On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 2:55 PM, ss <[email protected]> wrote: > If you send your child to school in India now - you are essentially consigning > him (or her) to an education system that will assume he wants to be a doctor > or an engineer. Neither teachers, nor parents, nor school managements, nor the > politicians know anything different.
I disagree on two points. First, the education system does not assume your child wants to be a doctor or an engineer. It assumes that your child wants to pass all the exams needed to get the degree certificate that proves he or she is a doctor or engineer. Any engineering/medial knowledge that she picks up along the way would be purely accidental. In any case, an engineering degree nowadays is just a rest stop in the road to an MBA. Secondly, I am cautiously optimistic about schools improving. When evaluating schools for my son last year, I realised that while the vast majority of schools are the worst kind of rote-learning crammer factories, there is a small but increasing number of schools that are trying to actually provide an education. I was especially impressed with the school that silk-lurker Jessica's daughter attends. It was too far away to send my son to, but the school that I finally decided on also seems to be fairly good. While far less unorthodox than my first choice, it too seems to be making an attempt to break out of the exam result focused mould of the traditional schools in Bangalore. My gut feel is that with increasing numbers of parents who are dissatisfied with the education that they received, simple economics is going to drive development of more "progressive" schools. Unfortunately, as with most so-called progress in India this will probably benefit only us -- the rich, well educated elite. -- b
