This is Why Education Might Have Ruined You

You probably know this, but are you doing anything about it?

This isn’t meant to be a rant, as much as it is an observation of the system of education as it stands today. I explore situations that have been causing me some headache and heartache, because I hope that we, as a nation, don’t have to endure this much longer. I live in India, and hence a lot of my views are drawn from the Indian experience, but they might be applicable outside as well.

If you’re like me, and finished school in the last 10 years, you probably struggled a little bit to get a job straight out of college. If you didn’t struggle, you were lucky. Or you genuinely deserved it because you were very good.

But for most of us in our mid to late 20s, most of the following will hold true:

• You probably had to invest in a Master’s degree because you didn’t see any other route into the job market.
• If you did get a job, you often found that what you actually did on the job did not require the degree in the first place.
• You wonder if all that money and time spent was the best decision in hindsight.

Way back in time, the education system was meant to produce people who could perform fairly mundane work. These jobs required little skill, but lots of repetition. So the best way to train a lot of people to do the same job was to put a lot of kids in one room, and teach them all the same thing. On the basis of this, kids would undergo tests and exams on which they would be graded. This was the system’s way of measuring everyone on the same scale. Based on their grades, kids would go out into the real world, and employers would have a fair idea of the ‘better’ candidates based on these grades.

This worked well up until about twenty years ago. Then, something strange happened. Technologies, and their positive exponential effects, started to spread a lot faster than they did previously. People began to work in jobs for which there weren’t any University training courses available, or for which they hadn’t been trained. So they had to learn on the job, or seek out specialized instruction from elsewhere.

They had to learn how to learn.

There was a very real demand for knowledge on topics that you had not learnt at school and university. A few brave hearts saw the need for such education and started platforms where Universities put up courses on various topics. All of a sudden, it was possible for a poor boy from Kenya, or a Grandmum from Vietnam to learn anything that they wanted. A few proactive individuals also saw that there were many people who were left ‘skill-less’ after a formal education, and they started teaching people on Youtube. Then, some companies came along and gave ordinary people like you and me the opportunity to teach subjects in which we were experts. Udemy, the biggest of such platforms, has more than 20,000 courses on offer. If it can be taught online, you can learn it on Udemy. Or on Khan Academy if you are a school student.

You’re an expert at machine learning? Teach a course on it.

You’re an expert at picking up great travel deals? Teach! Lots of people want to travel!

You've developed an exercise regimen that doesn’t require the gym? Teach others how you got ripped!

So it call came down to one thing for people who saw a need to rectify an incomplete education; they needed to have a will to learn new things on their own. Their education had not prepared them for the world that they found themselves in. For probably the first time in their lives, these people were able to learn stuff that actually interested them.

You now have many more types of jobs available all over the world, but the formal education system is still hell bent on equipping people for jobs that were available four decades ago.

I see an increasing number of candidates with Masters degrees who struggle to get jobs. Companies don’t care about your degrees and qualifications any more. They only care about what you will be able to do for them in the future, regardless of where you studied or what you studied.

The school system has a ‘one size fits all’ approach to everything it does. And this is not working for most people who go through the education system.

Who decided that all children of the same age have to be in the same class? Do all kids of the same age have the same ability? They do not. So why is the system hell bent on making children of different abilities and inclinations work through the same curriculum at the same pace?

You’re an adult. Do you have the same skills in different areas as other people your age? Then why do you expect a 7 year old to have the same skills as other 7 year olds?

Why do kids have to undergo years of memorizing useless facts and mechanically solving problems, even if they have absolutely no interest in what they are being taught? Facts are freely available, so why spend so much of your childhood learning them?

I would argue that being able to search for information, interpret that information and then apply it is an extremely important skill today. Is this being taught to children? Are they being given in an opportunity to practice this in the classroom?

The system as it stands, is best suited to very specific types of learners. There are plenty of children whose brains don’t function in the way the school system demands. What the system demands is the ability to memorize a lot of facts, mechanically solve a lot of sums in a short amount of time, and be able to produce answers under high pressure. But not everyone can excel within these constraints. And the ones who can’t are left feeling discouraged, demotivated and disengaged. This feeling continues all through college, and most people only regain their sense of confidence after a few years in the workforce. Some never regain their confidence at all.

This is true especially in India, but I suspect this exists everywhere. In India, academic achievement is the highest form of achievement that a child can aspire to during his early and teenage years. All other forms of endeavour are meant to be pursued only as hobbies or extra activities. We all have friends who were gifted in other areas, but never had the chance to pursue these talents in school.

There is so much pressure on children to perform, that this merry-go-round starts before children are five years of age. In a system where your abilities are judged on the basis of a number (grade), everyone wants to make sure they have the highest number possible.

Competition is fierce by the time children are in primary school. The objective is maximization of the number, and not widening of a person’s horizons. The objective is not to teach a person how to think. The objective is to teach them what to think.

In an economy which is as diverse and innovative as India’s, I am amazed when parents go to any lengths to put their children into schools where the following are not only the norm, but are celebrated:

• rote learning and a distinct lack of individualized instruction
• An over reliance on textbooks and workbooks, and not much left to the imagination of the teacher (or the children)
• An intense focus on achieving grades, and not enough attention given to activities which don’t directly lead to academic achievement

This results in the classic dilemma for parents:

“My child goes to one of the most sought after schools in the city, but he doesn’t seem interested in his studies, and we have to look for outside tuition to make sure he is able to cope.”

When I was growing up, there were plenty of my classmates who spent a lot of time at outside tuitions. Unfortunately, this is the case today as well. In fact, the proportion of children going for extra tuitions has increased. The fact that your child needs tuition is pointing to the fact that the teachers are not doing their job. It is not because your child is ‘dumb’ or ‘slow’ or any other word used to describe his apathy to repeatedly monotonous instruction.

I am of the opinion that the system is set up in a way such that most children will not live up to their own and others’ expectations. Not for any fault of their own though.

They can’t — why would a child show interest in something he doesn’t care about? Or which doesn’t stretch his imagination? Or which doesn’t allow him to use his creativity?

The system is set up such that you are made to feel inadequate from a very early age.

The system is set up like a quality controlled production line. If you hit a certain standard, you’re good. Otherwise you’re not good enough. And this label will stay with you until you leave school.

You didn’t come in the top ten per cent of your class? That is going to determine the path for the rest of your life.

You won’t get into a good college, and so you won’t get a good job.

And so you don’t really have much hope for a good life.

Which is why parents go crazy trying to get their children to maximize the number.

Fear and insecurity. That is what children are being fed on from the moment they are able to consciously understand their surroundings.

The system values conformity and an ability to stay on the path prescribed by people who have no interest in your welfare. The longer you stay on the path, the more normal you are.

But the world doesn’t reward those who perpetuate the failings of the system. It rewards those who are able to bypass the system entirely and create new paths for themselves and for those around them.

The system doesn’t care for creativity or innovation. Of course, you read press articles where the kids are working on some interesting stuff in school {robotics!}, but this is usually a one-off event and not part of the core curriculum, and done only to impress parents and feed the marketing team with some content.

The system will glorify you if you have learned how to game the system, and have learnt how to gulp fifty mouthfuls of information in one bite. You will then be an expert at regurgitating this onto exam papers, thereby proving to the world how special you (and your digestive system) are. The rest of your classmates will be disillusioned with the system until well into their 20s, but I can assure you that you won’t stay ahead of the game for much longer than that.

I estimate that it takes about ten years for the ill-effects of the education system to leave a person entirely. I actually don’t know of any other types of medication where the harmful effects stay in the body that long.

The system will also cause often irreparable damage to your confidence. You will have had innumerable instances of not meeting your parents’ and teachers’ expectations, and that will take its toll over the customary twelve year period. If you manage to avoid serious dents to your confidence, you are truly one of a kind. You are part of the fifteen per cent to which the system is catered.

However, there are many parents who are realizing that, at the K-12 level, schooling has become a commodity. And commodities have the following characteristics:

• they cannot be differentiated from each other
• production of the commodity has standard inputs, resulting in standard outputs
• there is little scope for differentiation in terms of quality

So unless you can afford an ‘international’ school and pay 10 lacs a year, the schooling system will result in your child going through stress and misery that can be avoided. Even international schools don’t always do what they claim to be doing (individualized learning etc), nor are they international in the way they go about things.

But there are alternatives. You need to have your eyes and ears open to realize that. And you need to be willing to step outside the system, trust your instincts and do what you feel is right.

There are many parents who are experimenting with home schooling, co-schooling and the like. And seeing wonderful outcomes. Children are more likely to develop at their own pace; not the one mandated by the system. Parents are happier as they have a direct connection to their child’s learning. It is much cheaper; but you don’t get to brag about how much you are spending on your child’s schooling. Sure, there are many benefits of belonging to an institution, but you can always move your child to a ‘proper’ school when she is 13 or 14.

When I started my masters at Cambridge, I remember our course director telling us. ‘There is nothing that we can teach you here. You are here because we think that you can teach yourself everything. We are here only to teach you how to teach yourself'.

My motivation for writing this is that I want to create a system where children don’t have to go through all that I have described. There are schools where good work is being done, but these are very few. So we need to provide an alternative that exists outside the bounds of what people have come to expect.

The thing about the rat race is that even after you finish the race, you’re still a rat.

— — — — —

You’re not a rat, so you don’t have to race. One of my future posts will cover examples of those who have side-stepped the system successfully and been able to give their children a good education without relying on schools. I am not advocating that you don’t send your child to school, all I am saying is that there are lots of alternatives and you need to choose wisely. Don’t follow the herd, do what you feel is right.

Ryan Chadha is an entrepreneur and creator who runs a preschool called Jigyasa The School in Bangalore. He loves cricket, technology and education.