After reading this article, All I can say is Indian education is very much identical. Some kids here are pushed even more than this Chinese kid; a kid sister of my friend goes to private tuition so that she could pass the entrance test of another private tuition which takes in less students and trains them to write and pass the entrance exam of a reputed college in India (so in simple words, she is going through two levels of tuitions to get into another tuition which she might go 4-5 years later).
Every other week I read in newspaper that a school or college kid killed himself/herself because they failed or got lesser marks than their peers. The most recent I read was a girl killed herself because she got 4 marks lesser than the topper of her class. It is scary and it is only getting worse day by day.
I have actually thought a lot about the reason “Why Parents are pushing their kids to the wall”, it is certainly not job uncertainty (there are plenty of outsourced jobs here and you can see almost anyone who is slightly not retarded getting one). The only answer I got was “Most of the parents in third-world countries lack good Identities” because they are in some jobs which are not very happy or proud of and the only way for them to escape from their ‘past or present’ is to change their future which they think is in the hands of their kids and not theirs. They constantly hear of stories of kids who studied well, got a job in some company and bought his parents house (which if he/she is lucky enough to hold on to the job might own it in next 20 years). As I have seen most of the pushy parents are highly incompetent who actually believe that their life is over, they can’t change it because they missed opportunities when they were young. A real person would go achieve what he wants at any age irrespective of anything else but pushy parents are not that because they are betting on their kids and that is much easier.
The other part of the problem is housewives (I am not sexist); this is a group which actually doesn’t have an identity. If you have ever been near one, most of their sentences start with “My son/daughter is…” most of these sentences end with an achievement of their kids which are incidentally better than other housewives kids. Now the housewives who were humiliated in the conversation go home force their kids to do well in whatever they do. It is certainly not limited to studies; it can be anything jumping a fence, throwing a ball or anything else. At the end of the day, their kid has to be better than other kids. It is kind of like playing a MMORPG where they want their avatar to be better than others and they want their avatars to level up faster so that they can fight bigger battles. So the problem is certainly not the education system, it is actually the society (housewives and people who are not happy with their jobs). So my solution would be think about the kids later, create jobs for housewives (idle minds are devil's workshop, they are the clear example of it). Keep the housewives busy and you would automatically see an improvement in kids who are back to being creative and independent like they always were.
Sorry for 600 words long rant, I am just pissed with how things are going on here right now. It actually took me an hour to write this. :)
With all due respect, your views and analysis are only relevant to the urban experience.
"anyone who is slightly not retarded" does NOT land up a job in non-metros.
Just visit a tier 2 city like Nashik (I am not even talking about proper rural areas) and see the employment opportunities there. At such places success stories abound of sons and daughters of lower middle class workers who cracked some competitive exam or another have landed, and naturally students are inspired to work harder.
Go little deeper and in the rural areas, the socio-economic conditions there are such that kids who can attend schools and colleges consider themselves privileged. And these people do uplift the economic situation of the entire family.
The point I am trying to drive here is that the parents are generally right to emphasize the importance of education to their children. Of course, obsessive behavior as demonstrated in this article is wrong.
The inherent problem which leads to this is two fold: lack of seats and unscientific content in education.
Lack of Seats
There is an utter shortage of seats in all educational centers in India. This leads to higher "cut off" grades leading to obsessive competition. The very idea that grades are the blanket deciding factor to deem a student fit to attend a certain school is very poor and it needs scrutiny urgently.
Unscientific content
The Indian education, in its current form, discourages creativity, emphasizes solely on memorization capabilities (I have some friends who are now managers at Big Four IT companies who memorized essays for English exam and sums for Math exams and got super grades) and is highly politicized. It is geared to train students to be doers and not thinkers, it does not light the burning curiosity that I feel is very important to really learn anything (be it math, sciences, even history, etc)
IMHO, there is an need to modernize the educational system which should solve many a problems.
It is a mammoth task; grading system, content, creativity, the "tuition problem" to name a few obstacles. We can start out by accepting the problems.
Again, all due respect to your views. I can relate with them and probably would have completely supported them had I not had the opportunity to visit what some call the "real India" :)
Well written. The 'real' India is indeed far bigger than 'non-retards' working in IT industry.
And as was discussed in this forum a few days ago, teachers have the most important role to play in imparting good education and encouraging creativity and learning over marks. They can actually make a huge difference even with this current system.
In reality very few teachers inspire. In my 16 years of education hardly three people inspired me. Do teachers here understand their roles and responsibilities? Bad teachers want the students to opt for private tuitions, which is again run by them.
All parents would like to see their children 'well settled'. Unfortunately, in our (Indian) society as of now, ticket to a well settled life is still 'perceived' to be a degree from a top educational institute. It was true to an extent in the days before economic liberalization (1991), and this mindset would take some time to change.
Rather than calling most of the pushy parents incompetent or reasoning them to be idle housewives (err homemakers), i think it's mostly the fear of the kid not getting to be as successful (by their definition) in his/her life. This fear sometimes is a product of their own perceived failure or hardships in life, or what they have seen around them.
Economic growth plus good education and thinking can go a long way in curing any society of most of such ills.
Absolutely. I cannot blame the parents entirely, they have not even seen the same kind of opportunities as we see now. The moment they see more success stories in other fields (not just IT), i am sure they will put emphasis on the right kind of education.
the socio-economic conditions from pre-independence have created the vicious circles .... also lots have to do with caste system as well; where brahmins were known as the best .... after independence if you want to do better then you have to have better education and to have better education you need to have better scores .... now the situation is so worse that even if you have better scores you still can't get admission in good schools ... the competitiveness has grown because of non-availability of very few premier schools. Also there is something like Status Symbol - parents are just dying to get some kind of status in the society and that they try to get it thru their kids... poor kids, the young minds are sometime destroyed because on this unusual pressures.
Also there is not much importance given to other extra curricular activities/career.... this is also due to to not having good institutions/infrastructure. If you are from middle class and god forbid if you want to leave your studies for getting in to sports or music or modeling then the whole society will come down on you as if you're a sinner. Though this mentality is on the verge of changing (in urban areas only) but not at the pace of 21st century.
Hey Zhang Rui, you're not alone, such a situation would soon arrive in India too. Recession is just another catalyst, for such way of thinking, to become popular here in India -- where opportunities aren't abundant and education system has been sleeping for years.
The child of scarcity of opportunities and avenues -- Competition -- about which so many people speak with pride. The word which gives us a false sense that after its occurance, the outcome will be pure gold! The word which kills aapasi bhai chara and life at large. The reason for so many stressed out people in 20-30 years of age... and I guess what not. Anyways coming back to my point, I think competition is the main m&*#^# reason behind all this. And the reason behind the competition is the layed back approach towards education that our government has been adopting and the way we have been giving respect to the ones who get good ranks in a competition.
We just keep forgetting that we as human beings we do, and yes we do, all of us, me you and everyone have the ability to learn things we like, to make changes to things around us to suit our needs, to devise better ways to do things, to create things, to do anything that we want. Now what fuck up competition does is that it puts a force, a palm on your back push you, all of you towards one direction. Now that is fundamentally wrong! You can't have the best outputs from me when you won't let me do what I want. And not everyone knows what one wants at ONE particular age. This introduction to competition at early youthful ages is the biggest fuck up of our life. Our education system is trying to hide its fallacies and fallouts under name of Competition and little are they aware that they are actually taking away our little right to do what we feel like at whatever time we want.
I know my thoughts haven't been presented in an organized manner, loads of you might just say wtf is he trying to say.
So go n relieve yourselves of the doubts and take a lesson, for if you enter the education ministry by your bad luck, your groundnut sized brains would also contain these ideas and with your rice grain sized heart, you would think, and not just think like they have been thinking after independence, you would rather DO something good for my kids, cousins and fellow young citizens who are yet to be born.
Being from India, I couldn't agree more. Its sad that the culture and system does not change. They do not value individuality. Hopefully over time we'll start to see some positive change.
Tuition for tuition? Hearing this for first time but I have seen students opting for two tuition simultaneously, one of which is correspondence course.
At times, peer pressure is more compared to ones from parents, which more dangerous.
