By: Aruni Mukherjee
August 17, 2004

Beaming with pride were the faces of the parents upon the 'success' of their children at India's Child Genius. The children on the other hand look up and try to force a wry smile on their forlorn and dry faces, their expressions clearly telling the story of the mental burden that they have to bear at such a young age, courtesy of their family's pressure, to try and capture the dubious crown of India's child prodigy. Out of all the interviews taken of these participants, almost all seem to (or, are taught to) aspire to make a spacecraft, or reveal some secrets of science. Their statements sound suspiciously identical to each other giving the impression that India's next generation is going to be a bunch of clones, incredibly bereft of any excitement and a 'bore', just like most of our previous ones. Our quiz programmes seem to be inspired by foreign counterparts such as 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' or 'Weakest Link', but if the copy cats ever ventured to follow closely the age group that appear on these kinds of shows and the type of questions that are asked, they'll notice that most are middle aged people and questions pertain to current affairs and cover generally all the strata of societal issues. They do not put kids' head on the chopping block and ask the most pedantic, the hardest possible and usually irrelevant questions for which, thanks to the unhealthy competition so inherent in our society, parents push kids over the edge to try and make them win not for themselves, but for a sadistic aspiration to climb the social status ladder.  

This is not a one-off problem, but merely one of the branches of the tree of education in the world's largest democracy, whose roots are rotten. Our education system is essentially the legacy of our colonial masters, yet having studied in both education systems,. I can say with much confidence that the Brits have moved on while we are still stuck with the same century old edifice. When people commit suicide after not performing well in their examinations, then something is not right; when a nation of 1 billion fails to produce any great Indian educated leader, then something else is not right. In fact, today, almost nothing is right in our education system.  

Applying Rousseau's immortal words to our context, it is unfortunate that 'Indian students should be born free, but everywhere they are in chains'. Our system is essentially based on a one-way system, whereby the teacher imparts whatever there is to be taught and the student promptly ventures to memorise it. Its almost as if 'Let the teacher be, and all will be light' is the prevalent spirit in our schools. The creativeness of human spirit, the inherent individuality that is such a treasure for every person, is thus strangled to death before even being allowed to flourish. Questioning the teacher is often discouraged, and I have been on the receiving end of many such irritated teachers. The precise wording of the famed 'notes' on topics (which are often grossly poor in their sentence construction, analytical skills, argument structure and relevance- far more important skills than factual prowess) is often crucial in determining whether a student passes or fails in an exam. As a result, students and often parents jump into the fray trying to secure the most relevant 'note', which on occasions even results in underhand dealings with other students and bitter quarrels among mates. No student can venture outside the rigid parameters of the syllabus, and reading round the topic is not encouraged (rather, the students have no time to do so- they're already under tremendous pressure). Projects, field work, internet research, etc. are a strict no-no in most cases. Choice, again, is a key issue here. If we look at Britain, most (not all, however) subjects are compulsory only upto GCSE level, when students can make a certain amount of choice. At A-levels, students are totally free to select whichever subjects they please, be it across streams. The syllabus is flexible and indeed, many schools enrol under different educational boards for different subjects, to suit their faculty expertise and their understanding of what the student needs. I really do not care about the metals found in the London basin, nor do I want to know the history of the Hindi language- why must I be forced to study these when I can do better by concentrating on lesser number of subjects, but in more depth? Wipro CEO Azim Premji recently spoke out on this precise topic by denouncing memorising techniques at Indian schools. We can extend his argument further by looking into the inherent evils of the Indian democracy, which is the lack of citizen responsibility, lack of respect for our culture and lack of the knowledge of the most basic things in the outside world. We can easily solve this by spending time at school on these issues. Introducing modern topics like Business Studies, Politics, Computer Science, Religion Studies (Yes, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism are taught in British schools) at an early age and giving students more choices would be most beneficial. By continuing the current trend, we'll keep producing columns of babus, or followers (which the British intended us to be) and no leaders without foreign interaction. From Gandhi to Manmohan- the clock is ticking and import of leaders is continuing.  

Now that we've looked into the contents of the education system, or the branches of the tree, lets look into its roots and try to pinpoint where the whole thing starts on a wrong foot. Firstly, fees must be paid. Elementary and secondary education should be provided free of charge to those who cannot pay, as they are the basic amenities. However, an individual who aspires to go to college must, in theory, be aiming to use his/her degree to get a decent job (which translates into decent pay). Then they must be financially self-sufficient, or at least, hope to be. If they cannot afford to pay now, they must be granted a loan by the state or the union which they will repay after a certain time frame. Without money being involved, there is no incentive either to work hard or to get a good job to repay the loan, as is the case with most college goers. With successive governments following sane economic policies, investment should be coming and job creation continuous. Secondly, syllabus quantity must be slashed drastically to make room for other useful activities, sport being of prime importance among those. A certain amount of 'free time' should also be made available to students, where they can go out with their friends, get in touch with the ground realities of life (which are not there in books) or simply relax and have a good time. An average Indian school student is what the Americans so degradingly call, a 'dork'. The age old (and, worthless) Bengali fetish 'Porashona kore je, gari ghora chore she' (those who study, ultimately see success in life) should be discarded in its entirety. Sport is a big industry world wide today, except in India. Even in cricket, children have to squeeze time out of their schedules to go to distant coaching centres. All these sporting facilities should be made available in schools, where children can enjoy the sport from a young age, develop an interest, get their first taste of formal training at school and develop a physique for the game from an early point in their lives. Before crying for Olympic success and cursing the IOA officials for not providing facilities, we should keep in mind that the schools are the places where the grooming begins and this is where it leaves the most impact. Thirdly, for such a Herculean effort to attain some success, education centres must be taken out of cities into spacious rural areas and public-private partnerships can be most useful here with the government laying the infrastructure for such projects by companies, NGOs and other private entities to work on. Living away from parents with a community nearer to their age, its bound to make our children more self sufficient and teach them how to live and enjoy societal life.  

The irony is that going by the diligence, natural intelligence, character and respectfulness of our students, it is they who deserve a free, friendly, scientific, modern education system and it is the students of our erstwhile colonial metropolis that deserve to rot in the dungeons that our current education system has become. Let us go forward with the notion of 'least teaching is the best teaching'. It is from this base of freedom that our students will fly, and potential being in plenty, they will not stop until they reach the sky.


Aruni Mukherjee