<div>Two bright and accomplished personalities living in UK recently expressed an almost identical view on education system in India. <br /><br />A 12-year-old school girl in UK and a 61-year old professor also in UK lamented the education system in India that focused on rote and not learning. They criticised a system where memory was ranked higher than knowledge. <br /><br />Neha Ramu is an Indian origin school girl who scored an IQ of 162, the highest possible for her age. <br /><br />Dr Sugata Mitra is scientist emeritus at NIIT and professor at Newcastle University, UK. <br /><br />These two brilliant personalities who are generations apart agree on a problem that our education policy makers still don’t want to accept. India’s education system was built to serve the empire that wanted to create thousands of people who were literate but not educated. They ensured that only basic information about science and humanities was imparted to students. There was a clear bias against curiosity and creativity. <br /><br />For once I would welcome a rant by political leaders against our method of education that works hard to kill the questioning mind. <br /><br />Young Neha was quoted as saying, “Indian education system is very exam-oriented and stressful. What you do is basically memorise and spout out during the exams.” Such perception from a pre-teen girl that is still to be grasped by the policy leaders who decide our school curriculum. <br /><br />Dr Mitra’s hole in the wall experiment proved that 8-12 year old kids can educate themselves to the level of an office secretary if left alone with an internet enabled computer. A few slum kids played with a computer stuck into a wall by Dr Mitra. They learnt to surf and over a few days learnt complex science from what they saw on the screen. <br /><br />The trick in this achievement was collaboration and curiosity fuelled learning. Dr Mitra goes so far as to say that teachers may be obsolete. All that kids need is initial direction, some encouragement and a technology enabled collaborative environment. <br /><br />Despite all the promises made by successive education ministers at states and centre, Indian schooling system remains most antiquated. Even the Right to Education Act does not address flexibility in curriculum. While it focuses on school infrastructure, the new law has not suggested any radical freedom for a student to learn freely at his or her own pace. <br /><br />Another example of the rigidity of the system is the set of subject is forces students to follow. A tenth grader moving into the final two years of school has to choose science or humanities. This at a time when he or she is yet to fully discover the importance of each subject. A 15 year old is thus forced to choose a subject suite that will decide the course of the student’s adult life. <br /><br />A student trying to mix and match science subjects with humanities is often advised against it. Typical fears are that colleges in India will not accept a mixed subject student. Or that the job prospects will reduce. <br /><br />In effect, the system tells a student that being all-rounded at school level is a crime. Allowing a few more years to explore multiple disciplines will somehow create fatal flaws in the student’s education rendering him or her unemployable. <br /><br />It is time that education policy makers are divested of such archaic ideas. Several studies have established that the current school and college system is creating legions of unemployable students. Most are stuck in doing work that they have no aptitude for. They were forced to make a subject and therefore a career choice much before they were mature enough to know what they were good at. <br /><br />One of the brightest students in the world Neha attributes her accomplishments to the education system of UK. Perhaps in India she would not have been recognised at all. Professor Mitra is desperately trying to protect flexibility that will nurture curiosity. Hopefully Indian political leaders will stop promoting literacy and start supporting learning. <br /><br />(<em>Pranjal Sharma is a senior business writer. He can be contacted at pranjalx@gmail.com</em>)<br /> </div>
