', if you had a commerce degree, you 'knew accounting'. And you were good enough to get an entry-level job, where you would build decades of practical experience doing the same thing and that's how you'd 'become competent'. 

Then, as technology developed more and more, the education-system textbooks were unable to keep up with the technological developments. It was not possible anymore for everyone with a graduate degree to stay on the cutting-edge of their field. Grades became the number one determining-factor for how 'good' a student is and companies started to prefer students from well-reputed universities over the lesser-known universities, toppers over those who barely passed. Internships became very important to set yourself apart from the herd, extracurricular activities like projects and student-initiatives started becoming a big deal to stay on the cutting-edge of your field and to prove your competence to companies as an 'expert'. The point being, a lot of extra effort started going into getting a job over just having a degree. This is where the education-system started getting a lot of flak for 'being outdated' 10-20 years ago. That is still the case, things have not improved on this front. 

Today, though, we face a bigger, more fundamental problem. And that is this - what's valuable in today's world is not teachable. You cannot 'teach' creativity, original creativity cannot be a product of blindly following a teacher. This is making it so the value of the college-degree is in freefall. On the other hand, we have AI and machine-learning. Machines are learning technical knowledge and procedures at a rate that is much faster than humans. For example, AlphaZero, today's leading chess-engine learned chess after playing itself only for 4 hours. This is massively impacting the human economic-system and creativity, which is arguably the only edge humans have against AI, is becoming more and more important. This is an existential threat to the education-system as we know it. And, at the very least, we must reassess our values as educators. 

 Now, when I say that AI is an existential-threat to our education-system, some of you may be thinking 'Won't humans always need knowledge? Won't there always be a need for a system that 'educates' humans?' That's correct. It does serve a very important function. But, let me ask you the follow-up question - why, then, are all degrees losing their value the way they are? Why is it starting to seem smarter to just learn skills off the internet and work like that, than to amass 2-3 degrees? 2-3 degrees would have seemed smart 10-20 years ago. Not so much in today's world. 

To figure this out, we have to look at the basics. That is, what is the definition of 'knowledge'? Today's education-system thinks that 'knowledge=words', that is, if you know how to describe something, you know what it is. And, if the definition of 'education' is to 'impart/disseminate knowledge', with this epistemology, 'education' boils down to 'indoctrination', that is, handing down a narrative without room for questioning, making the student repeat that narrative in their mind (i.e. memorization) and testing the student's ability to internalize and regurgitate it (in the exams). That's what exams grade you on. 

This is incredibly problematic. The biggest problem with this, is that indoctrination suppresses creativity. The biggest key to creativity is observing reality as it is and forming your own opinions/narratives/interpretations of it. That's how your mind gets the opportunity/space to create. But, when you're battling all of this indoctrination, your creativity gets suppressed. You get turned into a robotic order-follower. And the problem with this is that with AI on the rise, AI will outcompete all of the unoriginal, indoctrinated people who don't question their conditioning. Precisely because a robot can be a better robot than a human can be. So, if you think that you're very 'safe and secure' because you're 'well-qualified', think again. 

 As mentioned previously, it is not possible to teach a student to be creative. However, there are two things that we can do, collectively, to help students realize and embody their creativity in a constructive way. Here's how it goes:

• Parents should notice their children's abilities: If you are a parent and you care about your child's ability to make a living in the future, your biggest task in today's world is to help your child identify their creative-capacities. Meaning, you must notice their creative-abilities, bring to them mentors who can teach them useful skills that leverage those creative-capacities and tell your child about the creative-capacities they have. And, you absolutely must be unbiased. For example, a lot of parents make this mistake that if their child gets good marks, they will tell their child 'you can become a doctor'/'you can become a programmer', when that's not true. In a lot of cases, it is only due to their own bias and what they think would be good for their child's future. Do not make this mistake, please be unbiased in what you advise your child to base their self-esteem on. 
• Teachers should be good role-models for students: If a student has a vision for who they want to become in the future and this is based on what they're passionate about/what comes authentically to them/what they can create, they need teachers and mentors who will be good role-models for them. This is where, it becomes very important that teachers have some practical knowledge about the material they're teaching, that they have some practical experience relative to that material. Right now, there is a big complaint that people have with the education-system, that it is too theoretical. The reason for this is that the teachers are too theoretical. Hence, it is very important that teachers explain to students how what they're studying applies to practical reality/why it's useful for students. When teachers do this, students will pay more attention in class and they will engage more with the teachers. 

Today's education-system has to prioritize creativity above everything else. This must become the top value of our education-system, if we are to deal with AI in the future, if we are to have a semblance of a human economic-system once AI takes over. The bureaucracies today are pretty robotic and resistant to change, they are too rigid in the face of global crises. This cannot continue, we have a lot of looming global crises ahead of us. 

 JEE(Advanced) is the entrance-exam for the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Extremely tough, extremely competitive, huge syllabus. They give students a set of tricky problems to solve. These problems are not repeated and the design of each question is unfamiliar. Because of which, students cannot learn the techniques of solving these questions before going into the exam, they must rely on their conceptual understanding to 'crack' JEE(Advanced) on the spot. 

The important key for cracking JEE(Advanced) is that because the design of the questions is unfamiliar, there are two important factors to solving them correctly: 

1. Deep conceptual understanding, and 
2. Creativity. 

Most coaching-classes have teachers who are IITians and who have a deep conceptual understanding of the material. But, most of them have no clue how to help students use their creativity to model the questions correctly. Because of which, they tell students that 'they have to work very hard', 'they have to study 14 hours a day', 'they have to solve hundreds of thousands of problems'. All of which are myths. There is a much simpler way to go about doing this. 

For this, we must learn how the human mind learns and understands concepts. (Hint: It's very different from indoctrination.) 

Before we understand this, let us understand what a 'concept' is. The human mind thinks in terms of 'words'. No words, no thinking. What 'thinking' means, is 'to talk to yourself in your mind'. And, a 'concept' is a word with a definition. 

 There are three steps for the human mind to understand a concept. 

1. Introduction: This is your introduction to the concept. You learn the word, you learn the definition and you learn an example of how it's applied. You learn what it is in theory. 
2. Abstraction: In this step, you see how it is applied in a different context than the original example. This gives you a more abstract understanding of the concept that's independent of examples. 
3. Application: You learn to apply this concept to model reality. You use the concept to model/describe something for the first time, you make some mistakes due to unawareness of the context, then you do it again and now you know how to apply it. 

When I learned that this is how the human mind understands a concept, I saw that the coaching-industry is unaware of this reality. Because of which, there is a prevailing sentiment of 'Work hard, memorize everything and practice thousands of problems to crack JEE'. The strategy is not adapted to the reality of JEE(Advanced) and what it really takes to help students build their foundation correctly. 

So, I came up with a new lecture-structure, called the concept-oriented lecture. It is a new innovation in lecture-structure that is designed to deepen students' conceptual understanding, especially the application of concepts to solve problems. It is a 2-hour lecture. Here's how it goes: 

• Theory (1 hour), 
• Easy Questions (10 minutes), 
• Medium-level Questions (20 minutes), and 
• Hard Questions (30 minutes). 

First, in the theory-part, students get to learn the concepts for the first time and they get to practice applying them to model reality. They can brainstorm over it and ask the teacher questions about it. Then, in solving easy questions, they get an introduction to how the concepts apply to solve questions, in a simple and straightforward way. Then, in solving medium-level questions, because the questions are more complex and involve more calculations, students get to apply the concepts to solve questions of a different pattern, thereby getting a more abstract understanding of how the concepts apply to solve problems. 

Most coaching-classes teach this to the students and stop here. They don't know how to go further, because they don't understand the limits of the definition of knowledge that says that 'knowledge=words'. Which is why, they fail to teach students how to solve the hard questions, that require creativity. This is where things get interesting. 

Then, they get to solve hard questions. Here, they get to apply their understanding of the concepts to model the problems correctly, create the right interpretation of the model in their mind and then use the right solution-technique to solve it. This is why, it is critically important that when they're learning theory, they practice applying it to model reality. Because, they will have to do the same in solving hard questions! This is where students get to revisit their misunderstanding of the theory, recalibrate their understanding of how they apply to solve the questions and rack their minds to solve hard questions. 

This is my USP. 

Today's coaching-industry relies heavily on indoctrination, which is based on the wrong definition of 'knowledge'. This perpetuates the problem of the education-system, that is that it's too theoretical. This is a problem for cracking JEE(Advanced), in which you have to use your creativity to model the problems correctly. 

What do we do about this? We realize that 'knowledge' is not 'words', 'knowledge' is 'awareness'. We must do everything in our power to help students step into and actualize their creativity. And, for that, students must take responsibility for their own understanding of the concepts, students must take the initiative to learn the concepts on their own. Students must form their own interpretations of the concepts, because when faced with the hard questions, that is what will be required to solve them. 

The mission of Parth JEE-Coaching is to revolutionize the coaching-industry, to change the paradigm around JEE(Advanced). We have a lot of limiting-beliefs about JEE(Advanced), that 'it's too hard', 'you have to study 16 hours a day', 'you have to solve millions of problems'. This puts a lot of logistic pressure on students in 11th and 12th. The important questions to ask yourselves are - Are you interested in engineering? Are you willing to do what it takes to get into IIT? And, do you have this goal for the right reasons, meaning, are you actually passionate about engineering? Or, have your parents recommended this path to you because IITians get good packages? 

If you are in it for the right reasons, you will actually be interested in studying the material. Then, with the new paradigm around JEE(Advanced), you can form the right prep-strategy for it. 

Today's coaching-industry emphasizes the importance of 'hard work'. We, on the other hand, believe in 'smart-work'. And, this requires a good understanding of JEE(Advanced), how it works, what they test students for. 

Creativity is the biggest value of Parth JEE-Coaching. It is very important that students develop the ability to form their own interpretations of tricky questions. That is how you crack JEE(Advanced). Therefore, we are pioneering this change in the coaching-industry. 

We are aware that the education-system has not gotten to this point yet. And, we have explained the challenges with it and how we plan on overcoming these challenges. 

We hope to set an example for the rest of the education-system, we hope to create a wave in the education-system in which other educators also prioritize creativity in their institutions. 

To other educators: I hope you understand the gravity of the situation I have described. The future needs you to make creativity a top value in your institutions. Students need role-models who can demonstrate creativity to them, who can see the value in their creative-capacities, who can help them realize their potential.