Indian Education - Where do we go from here?

Ok, so that's that. McCauley is tossing and turning in his grave. But where do we go from here? When I look around, many NGOs, government and individuals are working to change the system. But I have only been impressed by a few.


Bollywood is not just entertainment anymore. Aamir Khan's movies Taare Zameen par and Three Idiots have really been on target and woken up lot of people. People don't change very easily and quickly, but I see lot of parents now talking about the child's rather than their wishes for what the child should do with their lives. This is a change from my generation.


Swami Ramdev, India's yoga guru has rently launched a people's movement called "Bharat Swabhiman". One of the key initiatives of this movement is the education system. The kind of changes he is talking about resonated with me. He is talking about strengthening the villages with a values based education system with focus on peace inside and prosperity outside (param shanti, param vaibhav). Millions of people are supportinh him and this movement has the potential to become something like Gandhi's freedom movement. If that happens, the changes would be definite and radical. One other key point of this movement is that citizens start demanding their rights from the government, educators etc. If the sleeping giant (that is India) wakes up, nothing like it.

There are many other efforts from NGOs and individuals as well as schools themselves, but the collective impact is yet to be seen.


I am not for or against any particular school of thought or system. I feel that good things should be learnt and adapted from anywhere, be it east, west or anywhere else. This is also the wisdom of ancient India which tells us to be open and accepting. This is the reason why so many immigrants and even offenders have integrated into the Indian society and lived peacefully for centuries. So, I feel that Indian values definitely need to be brought back to education, but we also need to teach and integrate strengths of the west such as, work ethics, analytical thinking, creativity and innovation, planning and execution skills for carrying out any work or project, working in teams rather than individually, civic sense and cleanliness.

Indian Education - Fulfilling McCauley's vision of creating a nation full of non-thinkers: Part 1

Part 1 – True History missing from textbooks
How the culture of a country can be totally stripped of its innate spirit, its growth entirely staggered by confusion, by malicious intentions of its rulers and ignorant carelessness of its subjects is very evident in current day India. In order to understand this phenomenon we need to look back at our history.

Thanks to the awareness being created today by various groups such as Art of Living's teachings by SS Ravi Shankar, Swami Ramdev's "Bharat Swabhimaan" movement's speeches by Rajiv Dixit, education from my AOL teacher Rajima and others, I am now becoming aware of our immensely rich heritage and knowledge, and how years of foreign rule tried to kill it, succeeding mostly but not totally. This rich heritage which I was never told about by any teacher in any school or college, and only sometimes hinted upon by my grandmother who could not provide any detail or proof.

For 10000 years my motherland India has been the land of sages who were scientists of a different nature. They experimented with themselves - their bodies, minds and spirits, and revealed the core, deep realities of our existence. Their experiences were then documented in detail in a rich collection of scriptures. From this came everything from Ayurvedic system of medicine for the body, the number system invented by Aryabhatta, Sanskrit, the mother of all European languages, meditation techniques for being peaceful and realizing the ultimate truth about who we are, practical tips for living a peaceful, virtuous and prosperous life, various dance and music forms deeply rooted in spirituality, cuisine which was deliciously rich with spices as well as healthy for the body, and so much more… These were all made available to the masses. They were not productized and sold for a profit, because the sages knew that this knowledge should benefit the whole world because inside we are all connected as one being. If one is not benefited, everyone else is also affected in some way. Everything started and ended by offering to the whole humanity and divine and chanting for peace. Till today any cultural and religious ceremony in a Hindu gathering ends with Chanting Om Shanti…Shanti…Shanti (Peace…peace…peace) and Loka Samastha sukhino bhavantu (May all people be happy. There is no "us" and "them"). There was no institutionalized religion, instead, everyone had total freedom to experiment and worship anything or nothing - total democratic system of spirituality!

It was only in the last 2000 years that Indians started organizing themselves as one religion in the face of fierce competition and conversions. And once that started happening, the zist of the ancient philosophies also started losing its impact on the society.

Indian Education - fulfilling McCauley's vision of creating a nation full of non-thinkers: Part 3

Part 3 – McCauley’s mission accomplished!
There are obviously some positives of McCauley’s system as well. For example, a big group of people like us can now communicate in English and hence succeed in doing business with western countries, bringing IT outsourcing jobs to India, integrate better with the Global community which though diverse, mostly communicates in English. But I would say there are more negatives than positives of this system. After all, countries like China and Japan are able to develop without English. But apart from English, there is little that this system has given us. The British designed it in such a way that we “be Indian by blood and colour and British by taste, opinions, culture, intellect and morals” ( according to McCauley’s speech to the British parliament in 1835), that we act like the British but we do not THINK like the British. This fact became obvious to me once I studied and lived in USA and when I observed my daughter studying in US and compared it to her schooling now here in India. I will give a few examples:

• During early education of English language, in US (and other western systems which I observe in schools following IB and IGCSE board curriculums), the emphasis is on expressing thoughts, imagination and thinking, while learning the language. In Indian system there is a lot of focus on things like spelling accuracy, clean handwriting, Grammar and copying from the board or book, and hardly any focus on thinking and creating. What does this mean? Who needs to copy or write clearly and accurately with no grammatical mistakes without the ability to think and create?? Someone like an office clerk? Someone like Thomas Edison would need thinking and creative abilities to invent, even though his handwriting may suck! Have you seen how illegible the handwriting of some of the IT company CEOs in Silicon valley are? I have. When I saw it I was happy that they invented email and I did not have to read a hand written memo from the CEO  Ha! In the big picture spelling and handwriting are nice, but thinking and creating are critical!

• Nowhere in my 15 years of education in India was I taught where I am going to use the things I am learning. I could see no point in learning and hence after being an A+ student in elementary through high school, barely passed my exams in college. Obviously there was nothing connecting education to real life and hence no creativity and innovation. When I went to college and then graduate school in California, I realized for the first time how things from school are applied in the real world and it renewed my interest in education. Now the point is, British obviously knew how to teach in this manner, but they chose to keep the analytical thinking and creativity part out of the India system for obvious reasons. They wanted to rule us, not make us their equal…
  

The results are so obvious everywhere in India – we have project delivery leads (who are given a defined project to deliver. All the thinking and definition is done by the team in US who understands the market and the big picture) but hardly any product innovators in IT industry. We have excellent copies of Hollywood movies adapted for Indian audience but very few truly indigenous stories and plots (thanks to people like Aamir Khan who left traditional schools and learnt film making on the job). Instead of tapping into our resources of natural medicines and beauty products, everyone wants western products loaded with harmful chemicals. Even the delicious Indian food we so rave about is not so cool anymore…kids crave for pizza, burgers and fries, icecream which are all taking them away from health. We have indeed become western in our tastes, opinions, culture, intellect and morals, while being Indian in blood and colour. McCauley’s mission has been accomplished!!

There are of course many innovators also in India, but by and large they have learnt these attributes elsewhere (such as home) not in school. For the most part I see that the poor class in India is more creative out of desperation to survive. Anyone coming out of the education system just wants a cushy job and live a life of consumption and entertainment without thinking much about creating value for society.

Indian Education - fulfilling McCauley's vision of creating a nation full of non-thinkers: Part 2

Part 2 – Catastrophic influence of foreign invaders
After the muslim conquest of the subcontinent in 12th century, this open and rich culture started slowly diminishing under force from those in power. And when the British ruled India, there was a systematic and deliberate effort to erode the culture and create self-hatered, let by Lord McCauley’s education system which replaced the gurukul system of education. Instead of explaining why, I would like you to watch these videos by Rajiv Dixit and get enlightened :-) These are in Hindi, so if you don’t know the language, please ask someone who does, to translate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8or1gPsFLaU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcEsg3ps-wE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye-HgSnLDOA

What next?

Like many Indians living abroad, after I had my fill of the material comforts, a career, home, etc., I started feeling the urge to do something more fulfilling. What next? More often than not the thoughts of doing something for the homeland I had left behind kept coming up. But what? India is full of problems...and hence opportunities. But what? And how? I reflected on 101 problems and every time I kept coming back to education. Change in India needs to begin and end with education. India desperately needs basic fundamental education. Not the type of education that teaches ABC and Maths, but the kind that teaches basics such as, honesty, hard work, self esteem, cleanliness, hygine, and above all ability to think, innovate and bring value to the society in however little or big way. Of course basic literacy is also important but less important than these attributes, which alone can uplift the society.



In 2010 I relocated to India and had an opportunity to observe the education system more closely. I am very discouraged at this point to see the current system in place. Except a few exceptions here and there, most schools are following a colonial system with herd mentality. There is total lack of any out of box thinking. Schools are businesses with the aim of pleasing the customers (parents) without any concrete focus on child's best interest based on scientific methods or even common sense. Fundamental change is needed but the task is too big and daunting, so I am starting with my daughter's school which BTW is more progressive and open to suggestions.