India’s Culture of Education
Dec 8th, 2007 by craigdos
There are so many woes about the education system back home. While I have not found the education system here to be necessarily better, it is definitely prioritized higher. The school system leading up to college is extremely competitive. You may think that the system in the US is competitive as well, but this is truly on a different level. Nearly all school children take tuitions (essentially extra classes after school) throughout their elementary and high school years in order to keep up. Kids are routinely held back to repeat a year, and many don’t make it through the system at all, and (for that or financial reasons) go on to menial labor jobs.
In the school system here, all of the grades are based on tests, and the test scores follow you on your record starting in the 10th grade. Not too dissimilar to the US, but unlike the US, the job market is largely based on your scores from school and standardized tests (Not just overall GPA, but employers actually look at class grades), so there is never really any reset button for a bad semester.
Possibly because of the importance of grades, educational scores are held in common conversation as a way of defining yourself. As an outsider without common test scores to compare, I’m routinely judged based on my past work at Microsoft, a much lauded employer that all Indians seem to hold as a holy grail. Others include educational institutions like the Indian Institution of Technology (IIT) and the Indian Institution of Management (IIM) and most any school of Medicine. All have exceedingly tough entrance parameters, and allow far less than 1% of applicants.
In the US, we define ourselves by our careers (”So, what do you do?”), our possessions (”He drives a Ferrari!”), and our hobbies (”He’s a rock climber.”), among other things. This exists here as well except maybe defining by hobbies. However, I’m consistently shocked by how often test scores come up. Possibly because they are often considered inappropriate topics of conversation in the US. (Of your group of friends, how many of their SAT scores do you know?)
A cousin of mine scored exceedingly well on an entrance exam to a post-grad program a few years back. Since initially hearing this a couple weeks back, I’ve been in contact with many family and friends who know him. I have not been in a single discussion that contained his name and did not contain his exact percentage score on the test. Interestingly, none of these discussions was he present for, nor has the topic come up directly with him.
I’m not yet sure how I feel about how education permeates the culture in this way. On one hand, it seems rather crude to compare people openly in such a black and white way. However, it does keep education at the top of everyone’s priority, which can only help India, as a whole.
Cool post. From my experience many other countries (Sri Lanka, China) are like that as well. Part of this culture is fed by the super-limited resources: University is free — if you can get in.
The cultural differences and stigmas are pretty interesting too — asking someone’s test score here is a bit like asking someone’s salary. Unfortunately, having a supposedly “quantitative” metric can lead to rewarding the wrong behavior. From experiences interacting with people on my blog, what’s needed to memorize something for a test is very, very different from the knowledge that lets you use something in a productive way.
It’s very interesting to see what kind of “personal” information is considered appropriate to be “public” in India versus the US…when I forwarded an email from a sick aunt to one of my best friends (from Bombay), he was totally dumbstruck that I would share personal information like that, but (like your friends) he’s totally comfortable rattling off personal test score/salary statistics about all his friends, which in the US are considered more private. I don’t think there is an objective way to define what’s right or wrong when considering what “should” be considered public or private; I can see justifiable reaons for arguing any of these personal details to be public or private, so for me it’s just a matter of understanding the values of the people with whom i’m sharing information.
For me, the bigger question is not “what’s appropriate to share” but “what conclusions are we drawing from these metrics.” I’ve always been curious about people who hold these test results so high…I definitely think they are relevant and tell us some useful information relating to a person’s ability to reason, but (like Kalid) I’m acutely aware that the kinds of skills that are measurable on tests are some of the many skills required to succeed in life. Of course, it depends on one’s particular job and field (being emotionally intelligent is more important as, say, a doctor as opposed to a structural engineer, one could argue), but there are plenty of studies that show things like EQ (emotional intelligence) are just as important, if not more so, than the more standard metrics such as IQ.
I do think it’s commendable that there is such a high premium placed on education there…when i see how many teenagers here just waste away the amazing educational opportunities given to them, it makes me wish we had a bigger cultural emphasis on education. My guess is that we lost that emphasis in the 80s with the self-esteem movement, where parents were taught to tell their kids they were special and “we’re all winners,” which I think helped take away that drive to succeed in many kids (if you’re already a winner with a B grade, why strive for an A?). Just my 2 cents