The Indian educational system lives inside a bubble, or indeed, several bubbles. These bubbles isolate it from the real world and cause most of the problems that plague this system.
The first bubble exists because of the class divisions in our society. The children of the very rich go to elite schools. The less prosperous have their own “English Medium” schools, the poor go to government-run schools. Each child interacts with other children in the same social bubble and doesn’t know how the rest of the world works.
Yet, another bubble exists because of the method of teaching. The Indian system is geared towards book learning and learning by rote. The memorisation of the written material is the preferred method; understanding and critically examining the information presented is secondary. There is little or no attention paid to developing other skills, such as oral skills or social interaction skills.
The entire system is geared towards written examinations. Even in the best schools, the focus is towards preparing the students for competitions and for preparing them for doing well in the Board examinations. There is little exposure to the real world outside the circle of book knowledge. When children graduate from school, they do not know how the real world works, except, perhaps, the little bits and pieces they have learned from their parents.
The pattern continues in higher education. I went to an IIT — the best that India has to offer. I learned a lot during 5 years of intensive study, but very little of it was related to the outside world of business and commerce. We had a very brief stint of summer training at a local government factory. But as unpaid trainees, we didn’t learn anything. We only learned about the real world of business after landing our first job and then there was a long learning curve.
Does it have to be this way? Not really. Indeed, it is not like this in many parts of the world.
In North America, teenagers start earning money while still in school, doing summer jobs. They cut grass, deliver newspapers, work in fast-food restaurants; flipping hamburgers. It is almost a badge of honour to work in McDonald’s for a while, where students learn real-world skills. They learn to get along with all kinds of people. They break barriers of race, colour or creed. They learn management skills from real life.
This could easily be done in India, but, somehow, it is not in our culture. There are so many fast-food restaurants and students should be encouraged to take up part-time jobs there. It will help them learn valuable life skills and teach them how to interact with people. It will also teach them the dignity of labour.
At the university level, most students in North America work their way through college. There are summer student programs where students work in the industry and get paid for their contributions. There are campus jobs with students running everything; from cafeterias to libraries and bookstores.
Even the government hires summer students giving them much needed financial support. It is a win-win for both sides as students are very hardworking and productive. The government of Canada, alone, hires thousands of summer students every year where they gain direct experience of how the government works.
There are also co-op programs where students can take time off and work in the industry, or the government, for a year or more. It helps the students find permanent jobs more easily when they graduate; they already have the contacts they need. It also helps many of them pay their way through college.
We need to introduce such programs in India. Industry and the government should be encouraged to start summer job programs for students and internships for students who want to take more time off from their university. There should be no stigma in working at entry-level jobs anywhere in the industry; they teach us much more than the classroom, which is the norm in India right now.
It is time to break the bubbles in schools and colleges so that we can move towards a better educational system that meets the needs of students as well as of industry. If we do this, both can flourish and move together from strength to strength.