On the Loose: Not Child’s Play

In India, this is a situation unlikely to arise since too few of us have experienced such high standards of tuition that we’d be able to call out a especially lousy teacher when we saw one. Even those of us who were fortunate enough to go to the so-called best schools in cities like Delhi were nameless, faceless, roll numbers in an endless sea of humanity. There was only one teacher, trying valiantly to get through to 50 kids in a classroom. A thankless task, since it’s so difficult to have even two children in the same mental space at the same time. Sections routinely went up to G. The only teacher I remember from my school years, quite fondly I might add, was a Math tutor who used to twist my ears when I got a sum wrong. He had a terrifying passion for the subject and was undeterred by listless, dispassionate pupils. Those days there was just one yardstick for success — academic excellence. If you were an average student you were destined to obscurity, treated with benign indifference by teachers and classmates alike.

Not much has changed in 20 years. Though one can hardly blame teachers for their lack of spontaneity. They’re paid too little. Both the ICSE and CBSE curriculums are painfully regimented leaving very little room for creativity. It can’t be much fun teaching the same thing year after year for decades on end. Going through my 13-year-old son’s textbooks makes me shudder because the coursework is intrinsically so boring. As a result, children spend only as much time on it to get grades their teachers and parents think are acceptable. There has been a spurt in international schools in India who’s biggest selling point is they have fewer than 25 kids in a class (of course, you also pay double the fees of a regular Indian school). Parents, scarred by memories of their own desperate cramming are flocking there, determined to spare their children the torture the system wrought on them.

Not to knock the advantages of an international school education; anything besides the slavish adherence to a textbook must be cheered on. In the IGCSE and IB curriculums, children are encouraged to do their own research so the classroom has many diverse points of view in every subject. It’s much more intellectually stimulating than reading a chapter and mugging up the 10 questions at the end of it.

Education, however, is also what you learn outside the classroom. And that’s where a down to earth Indian school scores over almost any in the world. You’re on your own academically, and are forced to complete difficult tasks even when you find them pointless and boring. From a cynical point of view, it’s a lesson in endurance. You have to jostle for attention from teachers and work hard to stand out. The eclectic mix of students from different backgrounds is a microcosm of the adult world with examples of conflict, competition and friendship playing out every day. Boring academics is a problem, sure, and the syllabus needs a revamp. But if the aim is to create well-rounded individuals who are thinking beyond their career goals, there’s plenty of real life experience available in an Indian classroom.