Why the Indian Education system sucks THE MOST out of the lot.
Author’s Note:
This is my first story so…
Let’s get started
India. Home of the toughest entrance exam on earth and also known to be the world’s cheating capital. Our student population is 315 Million as of 2014 which is almost the same as the population of The United States of America in the same year (318.6M-2014).
Quora’s Answer wiki states some points about the subject. Let me elaborate on them.
- Half the country does not even have access to proper education, and only a small fraction can go to university.
— Lack of quality primary education for the poor
— Limited seats in Universities
Truth. The education here is by no means, close to equal. There is the ICSE (private board associated with the French Board), the CBSE (Most popular, Central Govt.) and about 25 individual state boards, each of which are different in their own ways. The poor can’t afford anything but the State Board and that too in government schools. If you want to know how government schools look like, skip to 4:00 in this short film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ34d388Lck.
Learning atmosphere is a myth in MOST schools of India and that includes the “oh so great Private CBSE Schools found all over”. The students are made to sit in Assembly-Line like conditions in four or five seater benches (that is a luxury when compared to the govt. run schools) in infra-structurally deficient schools and are made to cram everything meaningless to ‘get settled’ which is basically get hold of a medical or engineering degree from some shitty govt. college.
Talk about limited seats coming soon. Read on.
2) Everything is about rote memorization, leading to behavior which encourages cramming and forgetting rather than life long learning.
Absolute truth.
No matter how many CBSE students say that they are the only students who actually understand what’s being thought, that also becomes a lie once you cross grade 10. I’ve seen many, many times teachers teach something actually interesting and useful in life and say immediately afterwards “Don’t try to remember any of these, only the formula that comes next is important for JEE” a million times.
You literally have to just mug up everything and spit it forth on your examination paper and, Et Voila! You’re a genius.
3) Standardized testing determines everything, and aptitude of students is not recognized outside this format.
Tests are a joke. The only thing tests actually test is the ability to vomit forth what a student has mugged up the last two days before the exams. You are given papers and a limited amount of time to assess useless problems that seldom occur in real life and answer them to get MARKS that is what EVERYONE uses to judge you forever.
4) Lack of diversity in the subjects you can take.
The shocking thing that most of you do not know here is this.
This, is the subject code list of the board we all hate, CBSE.
CBSE at its core is actually a good board of education with a huge variety of very interesting subjects ranging from Philosophy to Japanese but tell me, which CBSE school in India actually teaches more than 7 of them? These subjects are available for the Student to choose but the SCHOOL chooses them for the Students. How fair is that?.
Students are made to study subjects that they have ZERO interest in only to get into IITs (A special Section devoted to them coming soon) and I’m unfortunately one of them. The general answer/counter to this is that “you need to learn the basics Jessenth! How will you write programs if you do not know how to formulate a correct logic for that? you will learn that only through PCM.”
Well, we have been doing that till tenth grade when we actually learnt something. Most countries that follow K-12 system usually dedicate the last two years as prep for colleges and top mgmt. schools. That is another hugely flawed mechanism as well. A good solution here would be to ALLOW the students to learn what they want and give them collegiate oppurtunities based on their proficiency in THAT area rather than asking EVERYONE to mug their PCM.
A quick example. Jack is a 15 Year old dude who wants to be a software developer at google. He is an ace at programming and is unfortunately, an Indian student who just topped his tenth class exams. If he is given the chance to choose what he wants to study, He would definitely go for English, Math, Japanese (Cause he’s an Anime Freak a.k.a Otaku), Computer Science, Informative Practices as these are what he loves and is good at. In an Ideal education system, he Learns (not studies) everything needed and develops his skill set and gets ready for an entrance. MIND YOU. NOT THE JEE.
The Ideal way of selecting students for a prestigious institute that has limited seats (and therefore, fails to provide equal education yet again but, given our population, that’s natural) should be to conduct an exam that tests aptitude as well as technical expertise (in this case, that would be Jack’s programming skills that he’s already honed in his amazing non-existent school.)
Instead. He has to mug UTTERLY USELESS Stuff ranging from finding the speed at which water in a jug spins after being mixed up with a egg beater to the time taken by a non existent point mass to perform “Simple Harmonic Motion” and some other useless crap just so that he can get into the best college for SOFTWARE ENGINEERING.
5) Extreme pressure from parents / society to use education for financial security = CSE degrees for programming jobs or medicine. Societal pressure to get into the “right schools”, not only for the education aspect but to ensure good job/ marriage prospects, in general success in life. Little incentive to take risks and follow own interests or encourage creativity. Generally conformist culture, which makes educational achievement the only thing that matters to social standing.
This pressure is something that most students can’t handle, this also leads to depression and suicide. Unsurprisingly, India ranks number one in student deaths by suicide and guess the reason?
Look at the boy on the left-
He is Abhimanyu Sadasivan.
Photo Source: Mother of teenager who hanged himself urges others to pay heed to children’s well-being | The National
Abhimanyu was a 16-year old student in 11th grade and was found dead on the terrace of his family’s apartment in March, 2014. He committed suicide in the midst of his exams and left a suicide note in his chemistry exam sheet. On it, was written,
“The CBSE system is based on mugging. Education should be about understanding and applying your knowledge. My death should be a lesson and a reason for the system to change.”
He was not alone. There was 17-yr old Kriti Tripathi, a student at one of the Kota’s coaching centers. She jumped to her death from a five-storey building in Kota in April this year. Though she had comfortably cleared the IIT entrance exams, she complained that studies in these centers subjected the students to unbearable stress and depression in her suicide note.
“Please Government of India HRD do something about these coaching institutes. They suck and should be shut down as soon as possible,” she wrote.
Source: ‘Shut coaching centres, they suck’: Kota student’s suicide letter
And there were more. There was 21-yr old Jitesh from Haryana, a student of chemical engineering at IIT-B. He committed suicide by consuming a poisonous substance from the institute lab in May last year as he was depressed due to his poor academic performance. The suicide note stated that he regretted passing JEE exam to make it to IIT. There were 15-yr old Radha and Pragati from MP, who ended their life March this year by hanging from the ceiling of their rooms, for being under stress due to exams and unable to secure first rank in the examination.
Source: ‘Depressed’ over poor grades, IIT Bombay student kills self — Times of India, 2 teens commit suicide over exam stress in MP
The disturbing accounts are numerous. But all point to the same thing: Indian education system forces its pupils to live a pressure-filled life, demanding excellence in the form of an external reward: MARKS. This demand starts right from the beginning of school life, and decides the fate of a person- to live a qualified life (as admission to colleges is based on these MARKS cut-off), as well as a dignified life (as everyone acknowledges the merits of being a top-scorer). This system emphasizes children’s report cards, instead of making them understand and apply what they are learning. And most importantly, it never asks them if they are satisfied with what they are learning in school. Never highlighting inner growth and development.
Note: The above section about suicide was written on Quora by Anshul Aggarwal.
6) Additional extreme pressure due to limited seats resulting in very intense competition between students.
Know what Kota is? Infamously known to be the Coaching Capital of the nation, this small Desert town is home to a 70 Billion Dollar industry that is responsible for the deaths talked about above. Disconnect relationships with EVERYONE including parents and get shut up with fat PCM books that does not interest you in the least for 2–3 Years and Learn absolutely nothing but the useless problems mentioned in the books given to write and qualify the only exam known to be tougher than Ivy League school exams all for a useless Engineering degree from some college ranked 185+ in the world and is apparently the “only good college in India” also called, The IIT.
What’s the difference between the *Studying we do* and learning?
studying has no focus at all on experimental learning, practical implementations or an innovative approach towards theory. For example, in the subject of Thermodynamics, students will memorize the various techniques of solving a question WITHOUT understanding what the question is. The condition of knowledge among students is so pathetic that they can’t recall majority of the content even the next semester.
In the subject of Chemical Process Technology, just learn the ways of manufacturing acids,bases, paints, glass, ceramics,paper and fabrics. The process of memorization is so abysmal to the extent that the students do not know, which intermediate process or chemical is being talked about.
MARKS MARKS MARKS are the only thing they can think about, to satisfy their society that’s slowly creeping upon them. Such is the sad state of students in India.
Last but not the least, The Curriculum itself.
The Syllabus. Let’s get back to our favourite unfortunate student Jack. He is left no choice but to learn PCM. Ok, he accepts. He can sort of develop an interest on a few topics that probably intrigues him to say the least. He is in grade 11 now. He opens his physics textbook *Sorry*, His Practice Material (Since CBSE books are sh*t and do not help you to get into IIT. Nobody has gone inside without these material. That’s why they earn 70 Bil). He wants to do Mechanics. He opens Simple Harmonic Motion. Oscillatory motion with a fixed time interval, simple right?
No.
Problem :
A mass of 2 kg oscillating on a spring with constant 4 N/m passes through its equilibrium point with a velocity of 8 m/s. What is the energy of the system at this point?
Jack: What the F*** am I even going to do by finding how much “energy” a goddamn “mass”(I don’t even know what that body is ffs.) that is fixed to a spring that has a “constant” (how did they even measure that constant) and that too at the point of “equilibrium”. All I’m gonna do after college is sit up and type some code.
See his plight? Now let’s suppose he does this and finally gets the right answer.
K.E = 1/2(mv²) = 1/2*(2)*(8)*(8)=64 Joules.
The options are: A)64 J B)6.4e+8 Erg C) √(4096) J D)None of these
Jack is smart enough to convert Joules into the C.G.S unit of Energy and chooses A, B and C but, in a hurry, forgets that the root of 4096 can also be -ve and hence, he is awarded -2 Marks instead of 5 just because of that. Now this question is supposed to evaluate his knowledge of the useless concept or his mindfulness?
A change is needed asap. In peoples minds at least. Professional Courses are not the only courses out there.
The Education of the rest of the world is already F***ed Up as it is, we are adding sh*t to it.
Thanks for Reading.