Education in India : a test of memory or knowledge?

June 27, 2008

It’s that time of the year when many parents complain either of high BP or the healthier ones dash to the bathroom at an alarming frequency. It’s results time folks! More than the students, results are stressful on the parents with a whole bunch of them declared in quick succession starting early May well through July. IIT-JEE results followed by HSC, CET (for the academically challenged as IITians would call, not me) , SSC, University cut-off lists and ohh let’s not forget the most important of all - kindergarten admissions!Throw in the combination of numerous boards - CBSE, ICSE, State and you have a packed summer calendar.

The Maharashtra State board SSC results were announced yesterday ..our locality saw a mini celebration of sorts. The most popular lady of this area - let’s call her Mrs.P (we call her know-it-all aunty), has a son who had appeared for the secondary level board (X std as is commonly known) exams this year. Mrs.P’s popularity is partly because of her connections (not in the wrong way) that can get things done - from getting you a maid to a cook to restoring a water connection or getting a slot with the much-sought after tuition teachers in the area - and partly thanks to her topper son. With the sudden rise in the number of X std. students here, everyone wants to be a friend of Mrs.P to get access to the secret of her son’s success, study patterns and a slot in his tuition teachers’ classes. For a few parents who had been denied a slot, all that was required was a recommendation from her. Mrs. P’s son, a topper of his school in prelims, was expected to perform where it mattered the most and the bar raised higher with aunties discussing the percentage he would secure, an evening before the results were out as if it were their business. On an unrelated note, did you know tuition teachers’ phone numbers are exchanged over kitty partie - gossip is out, I know how boring! Back to Mrs. P and her son. While Mrs.P predicted her son to score 92%, another pitched in with 94% and the sister settled on 90%. The results are out - he has secured a modest 86%. The poor kid is so ashamed and disappointed that he hasn’t budged out of home ever since so much so that the school principal had to call him at home requesting him to come over to school reassuring him he had not let anyone down and had done well despite the not-so-good show. Come on , give the kid a break!

With Mrs.P narrating stories over a evening cuppa of how hard he worked for his exams sitting up late until 2:oo a.m., skipping dinner with she having to feed him rotis while he poured over the books, no TV for a year, I wonder if there’s something wrong. Nothing at all. It’s the same routine like Ekta Kapoor’s soap plots we’ve heard over the years. I worked so hard - I expected over 90%; that kid scored much lower than me in prelims but has got so many marks than me; evaluation is not right, even my teacher says I deserved more blah blah blah. My faith is restored - the Indian education system, decades rather almost a century later, is intact. It’s hard to say what Lord Macaulay hard in mind when he designed our education system but I doubt if this is what our children and the future generations need.

Year 1992. I was in my X Std and like Mrs. P’s son spent hours immersed in textbooks, wouldn’t shower for days, rarely emerged out of the room to feed myself studying like a maniac. This continued in varying degress till the end of ‘99 when I finished my engineering. It does take hours to learn by rote every word in every textbook of all the subjects to be reproduced word by word. I remember my history teacher deducting makrs for answering in my own words in the half-yearly exam though the context was the same. If a step was missed in deriving an asnwer for a maths problem marks would be cut. Ever wondered why girls fare way better in such exams than boys. Because girls are good at rote learning. Couple this with neat handwriting, good presentation (no striking), and you’ve got yourself a state rank. If there is one thing I regret in my life, it is doing engineering. To this day, I’m ashamed of calling myself a engineer because I do no justice to the degree I received. Forget the nitty-gritties of Instrumentation, I doubt if I have my basics right. What a pity - which is when I decided I wouldn’t write a GRE or do my masters just for the heck of it. If there is one good thing that came of the education, it was a backdoor entry into the IT industry. Sadly, doing engineering in this country does not require you to understand anything, let alone testing the applied knowledge. You can still get a distinction if you have the right connections at the right time - by which I mean people who seem to lay their hands on those crucial photocopies for various subjects before the exam. I’ll let you in on the mantra : cram the right stuff for a few hours before the exam, create an impression with the faculty you are a nerd/good student (read: no flirting, no annoying questions, no acting smarter than the prof) and there you go - you’ve got yourself a distinction. I doubt how much of engineering the rest of folks in my batch learned. Those who did learn and now work in a related field weren’t among the toppers.

Academic excellence, for one does not necessarily guarantee success later in life. Neither is it reflective of the knowledge acquired. If you’ve got a good memory power and the ability to reproduce text verbatim, you’ve assured yourself a good grade. Our grading systems and admission processes are so screwed up, it will take more than a quick overhaul to fix the damn thing. The seeds of it are sown as early as kindergarten when four year olds are assessed on their ability to recite ABCD, rhymes and point out colours that just doesn’t make no sense. The sense of competition, comparison with your neighbour’s kid with emphasis on scoring that cent percent is so high in our society that it’s difficult escaping it. The pity is this competition has no end. You might say if a student gets into IIT (s)he must be brilliant. As an icing on the cake, if one gets an admit to IIM then there’s nothing more to look forward to - you have the best that India has to offer. But I doubt. If this were true, we wouldn’t be seeing cases such as that of Toya Chatterjee.

Little has changed over the years. What has changed is the numbers you are competing against. With the supply side (quality schools opening up) not keeping up with the demand, the pressure is on kids and parents alike to stretch themselves as far as they can. How far I don’t know. It scares me to see kids not returning home after a 8 hour school instead heading straight to a 3-hr tuition session and then returning home to do homework. Is there any end to this madness at all? Sadly, IBO and other internationally reconginzed programs are only for a privileged few of this nation.

Back to Mrs.P, she announced her son is likely to get an admission in one of the city’s top colleges. In the same breath, she also stated her objective is to get him into IIT and is not too worried about his college admission as much as getting a seat in IIT’s coaching class. Yea, even coaching classes have entrance exams now. For most of us like Mrs.P, hard work is what we can rely upon when donation or recommendation is out of our reach!

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Comments

9 Responses to “Education in India : a test of memory or knowledge?”

Aparna on June 27th, 2008 10:43 pm

Hi Lakshmi,
Really nice post to read. It’s sad how our education system works, but every word that you have written is so true.
I too did my engineering and I used to be so stressed during exams. I did not get my basics right, there was no practical knowledge too. We had to “mug up” things just for the exam.
I regret all this so much.
Bharath on June 28th, 2008 2:29 pm

Interesting Topic!

Yesterday, TOI had covered a suicide by a 15yr old Pune girl, by setting herself ablaze, thinking that she had failed in her SSC exam.
As you have pointed in this post,clearly, the parents, teachers and the society are the culprits here. But,I dont see even a hint of fading of this mentality.

Personally, having cursed my parents all this time for pushing for higher marks, I’m not sure how I’ll be as a parent in this context. Will I fall into the “SOCIETY” trap - no idea.

Correct me if I’m wrong - When I talk to people who are in this phase - having kids in school, college or kindergarden - majority of them still seem to have this expectation from their children. Some of the parents, atleast those with kids in 1st or 2nd standards are probably a few years elder to me - young enough to call them my generation. Now, all they discuss about is SPELLING-BEE competition. A few more years older - then they discuss how their children are working hard to get into one of the IVY leagues.
All this makes me wonder if this attitude is ever going to change !
With more competition in the future, the society looks to be certainly poised for more such suicides.

On a different note, what’s the big thing abt these spelling competitions? and that too for 6-7 yr olds? It only makes them bi-spectacled at such an early age.
Abhishek on June 30th, 2008 5:28 am

…Forget the nitty-gritties of Instrumentation, I doubt if I have my basics right…

LOL … forget that L, you were far far better than the stuff coming out of college these days … these folks lack basic phy/chem/maths!!! (leave alone engg) (you can’t even compare yourself with today’s genX idiots)
Vivek Nath on June 30th, 2008 6:00 am

he he he he well am I proud to have been the last ranker :))….never took pain…(can say in hind sight) knew there never was any gain…. but tell you one thing….even kids these days some how seem to njoy the competition and do not want to be left out….when I was young and in school.. as much as my dad spanked me to comw out topper… i too loved the adulation , praise and the comment ” what a genius” .. “he is a role model”
Lakshmi on June 30th, 2008 1:14 pm

Aparna: Thank you for the comment. I believe a good percentage of engineering graduates post ‘95 would have similar tales to tell. This ear also coincides with the IT boom in the country which was an influencing factor in taking engineering not too seriously as a job was assured in the end that didn’t require strong technical skills. It was so very different in the ’70s - I have a very good example of this in my father - a electrical engineer by education and profession and others of his age who don’t screw up on basics in the least. With time they adapted themselves to other professions - some branching over to IT consulting and they made a deadly combination because for one they knew what they were talking about unlike the MBA consultants we produce today. 4 years of engg + 2 years of MBA + 0 experience = Consultant
Lakshmi on June 30th, 2008 1:15 pm

Bharath: Yes, I read that one. What a haste! Read between the lines and you’ll see the frustration, stress of proving one self, measuring upto one’s peers and the impatience of our 2-minute generation. They get things too soon too early in life and this one ended taking her own life too soon!

I had good reason to believe that the state we are in is because of our population which in turn leads to a huge competition. Hence, the stress on parents and kids to perform to get into a good school, then a good college and finally, a good job. It’s a vicious circle. But, now I believe it goes beyond that. As you rightly pointed out, I’ve never understand what the big deal is with SPELLING-BEE competition. More often than not, it’s Indian American kids who emerge as winners. And, our newspapers back home take pride in boasting of the winners.

It’s something to do with our way of bringing up induced perhaps from centuries of colonisation. “Getting ahead of the herd” is in our genes - be it in a railway ticket counter queue or an airport’s check-in counter - doesn’t matter even if you travel business class. It will take generations to change this mentality. If I’m not wrong, you will find less of this competitive mentality in second and third generation Indian Americans; they’ve been there long enough for some characteristic of Americans to rub off on them. As far as India goes, it’s just getting worse. Kids getting into other off-beat streams such as RJ/DJing, Painting, working for NGOs is slwoly catching up. The mindset to shift from conventional professionals of Engineering and Medicine will take time - these have bene tried and tested means of a comfortable living with good source of income. And IT just encouraged that thought.

We’ll have to be the change to see the change in our society!
Lakshmi on June 30th, 2008 1:15 pm

Abhishek: I’d rather not comment on that one abt Gen X or should we say Gen I
Dip on July 2nd, 2008 4:26 pm

Interesting debate. The higher the education in India, the less relevant it is. Even MBAs, PhDs are more about the degree and brand of the institute. And entry barrier is the prime determinant of the brand of the institute.
Lakshmi on July 3rd, 2008 9:33 am

True, Dip. Add one more to the entry criteria - the amount you can shell out to finance your studies.