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By Rajkamal Rao
See Also:
Section 7a: Recent Changes
Section 7b: Choosing school type and curricula
Section 7d. The cost of schools
Section 7e. Interviewing schools
Section 7f. What to expect at Indian schools
Section 7g. Home schooling
Section 7h. Transitioning your kids to Indian schools
Section 7i. Undergraduate Technical Education
On the India Live tab, Cram schools are completely out of control
Choosing an Indian school for your children is likely to be one of the most daunting tasks of your move. Like most things, India and the West offer largely different models for elementary and secondary education. Children who have never been to school in India will be anxious that it will be frightfully different to adjust to. But the experience of thousands of families who have successfully returned shows otherwise.
Fareed Zakaria, the Time magazine columnist and a Mumbai-born Ph.D from Harvard wrote an interesting column in Newsweek’s Jan. 9, 2006 issue comparing the American education model with that of Asia’s. Zakaria noted that East Asian countries top virtually every global ranking of students in science and mathematics, yet, “10 or 20 years later, few of them are world beaters”. American kids, by contrast, test much worse in the fourth and eighth grades but seem to do better later in life and in the real world. Why?
Zakaria quotes a Singapore education minister as saying to him, “We both have meritocracies. Yours (i.e. the US) is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. There are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well—like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. These are the areas where Singapore must learn from America."
A Singaporean friend of Zakaria’s brought his children back from America and put them in his country's much-heralded schools. He described the difference. "In the American school, when my son would speak up, he was applauded and encouraged. In Singapore, he's seen as pushy and weird…here it is a chore. Work hard, memorize and test well." He took his child out of the Singapore state school and put him into a private, Western-style one.
While the above paragraphs describe East Asia and Singapore, it is clear that you could substitute the word India for Singapore just as well.
The real question is whether Indian education prepares children for the workforce. In a controversial essay in the New York Times on May 23, 2012, Mohit Chandra, a KPMG Partner in India has criticized current Indian graduates as being substandard, lacking ambition, frustrating and of limited productivity. Chandra says that fewer than 10 percent of the graduating class are highly skilled but the vast majority fails to offer five key attributes which employers seek. These include an ability to speak and write English fluently, and the capacity to do creative problem-solving and thinking out of the box - attributes which are stressed in US education models.
But informal interviews with NRI parents whose kids were partially schooled in India and who returned to the US for undergraduate schooling show that these children appear to be better grounded for life in the US. The kids’ exposure to an Indian lifestyle (respect for elders, improved social skills, enjoying time with extended family, an appreciation of the good and bad things that India offers) - helps them better adjust to life in the US. The most important advantage these children have is that having experienced life outside the US, they are more willing to make friends with students from other countries - and perhaps entertain study or work opportunities in other countries.
Ultimately, there is no single right answer as to which education model, US or Indian, is better for children. It is no wonder that NRI parents and children are significantly anxious about this topic.
See Also:
Section 7a: Recent Changes
Section 7b: Choosing school type and curricula
Section 7d. The cost of schools
Section 7e. Interviewing schools
Section 7f. What to expect at Indian schools
Section 7g. Home schooling
Section 7h. Transitioning your kids to Indian schools
Section 7i. Undergraduate Technical Education
On the India Live tab, Cram schools are completely out of control
Choosing an Indian school for your children is likely to be one of the most daunting tasks of your move. Like most things, India and the West offer largely different models for elementary and secondary education. Children who have never been to school in India will be anxious that it will be frightfully different to adjust to. But the experience of thousands of families who have successfully returned shows otherwise.
Fareed Zakaria, the Time magazine columnist and a Mumbai-born Ph.D from Harvard wrote an interesting column in Newsweek’s Jan. 9, 2006 issue comparing the American education model with that of Asia’s. Zakaria noted that East Asian countries top virtually every global ranking of students in science and mathematics, yet, “10 or 20 years later, few of them are world beaters”. American kids, by contrast, test much worse in the fourth and eighth grades but seem to do better later in life and in the real world. Why?
Zakaria quotes a Singapore education minister as saying to him, “We both have meritocracies. Yours (i.e. the US) is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. There are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well—like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. These are the areas where Singapore must learn from America."
A Singaporean friend of Zakaria’s brought his children back from America and put them in his country's much-heralded schools. He described the difference. "In the American school, when my son would speak up, he was applauded and encouraged. In Singapore, he's seen as pushy and weird…here it is a chore. Work hard, memorize and test well." He took his child out of the Singapore state school and put him into a private, Western-style one.
While the above paragraphs describe East Asia and Singapore, it is clear that you could substitute the word India for Singapore just as well.
The real question is whether Indian education prepares children for the workforce. In a controversial essay in the New York Times on May 23, 2012, Mohit Chandra, a KPMG Partner in India has criticized current Indian graduates as being substandard, lacking ambition, frustrating and of limited productivity. Chandra says that fewer than 10 percent of the graduating class are highly skilled but the vast majority fails to offer five key attributes which employers seek. These include an ability to speak and write English fluently, and the capacity to do creative problem-solving and thinking out of the box - attributes which are stressed in US education models.
But informal interviews with NRI parents whose kids were partially schooled in India and who returned to the US for undergraduate schooling show that these children appear to be better grounded for life in the US. The kids’ exposure to an Indian lifestyle (respect for elders, improved social skills, enjoying time with extended family, an appreciation of the good and bad things that India offers) - helps them better adjust to life in the US. The most important advantage these children have is that having experienced life outside the US, they are more willing to make friends with students from other countries - and perhaps entertain study or work opportunities in other countries.
Ultimately, there is no single right answer as to which education model, US or Indian, is better for children. It is no wonder that NRI parents and children are significantly anxious about this topic.
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