An Education on Indian Education

A few nights ago I was eating dinner and chatting with Rajesh, the restaurant owner, about what is “right and wrong” with Indian government education. I was peppering him with questions about his sister’s life (who could not go to school as she took care of the children), his level of engagement in school, the quality of his teachers, etc. The man next to us asked where I was from and held up the book he was reading “Indian Education Philosophy.” This country works in amazing ways.

Rishal joined in our conversation and I quickly learned his family had opened two schools in Delhi. He is a recently graduated intellectual property lawyer from Delhi who received an excellent boarding school education at the Doon School as well as a squash scholarship to Brown University. He wants to affect change in the Indian education system by developing a curriculum that mirrors his experience at Brown – “teaching to think, not teaching to follow like the Indian education system does.” We quickly exchanged numbers and planned a breakfast meeting.

My visits to the two local schools and conversations with other Indians left me very confused on the challenges with government funded education – teacher training and support, literacy levels, the impact of the 8th five year plan, the average ratio of 46 students to one teacher, the mystery of this “ghost children” – all of this seemed strangely fine with the teachers and the Indians I spoke with… I spent an hour prior to my visit with Rishal doing some research.

Rishal quickly informed me that my research was crap. Perhaps in Kerala – a communist state (“Communism is clean in India, democracy is dirty,” Rishal said) - but none of the other numbers were true; in a country with 33 official languages and 1,652 “mother tongues” how can anyone do a proper census on the reality of education? Here in Karnataka, most of the village children will speak a local dialect, they will then learn Kannada to do trade or interact with other city people, they will learn Hindi if they are being educated (or come from a Hindi family) and finally they will learn some English at school and only fluently if their parents speak it at home with them as well. This helped me understand why Rena couldn’t write her name, and also why Ashish was first in his class and intends to be a doctor at age 12 – parental involvement.

According to Rishal, teacher training and professional development doesn’t exist – Indians think any young girl knows how to take care of kids and therefore will be fine as a teacher. Curriculum used in schools is based on memorization and not creative thinking. Creativity and developing your own approach is also not supported in the home, most Indian parents think there are three jobs – accountant, doctor and lawyer.

“Indians feel most comfortable following a road that another man built and taking less money as a result. If India is to succeed it must start learning to build its own roads (literally, you realize if you’ve ever been to India) and the only place that’s happening today is in the private sector. Change in India happens in the private sector, the government sector is too corrupt with baksheesh and NGO’s are not well respected at the top level to make change – unless they are funded by rich men,” Rishal informed me.

Thus, his sister decided to build a private school. About 15 years ago, Gurgaon, an area just outside of Delhi, was a “no-where-land.” No city person would even consider moving there. KP Singh, soon to be the richest man in India after he takes DLF public, started buying up land in Gurgaon as he realized the exponential population growth in Delhi would motivate middle class and up Indians to find a cleaner, roomier place to live. He built 30 shopping malls, high-tech centers, sound roads and infrastructure and today land in Gurgaon is some of the most expensive in Delhi. Ten years ago Rishal’s family bought some of this land and his sister, frustrated as well with the Indian approach to education, decided to build two primary schools with highly-educated, well paid teachers and constructivist approach to teaching. Rishal hopes to learn from his sisters approach and after a few years of law focus full time on private education and institute a “robin hood” approach – the rich pay more, the poor go for free or with government tax rebates.

I pushed again – so there is no way in your opinion to affect change in the public sector? He laughed, “There is no partnership like there is in America. The government is controlled by very smart, highly corrupt and usually uneducated men – like Bal Thackeray…” I told him he didn’t need to go any further. During my last visit to Delhi I read Maximum City and had to finish it at home as it was coloring my Indian experience too much, I was terrified to even set foot in Mumbai.

Rishal went on to tell me about Lalu Prasad Yadav, apparently he makes George Bush look like Einstein. Because of coalition politics Lalu runs the richest natural resource state, Bihar, and is now, get this, the Indian railway minister in his strive to become a minister. I quickly decided to eliminate train transportation this trip.

“No,” Rishal concluded, “change will not happen in the public sector. The way change is now happening is in the private sector and many NRIs (Non-resident Indians) are returning to India to make they change they have seen in their time abroad. They understand that we must educate the masses, that a rising middle class should be a right and a dream for all Indians and private education is the only way to make this happen.”

“What is the Indian opinion on over-population and the magnitude of a rising middle class, who dreams of an “American-style” life with cars and refrigerators and consumption and the affect on not just the air you breathe here but the world environment?” I asked.

Rishal laughed, “No Indian politician has mentioned the word “over-population” since Indira Gandhi convinced her son on the castration rampage over 30 years ago. And similar to your leaders, no politician is going to talk about oil and the environment until its cool too. India will advance and rise anyway it can, that’s the Indian way.”