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.
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