Indian Education System. Overhaul long due.

What is the purpose of schools, colleges, universities and institutions of higher learning? 

The main purpose is to provide education. Let’s revisit that statement. The main purpose is to nurture the student’s mental and physical growth. Measured on various dimensions of these two criteria, it is safe to say that the modern Indian education system is woefully inadequate in most cases. And dangerously misguided in many others.

For this discussion, I would like to keep aside ancient Indian education systems like gurukuls. The comment is squarely about the modern system where a child progresses through the nursery, kindergarten, primary and secondary schooling systems. Followed by various undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate courses. I believe our education system fails students in every conceivable manner of relevance. Almost all of this can be attributed to the Indian obsession with grades / marks / percentages to the detriment of everything else. 

Some of the parameters where I see significant issues are mentioned below. I have also commented on what can be done to change this. One can see that most issues need to be addressed at an education board / society level. Hardly any issues can be controlled by the student and this is a big concern.

Our education focuses on memory, not understanding 

This observation is as old as the hills. One only needs to spend half a day in school (at any grade / class) to see how this operates. Focus is on rote learning, repetition, shoving a sequence of steps into memory without bothering to get into details. This is a double edged sword. On one hand, a student that may be genuinely interested in learning something gets swamped by lacking time to get into details of a topic. On the other hand, as the focus is on memory, the student who may not be good at memorizing gets penalized for something that they may have no control over.

Our education is driven towards books, not tasks 

As a society, Indians generally tend to shy away from physical labour. And this attitude seeps into the learning system as well. It’s almost as if one led to the other. Let me give a real-life example from a few weeks ago. I was in discussions with a professor from a leading US university – a desired destination for MS for a number of Indian students. His observation was that Indian students were woefully poor in practical application of various theories. He felt that Indian students lacked the comfort of physical experiences to back their theories and this started at a young age. While a child in India learns about insects and reptiles, a child in many Western countries learns to build a model spider using arts and crafts materials. While a student in India learns about concepts like lenses and refraction, a student in western countries builds a rudimentary telescope using household materials like cereals boxes, egg cartons and such. It is no surprise that concepts “stick” better when experiential learning comes in.

Our education is intelligence driven, not emotion driven 

Studies have shown over and over again that Emotion Quotient (EQ) is far superior to Intelligence Quotient (IQ) from a decision making perspective, from a social engagement perspective and from a personal growth perspective. Having all the world’s intelligence means nothing if there is no emotional reserve to bank on. Despite such studies and more, Indian education system focuses over and over on drilling concepts into student’s minds and then subjects them to examination after examination. Grades, scores, marks are cornerstones of this learning. They are nowhere near prepared to handle failure because the cost of failure is so high. Out of curiosity, I looked at ads after CBSE results were announced last year. The number of school / coaching ads talking about their students being in the top 5 /10 /100 was shocking, but not surprising. In a random set of 10000 students, the question is not about the top 100 or top 1000, it's also not about the middle 9000. It's about the bottom 1000. How are they equipped to handle their failure in such an examination? Are support systems in place to help them move ahead?

These are three dimensions that stand out. There are more – for example, the focus on the outcome than on the process. Our education systems care only about the final outcome whereas there is little to no focus on the learning that should accompany final examinations. Various academicians have proposed steps that can be taken to address gaps in the system. As someone who has been through the grind – first as a student and then as a professional, I would strongly urge schools to focus on the three areas I mentioned. 

Schools can’t obviously change the education system unless the school wishes to move away from accreditation to CBSE. ICSE, state board etc. But, they can and they should focus on the emotional growth of the student. They should focus on integrating learning into education in a manner that concepts get grounded well and stick to the mind. And this is possible through focus on the non-book and non-academic aspects of learning. Through arts, drama and sports. Bring in rigour in these aspects also and help the student to be more rounded. Integrate curiosity into learning. This will also help children to recognize early what excites them and get a view for the parents as well. Not every child needs to become an engineer or a doctor . There are other growth avenues that can be discovered and nurtured organically and it is the responsibility of the education system to enable this for students.