What is wrong with Indian Education?

So..what is the definition of wrong when it comes to education ? 

Lack of well rounded education . Nerds are restricted to books while jocks are restricted to practice nets. Unfortunately, nerds can benefit a lot from sports and learn team dynamics and how to work along with other people. Jocks on the other hand can learn a few things like critical thinking and logical reasoning.

Absence of disruptive innovators and rebels in our society . Like the commonly quoted Steve Jobs, we do have a lack of innovators (small when compared to our huge population) in our  country.

What we instead have in our country is nation of sloggers who are restricted by our underdeveloped society's definition of success and cramming in spite of unhappiness to get into an engineering college and later to get the next promotion. This is completely done irrespective of if they actually care about the subject and work but rather by social conditioning which deludes them into thinking this how they can attain salvation.

Is it unfair to compare India with say...United States ?

Well take a completely unrelated metric ..life expectancy and compare the US, India and  Singapore. Singapore was chosen by me because in the lifetime of our previous generation it managed to go from an under developed third world to a first world country. Now if you look at something as basic as life expectancy, India completely lacks behind US and Singapore with a life expectancy of something around 65. That would literally mean,  if you are in your 30s, more than half of your life
is gone (yes you can argue it is for the entire nation and not specifically the urban population.)  Anyway coming back to life expectancy, India is where Singapore was in the 1960s. 

Now what does that say to us ?

India is still in the "survival mode" . Since its creation in 1947, we have been and still are in the "survival mode". What happens in the survival mode is that we do cost-benefit  analysis of every decision in our lives and unfortunately in education, career as well as marriage. This explains why engineering is the overwhelming choice of the majority of the people in this country and in similar countries like China (who smartly have also recognized the potential of studying finance.) After we leave the "survival mode" as a nation, then only we will reach the developed stage like US and Canada where a significant fraction will choose subjects which they actually like and rather not forced by society to choose. After that when we reach the "Uber-Developed" status like Scandinavian countries, then the majority of our country, free of financial constraints will pursue their dreams.

Inspite of all this if we look at the enrollment in tertiary education in both US and India (assuming the correctness of the data, they are amazingly similar with approximately 20% enrollment with India doing better). As per the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2012, 96.5% of all rural children between the ages of 6-14 were enrolled in school. This is the fourth annual survey to report enrollment above 96%. 83% of all rural 15-16 year olds were enrolled in school. However, going forward, India will need to focus more on quality.Gross enrollment at the tertiary level has crossed 20% (as per an Ernst & Young Report cited in Jan 2013 in Education News/ minglebox.com  "In 2006, 19.5 percent of the adult population had attended college but had no degree, 7.4 percent held an associate's degree , 17.1 percent held a bachelor's degree , and 9.9 percent held a graduate or professional degree . The historic gender gap had practically vanished.  New England had the highest proportion of college graduates, and the South Central states the lowest. "

So what is wrong with our curriculum ?

Actually nothing. Our curriculum is perfect and better than most countries. We are taught a vast majority of subjects (we will get to teaching methods later) which will allow us to recognize where  our interest lies later in life. Hardly do you get Shakespeare and C++ being taught at high school  level in developing country. Even in a developed country like Singapore, the syllabus is not so vast and people who might take History will not end up taking Geography. Unfortunately, our co-curricular activities lack behind a lot which would actually produce a well rounded individual. We end up being egoistical, individualistic narrow minded individual. However, till this crazy competition goes away, I doubt if any importance will be paid to co- curricular activities.

So who are we to blame ?

Parents, Teachers and Society "Cost Benefit Analysis of every Career Decision" When was the last time anyone studied engineering especially ECE because they liked it? They had been tinkering with circuits since young, taking apart radios and other stuff. When was the last time we studied anything because we liked doing it not because we can quote a huge starting annual salary?

Another consequence of the country being in the "survival mode", is that the insecurities of the parents are passed to the children over time and the ultimate objective is to achieve financial stability in whichever way possible.

"Myopic Definition of Success"

Standard definition of success common in our society is getting into a top engineering college followed by working in an unrelated field which would pay the most followed by getting into a B School to work in a field which you did not know  even existed when you were in high school. Although I congratulate the successful ones from the top schools, what concerns me is that the definition of success is extremely myopic. Life is  a long, long journey and although this might give you a good start, it will never determine where you end up.

In this way I will argue that we should stop blaming reservation as a curse of our society. Reservations can only stop you to a certain point and blaming them for "ruining your whole life" is extremely short sighted.

"Nation of Conformists"

We although will hate to admit, are a nation of conformists. Adventure and risk taking as a whole is just lacking in our DNA. We never explored China during ancient times (Marco Polo came from  Italy), we never bothered to go to Africa till there were jobs for us. We are shit scared to be different.  Every career decision is approved by our parents and society. We are just afraid of making a mistake and being pointed at. This comes from the very fact that  since childhood, our teachers will label anyone different to be a "problem child" who needs psychiatric help, thanks to their limitations as incomplete human beings. We are so scared that we even make our parents choose our life  partners.

Sometimes this delusion and comfort in success are gone by our early 30s and for the first time we want to live for ourselves. Unfortunately thanks to our small life expectancy and probably a family and child to support, this becomes a dream which we can never fulfill. Have you noticed why your father is grumpy all the time...this might be the very reason..!!

So is there any hope left ?

Yes! there is. This new generation is slowly breaking conventions and we are seeing more artists, more designers, more scientists.
Things will be much better by the next generation when people will choose careers out of their own free will.