Writing after a loooong time. No, not for paucity of time or motivation, but perhaps the need of expressing myself has decreased significantly now that I have a regular sounding board with whom I can ‘share’ my frustrations and my pet peeves (Poor thing!) Also I am taking time assimilating, absorbing (and appreciating!) the shock of living in a different country. I had never thought I could ever love a city more than Mumbai. But now I am in the throes of a toe-curling extra-marital affair with NY. Talk of being infidel!! :P
One of the things which has really impressed me so far is the American Educational system vis-à-vis its Indian counterpart. No, I am not discounting the lack of security or moral values in the high-schools or the under-grad levels: the bane of every young Indian parent trying to bring up kids here. What I appreciate is the quality of the education itself which encourages a child to have an all-round development & lets him/her study any field of his/her choice without fear of career & future financial security. In short, people don’t need to run after multiple degrees here; you could be an under-grad in Psychology or Sociology, but could easily be employed by Morgan Stanley or Nomura in Investment Banking or Research or Trading! Try contrasting that with the Indian educational system where people have to gain multiple degrees & endless hours of brain-numbing studying to make a break in a career of their choice. Often people in India take inane pride in their string of degrees without analyzing whether those degrees actually are useful for their careers or not. More needn't be always better.
Another major difference between US & Indian educational system is the flexibility in education offered to the students here. Students can choose amongst a host of classes and courses in high school and college. This means they can change their major (i.e. field of study) midway through college. This usually means that students in the US receive more exposure to a variety of subjects and hence, are more aware of their career options and opportunities. On the other hand, the Indian education and social systems are very hard on kids and completely ignore their feelings, opinions and ambitions. Kids are pushed to study from the age of 3 and non-performers are treated as dolts and ostracized by parents and society. The preferred choice of learning and teaching is memorizing facts. These facts do help in the long run; the multiplication tables we learned in primary school keep us ahead of our American peers who need a calculator to find out what 6 times 7 is ! However, the memorization approach to study does not allow and teach kids to think independently. The American school system lays stress on individual ability development and encourages kids to express themselves and their opinions from an early age. As a result, most Americans are way better at getting their point across as compared to people from other countries. As my husband once was shocked when a taxi-driver started intelligently discussing the oil & gas industry, after discovering he was an Oil analyst in a big investment bank!
I remember a conversation with an Irish colleague in London a couple of years ago, about the attitude of the West towards the rapidly developing India & China. One of the topics was the educational system which made possible the emerging of India as IT superpower. I remember my colleague remarking “I admire the brilliant minds from your country, but damn if I make my kid a geek & have him sit in front of the PC programming day-in & day-out. I would rather have him chase girls & drink beer & have a life of his own” A statement I have truly appreciated many times since then, whenever I see the parents & teachers holding the poor kids’ noses to a perpetual grindstone in a quest to get better marks than their peers. India has mass-produced many generations of geeks & nerds, unable to express an intelligent opinion on areas of study different from their own or indeed in many cases, unable to express an opinion at all, because their educational system never required them to have communication skills!
Contrast this to the educational system in western countries, where ‘additional tuitions’ to score more marks are practically non-existent, kids are compulsorily encouraged to take up at least one sport & multiple foreign languages are taught in schools to encourage appreciation of global diversity as well equip them with skill sets to cope with multicultural work environment.
It’s high time our Indian educational system becomes less ‘mindless study’ oriented & more ‘all-round development’ & ‘practical application’ oriented in the context of global economic & social structure. My fear is that the increasing pressure on the kids to perform academically should not result in majority of generations of students facing psychological problems in trying to keep pace with an out-dated system.
