Happy to share another article printed in the Wall Street Journal (http://tinyurl.com/ylax94m) with you guys! Looking forward to reading your thoughts.
--
"Indians can never be good terrorists," argued Canadian comedian Russell Peters at one of his shows in New York City. "They don't hate Americans...they just hate each other!" For Indians like me sitting in the audience, Peters's observation struck an immediate chord. They broke out into hesitant chuckles, apprehensive whether it was just one or two of them who shared the somewhat controversial sentiment. Then, on realizing that everyone in the auditorium was chuckling, came the loud laughter.
It is a known fact among Indians and a common observation by visitors to the country that we Indians lack the manners which form the intricate fibers of any civilized society. Far from using words such as "thank you," "sorry" or "excuse me," there is a complete lack of respect for others' space or property. Road manners are non-existent, people are dirty in public places and there is a complete disregard for ethical, if not legally-enforceable, courtesies such as forming queues or tipping good servers. So much so that there are now counseling services in civic behavior and social manners recommended for Indian students and others migrating to countries like Australia or the U.K.
As India gears up to play host during the upcoming Indian Premier League, the much-awaited Commonwealth Games and the eagerly anticipated Cricket World Cup, and as the country positions itself as a leader in the world of business, tourism and education, it is high time we Indians pulled up our socks and offered our compatriots and visitors the respect we ourselves crave.
That Indians disrespect civic courtesies might strike the uninitiated as an exaggeration or even a stretch of the imagination. Yet, there are a few reasons that explain this problem well.
The first of these can be traced back to India's feudal history and its infamous caste system, where social hierarchy was given precedence over social equanimity. Isn't it a wonder, even today then, that a deep-pocketed customer talks down to a restaurant waiter who is perceived to be of a lower class? Or that the driver of an expensive car authoritatively claims it is the fault of the motorcyclist in an accident?
The concept of a singular and unified country is also very contemporary in India's biography. It was not until 1912, when Mahatma Gandhi joined the Indian freedom struggle against the British and introduced the idea of swaraj or self-rule that India awoke to the idea of oneness. Till then, the country was a jigsaw puzzle of thousands of tehsils, kingdoms and independent territories. Having such diverse sets of people crammed into a single country—it is any wonder—led to, and is still leading to, a missing sense of civility and harmonious living.
Finally, in a country with stark poverty and with the world's second largest population, there has always been a cultural push towards single-minded competitiveness, be it in schools, offices or homes. The development of softer skills and emotional intelligence has thus been sidelined in favor of building more tangible and marketable skills. After all, why develop a refined sense of table manners when it is really the ability to crunch accounting figures that will earn the high paycheck?
Though anecdotes of disrespect and shabby treatment may form the brunt of jokes over a few glasses of beer, we need to smell the coffee and realize that the problem is far more severe.
For starters, disrespectful behavior causes irritation and leads to anger, even in the otherwise respectful. This, in turn, leads to more disrespectful behavior, creating a vicious cycle. Since starting to drive in India after spending many years abroad, I am surprised to find myself instinctively punching the horn back at ruffian drivers or cutting traffic lines on seeing others do the same time and again.
Second, a lack of respect by us is bound to lead to a lack of respect toward us by others. On an flight from Dubai to New York a few months back, I winced at seeing a large group of Indians airily demand a round of drinks from the flight attendant by snapping their fingers and later, sulk and complain as they were rightly ignored by the serving staff onboard.
Last, and most important, a lack of respect for civic manners is a large burden on public resources. We don't follow simple traffic laws, leading the police to chase after us rather than to catch real criminals. We break queues time and again, leading to the hiring of special personnel to monitor queues in movie halls and airports instead of building factories and schools. And we litter in public places like parks and museums, leading government to spend money on cleaning waste instead of restoring our national monuments or building more gardens.
It is no secret that with India's large population and developing economy, there are bound to be pulls and pushes as several compete for limited resources. Yet, with a burgeoning middle class, a greater emphasis on building soft skills in schools and colleges, and a harder drive by government bodies to educate citizens, India can claim to be not just a rising economy, but also a virtuous society.
In the end, the onus for building a new class of manners-conscious and respectful Indians falls on many of us, who are culturally-savvy, educated and in a position to carve out change in our offices, schools and communities. We have a rich and well-regarded history; a bustling and energetic population; and a compassionate and societal nature. An act of kindness towards a stranger, a greater degree of control on personal behavior and better awareness of disrespectfulness is really all that India needs to make a stronger mark in the global community. We Indians are not bad people. We just need to work on being nicer.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
How to create magic in India's schools
Hey guys,
I am very excited that this particular article has been published today in the Wall Street Journal (http://www.smalllinks.com/IMF). This is one of many such articles I hope to write for the newspaper on education and entrepreneurship in India.
Do check it out on the WSJ website and leave me some comments either on this blog or on the WSJ website itself!!
--
As published:
As a 16-year old student in Chandigarh, India, I spent most of my time outside school attending private coaching classes in Math, Chemistry or Physics. Most of my classmates, too, lived a similar life, donning their school bags at 5:00 a.m. and taking them off at 9:00 p.m. Private tuition centers thrived in the city and it was a common joke between students that schools were meant for hanging out with friends and coaching classes were meant for studying and learning.
Though a slight exaggeration, this couldn't be closer to the truth. The most common complaint among students like me was that teachers were not attentive to students' specific needs and were more interested in simply completing their daily agendas and signing their attendance registers.
Many times, students were absent for days in a row as they saw little reason for attending school. Classes tended to be boring monologues devoid of energy and at many times the result for incorrect answers to unclear questions was some sort of punishment. When our motivators, our teachers, were indifferent, how could they motivate us to learn?
When this traditional system of learning in schools could not satiate students, they instinctively turned towards private tutors to help them out. This was especially true for students from low and middle income backgrounds who attended low-tier public schools already notorious for poor teaching standards.
In an age where India promised to become a power-house of business, thoughts and ideas, I often wondered how such a feat would be possible with the country's schools churning out bored and frustrated students instead of creative and entrepreneurial thinkers.
Today, as I manage a high-school in India after living overseas for many years, I am heartened by the introduction of hefty government reforms, innovative teaching technologies and practical student curricula in our private and public schools. The one thing I have observed to be a constant, however, is the prevalence of the teaching styles and attitudes that made my high-school journey as enjoyable as a root-canal treatment.
Although India may have surged ahead of several leading economies over the past few years, it now needs to create the magic that will position it as an inventor, creator and leader, and go the extra mile. A magic that will not simply manage businesses, but revolutionize them; that will not simply sell products, but create them; and that will not simply follow norms, but pioneer them. India's schools and teaching styles form an important ingredient in the creation of this magic.
As a student at New York University, I remember the ease with which classes flowed between students and teachers. Instead of maintaining a rigid demeanor or an arms-length relationship with students, my teachers were friendly and approachable people who saw the world through my eyes and who made every effort to quell the doubts of students.
In my economics class, for instance, my teacher used an example of beer factories and pubs to explain an otherwise dry concept (no pun intended) of supply and demand to a class of young adults. All students were encouraged to ask questions and to make themselves heard. "No question is stupid," I was told time and again. The ability to learn outside the textbook by asking questions, talking to classmates and visualizing vivid examples came as a wonderful and welcome surprise to me.
On my first volunteer trip to an inner-city school in the Bronx, New York, I noticed how classrooms were engaged in activities like group work or quizzes. In one class, I was surprised to see students teaching physics to the rest of the class. Coming from a background where such activities were considered sheer sacrilege, I naturally assumed that the school was either celebrating a holiday or was falling short of teachers.
On asking the director of the school, I was surprised that this was how classes were conducted in the school on a daily basis. She felt that students learned best when they were mentally and emotionally engaged. I noticed none of the exasperated looks on the faces of teachers and students that I was used to. Like visitors to a movie-hall, everyone seemed to be excited and interested in what was going to happen next.
Such a reformation in teaching and learning is overdue in India. We need more students in schools, questioning thoughts and ideas, instead of wallowing in private coaching centers. Students should learn something new and develop their critical thinking skills everyday, and not simply when they write their final exams. Teachers should stimulate minds, not bore them. And schools should be seen as fun, not as torture. Only then can we hope to generate a progressive and dynamic set of educated and informed citizens, leaders and inventors.
As I discuss these points with teachers in my own school and in leading schools I visit around the country, I am offered several arguments against a more student-centric and reformed learning system.
The most common of these is that a more fun-filled and interactive learning experience causes a school's discipline standards to tank. This assumption is founded on the belief that strictness and rigidness help keep students in line.
Why was this same strictness causing me to sleep in classes or attend tuition sessions in Chandigarh, then? Through my experience abroad, I noticed how students in university or school were always excited to be in class. Unlike in India, bunking school or university was not considered heroic or cool but was looked down on by classmates. I believe that a teacher who stimulates a student's mind has already won the student's respect in a manner no cane or punishment could have.
I am also told that by removing the arms-length relationship between teachers and students, a teacher's sense of objective judgment is impaired as she interacts with her students and forms personal connections with them. I often wish this were the case for I have received several low grades from my U.S. professors despite interacting with them inside and outside class. For well-trained and grounded teachers, teaching students well and judging their performance can be compartmentalized as separate and non-related activities.
Finally, I am informed matter-of-factly by many school-owners that while implementing such a system would work in the best interest of students, it would come at a considerable cost to the school. This would include the cost of hiring better-trained teachers, of implementing activities for students and of constantly bringing new teaching methods into the classroom.
Instead of seeing such systems as a cost, however, I believe school leaders should see them as an investment; for apart from promoting better teaching standards, they will also reduce student agitations, improve a school's brand name and promote a culture of meritocracy. This in turn will improve the school's social standing, attract high-quality job applicants and boost long-term profitability. More than anything else, it will help schools to live up to their vision of educating instead of merely teaching.
As is stands today, many schools actively advertise the length of their swimming pools or the size of their cricket fields. There is a large emphasis on using computers for learning physics and language labs for learning French. Yet, without a corresponding upgrade in the style of teaching and interacting with students, such fancy systems are as useful as an airplane without a pilot.
Our teachers are not unintelligent or lacking motivation--many teachers who bored students in schools were the same ones who taught them in private coaching centers. Our curriculum is not antiquated or inferior--the U.S. has publicly admitted its intention of following Indian standards of math and science in schools. And our students are not lazy or detached--the enthusiasm and energy I see in students today surpasses those of previous generations. With a better sense of teaching and learning present in our schools, our teachers, curriculum and students can create magic.
-Mayank Maheshwari is a former investment banker and an aspiring social entrepreneur. He currently serves as director at the Hope Hall Foundation School, a private school catering to middle-income families, and is based in New Delhi.
I am very excited that this particular article has been published today in the Wall Street Journal (http://www.smalllinks.com/IMF). This is one of many such articles I hope to write for the newspaper on education and entrepreneurship in India.
Do check it out on the WSJ website and leave me some comments either on this blog or on the WSJ website itself!!
--
As published:
As a 16-year old student in Chandigarh, India, I spent most of my time outside school attending private coaching classes in Math, Chemistry or Physics. Most of my classmates, too, lived a similar life, donning their school bags at 5:00 a.m. and taking them off at 9:00 p.m. Private tuition centers thrived in the city and it was a common joke between students that schools were meant for hanging out with friends and coaching classes were meant for studying and learning.
Though a slight exaggeration, this couldn't be closer to the truth. The most common complaint among students like me was that teachers were not attentive to students' specific needs and were more interested in simply completing their daily agendas and signing their attendance registers.
Many times, students were absent for days in a row as they saw little reason for attending school. Classes tended to be boring monologues devoid of energy and at many times the result for incorrect answers to unclear questions was some sort of punishment. When our motivators, our teachers, were indifferent, how could they motivate us to learn?
When this traditional system of learning in schools could not satiate students, they instinctively turned towards private tutors to help them out. This was especially true for students from low and middle income backgrounds who attended low-tier public schools already notorious for poor teaching standards.
In an age where India promised to become a power-house of business, thoughts and ideas, I often wondered how such a feat would be possible with the country's schools churning out bored and frustrated students instead of creative and entrepreneurial thinkers.
Today, as I manage a high-school in India after living overseas for many years, I am heartened by the introduction of hefty government reforms, innovative teaching technologies and practical student curricula in our private and public schools. The one thing I have observed to be a constant, however, is the prevalence of the teaching styles and attitudes that made my high-school journey as enjoyable as a root-canal treatment.
Although India may have surged ahead of several leading economies over the past few years, it now needs to create the magic that will position it as an inventor, creator and leader, and go the extra mile. A magic that will not simply manage businesses, but revolutionize them; that will not simply sell products, but create them; and that will not simply follow norms, but pioneer them. India's schools and teaching styles form an important ingredient in the creation of this magic.
As a student at New York University, I remember the ease with which classes flowed between students and teachers. Instead of maintaining a rigid demeanor or an arms-length relationship with students, my teachers were friendly and approachable people who saw the world through my eyes and who made every effort to quell the doubts of students.
In my economics class, for instance, my teacher used an example of beer factories and pubs to explain an otherwise dry concept (no pun intended) of supply and demand to a class of young adults. All students were encouraged to ask questions and to make themselves heard. "No question is stupid," I was told time and again. The ability to learn outside the textbook by asking questions, talking to classmates and visualizing vivid examples came as a wonderful and welcome surprise to me.
On my first volunteer trip to an inner-city school in the Bronx, New York, I noticed how classrooms were engaged in activities like group work or quizzes. In one class, I was surprised to see students teaching physics to the rest of the class. Coming from a background where such activities were considered sheer sacrilege, I naturally assumed that the school was either celebrating a holiday or was falling short of teachers.
On asking the director of the school, I was surprised that this was how classes were conducted in the school on a daily basis. She felt that students learned best when they were mentally and emotionally engaged. I noticed none of the exasperated looks on the faces of teachers and students that I was used to. Like visitors to a movie-hall, everyone seemed to be excited and interested in what was going to happen next.
Such a reformation in teaching and learning is overdue in India. We need more students in schools, questioning thoughts and ideas, instead of wallowing in private coaching centers. Students should learn something new and develop their critical thinking skills everyday, and not simply when they write their final exams. Teachers should stimulate minds, not bore them. And schools should be seen as fun, not as torture. Only then can we hope to generate a progressive and dynamic set of educated and informed citizens, leaders and inventors.
As I discuss these points with teachers in my own school and in leading schools I visit around the country, I am offered several arguments against a more student-centric and reformed learning system.
The most common of these is that a more fun-filled and interactive learning experience causes a school's discipline standards to tank. This assumption is founded on the belief that strictness and rigidness help keep students in line.
Why was this same strictness causing me to sleep in classes or attend tuition sessions in Chandigarh, then? Through my experience abroad, I noticed how students in university or school were always excited to be in class. Unlike in India, bunking school or university was not considered heroic or cool but was looked down on by classmates. I believe that a teacher who stimulates a student's mind has already won the student's respect in a manner no cane or punishment could have.
I am also told that by removing the arms-length relationship between teachers and students, a teacher's sense of objective judgment is impaired as she interacts with her students and forms personal connections with them. I often wish this were the case for I have received several low grades from my U.S. professors despite interacting with them inside and outside class. For well-trained and grounded teachers, teaching students well and judging their performance can be compartmentalized as separate and non-related activities.
Finally, I am informed matter-of-factly by many school-owners that while implementing such a system would work in the best interest of students, it would come at a considerable cost to the school. This would include the cost of hiring better-trained teachers, of implementing activities for students and of constantly bringing new teaching methods into the classroom.
Instead of seeing such systems as a cost, however, I believe school leaders should see them as an investment; for apart from promoting better teaching standards, they will also reduce student agitations, improve a school's brand name and promote a culture of meritocracy. This in turn will improve the school's social standing, attract high-quality job applicants and boost long-term profitability. More than anything else, it will help schools to live up to their vision of educating instead of merely teaching.
As is stands today, many schools actively advertise the length of their swimming pools or the size of their cricket fields. There is a large emphasis on using computers for learning physics and language labs for learning French. Yet, without a corresponding upgrade in the style of teaching and interacting with students, such fancy systems are as useful as an airplane without a pilot.
Our teachers are not unintelligent or lacking motivation--many teachers who bored students in schools were the same ones who taught them in private coaching centers. Our curriculum is not antiquated or inferior--the U.S. has publicly admitted its intention of following Indian standards of math and science in schools. And our students are not lazy or detached--the enthusiasm and energy I see in students today surpasses those of previous generations. With a better sense of teaching and learning present in our schools, our teachers, curriculum and students can create magic.
-Mayank Maheshwari is a former investment banker and an aspiring social entrepreneur. He currently serves as director at the Hope Hall Foundation School, a private school catering to middle-income families, and is based in New Delhi.
Monday, January 18, 2010
A new band of leaders
One of the constant challenges I face in my present job as Director of a high school in New Delhi is the severe shortage of talented and motivated teachers in the school. Despite holding several rounds of interviews and offering high salaries, I come face to face only with those individuals who have barely passed their high school exams, who have floundered through university tests and who have little or no previous record of social work, but who are now suddenly keen to teach children in my classrooms.
At one such interview, I turned towards our education advisor, a retired Director of Education with the Indian government.
"Why are we only receiving applications from such mediocre applicants?" I asked him, thoroughly bewildered and somewhat concerned that we may be doing something grossly incorrect.
"Why!" he laughed, "why would anyone who is more than mediocre want to be a teacher in the first place?"
Despite their intended humor, his words struck me sharply. Not only did they answer my immediate question regarding the quality of teaching staff in majority of schools and universities in India, they offered a wider explanation to what might be grossly wrong with India's system of educating its future leaders.
I remember my days as a college student in New York University, where many of my class-mates and friends had taken up part-time jobs or borrowed large sums of money to pay their way through college. What surprised me was that several such students were not pursuing degrees in business, engineering or medicine--commonly regarded as the only three disciplines worth studying for in India--but were following their passions in disciplines like social work, education or literature. The idea that someone could work so hard and sacrifice so much to study something which they truly enjoyed rather than something which offered them a cozy pay-package boggled me. It was something I had never encountered back home in India.
As I started to volunteer in local schools and NGO's in the Manhattan area, I noticed the talented and motivated individuals running such schools and organizations. Many held advanced degrees in education from prestigious universities like Harvard, Columbia and Stanford. Many had left their corporate perches to dedicate time to teaching under-privileged children. And many had ambitious ideas for how they could further the cause of rural minorities and inner-city communities in the city's schools. I was amazed at the positive energy and enthusiasm that circulated in such schools. Why were such people not running schools back home? Why had I never encountered such people as a school student?
Even outside educational institutes, I observed how passionate my friends were for working with the government or for leading community service projects. One of my friends wanted to use her deep understanding of Latin American cultures to work with the Ministry of External Affairs; another wanted to study developmental economics and trade by working with a fair-trade organization in India. This interest in public-service positions by highly intelligent students was alien to my mind, where only those professions earning boat-loads of money were considered respectable. I knew that India did not have a shortage of smart and motivated people. It was somehow unable to channel these people into public serving jobs. I wondered what the reason might be.
Having observed leading schools in India, I have found very few promoting a spirit of public-service and social-work. Yes, many schools carry lofty mottos like "Service before self" or "Leading Society", but how exactly do they fulfill such promises? There is barely any focus on social work. Students are not exposed to social organizations or creative careers. Instead, students and teachers seem to be stuck in a rat-race to send as many students to IIT's as possible. In my own school, the sheer pressure to succeed in academics and score high grades dilutes any interests students might have in volunteering or learning outside the traditional curriculum. Is it a wonder that the meat of our talent ends up in call centers or multi-nationals instead of in schools or NGO's?
Even in schools promoting a social message and encouraging students to pursue their interests in the humanities or education, there is a strong social stigma against taking up non-business or non-engineering courses. A few days back we had parents of prospective students in my school inquiring how many students we had placed in medical and engineering colleges. This was a number they would keenly scrutinize across schools in the area--obviously, the school with the highest number of admissions received the admiring interest and the much-needed funding of the parents, leaving little room for the school to foster interests in the humanities, social work or education.
There is also a strong stigma against students learning politics or literature, most of whom are regarded as nincompoops. There is an interesting rule of thumb in schools in India: A-scoring students must choose science subjects, B-scoring students go in for business studies and students scoring below B choose the Arts since it is perceived to be the easiest to score high grades in. There is strong pressure on students from teachers as well as parents to choose career paths based not on interest or talent but rather on how smart a kid is. For a sharp kid to go in for a major in history is considered sheer sacrilege.
While the past decade has propelled India as a major economic powerhouse, I see little change in the country's collective attitude towards educating its public-leaders. This worries me: for while frothy stock-markets and over-crowded call-centers may have served India well over the past few years, only well-educated, motivated and enigmatic leaders can pilot the country towards sustainable development in the coming years. The problem, as exemplified in my teacher interviews, is the acute shortage of such leaders immediately and the lack of educational and societal measures to provide such leaders in the near future.
I've been wondering since a long time how a deeply ingrained educational system can quickly be turned around to encourage public service. Though government laws are now being drafted to reduce rote-learning and emphasize more creative thinking in school curricula, it could be years before such laws trickle down to the bedrock of everyday student-teacher interactions.
Instead, I feel the answer lies with efforts at the micro-level. We need schools that can provide excellent resources to painters, musicians and sports-persons, even at a loss to their bottom-lines. We need young entrepreneurs to setup NGO's promoting education as a career. We need quality college-level programs in government and social work, even if the short-term costs of maintaining such programs exceed their immediate monetary benefits. More than anything else, we need to ask ourselves who we would like to govern our country and who we would like to teach our kids in school.
I remember my days in the financial services sector where my colleagues and I would skim through countless resumes of highly talented and intelligent job applicants and end up shortlisting one candidate. With hefty reforms in the Indian education sector underway and with individual efforts cropping up from time to time, the day when such a system of choosing teachers and Principals becomes norm rather than exception are not far away. It is up to people like you and me to usher in tomorrow's new band of leaders.
At one such interview, I turned towards our education advisor, a retired Director of Education with the Indian government.
"Why are we only receiving applications from such mediocre applicants?" I asked him, thoroughly bewildered and somewhat concerned that we may be doing something grossly incorrect.
"Why!" he laughed, "why would anyone who is more than mediocre want to be a teacher in the first place?"
Despite their intended humor, his words struck me sharply. Not only did they answer my immediate question regarding the quality of teaching staff in majority of schools and universities in India, they offered a wider explanation to what might be grossly wrong with India's system of educating its future leaders.
I remember my days as a college student in New York University, where many of my class-mates and friends had taken up part-time jobs or borrowed large sums of money to pay their way through college. What surprised me was that several such students were not pursuing degrees in business, engineering or medicine--commonly regarded as the only three disciplines worth studying for in India--but were following their passions in disciplines like social work, education or literature. The idea that someone could work so hard and sacrifice so much to study something which they truly enjoyed rather than something which offered them a cozy pay-package boggled me. It was something I had never encountered back home in India.
As I started to volunteer in local schools and NGO's in the Manhattan area, I noticed the talented and motivated individuals running such schools and organizations. Many held advanced degrees in education from prestigious universities like Harvard, Columbia and Stanford. Many had left their corporate perches to dedicate time to teaching under-privileged children. And many had ambitious ideas for how they could further the cause of rural minorities and inner-city communities in the city's schools. I was amazed at the positive energy and enthusiasm that circulated in such schools. Why were such people not running schools back home? Why had I never encountered such people as a school student?
Even outside educational institutes, I observed how passionate my friends were for working with the government or for leading community service projects. One of my friends wanted to use her deep understanding of Latin American cultures to work with the Ministry of External Affairs; another wanted to study developmental economics and trade by working with a fair-trade organization in India. This interest in public-service positions by highly intelligent students was alien to my mind, where only those professions earning boat-loads of money were considered respectable. I knew that India did not have a shortage of smart and motivated people. It was somehow unable to channel these people into public serving jobs. I wondered what the reason might be.
Having observed leading schools in India, I have found very few promoting a spirit of public-service and social-work. Yes, many schools carry lofty mottos like "Service before self" or "Leading Society", but how exactly do they fulfill such promises? There is barely any focus on social work. Students are not exposed to social organizations or creative careers. Instead, students and teachers seem to be stuck in a rat-race to send as many students to IIT's as possible. In my own school, the sheer pressure to succeed in academics and score high grades dilutes any interests students might have in volunteering or learning outside the traditional curriculum. Is it a wonder that the meat of our talent ends up in call centers or multi-nationals instead of in schools or NGO's?
Even in schools promoting a social message and encouraging students to pursue their interests in the humanities or education, there is a strong social stigma against taking up non-business or non-engineering courses. A few days back we had parents of prospective students in my school inquiring how many students we had placed in medical and engineering colleges. This was a number they would keenly scrutinize across schools in the area--obviously, the school with the highest number of admissions received the admiring interest and the much-needed funding of the parents, leaving little room for the school to foster interests in the humanities, social work or education.
There is also a strong stigma against students learning politics or literature, most of whom are regarded as nincompoops. There is an interesting rule of thumb in schools in India: A-scoring students must choose science subjects, B-scoring students go in for business studies and students scoring below B choose the Arts since it is perceived to be the easiest to score high grades in. There is strong pressure on students from teachers as well as parents to choose career paths based not on interest or talent but rather on how smart a kid is. For a sharp kid to go in for a major in history is considered sheer sacrilege.
While the past decade has propelled India as a major economic powerhouse, I see little change in the country's collective attitude towards educating its public-leaders. This worries me: for while frothy stock-markets and over-crowded call-centers may have served India well over the past few years, only well-educated, motivated and enigmatic leaders can pilot the country towards sustainable development in the coming years. The problem, as exemplified in my teacher interviews, is the acute shortage of such leaders immediately and the lack of educational and societal measures to provide such leaders in the near future.
I've been wondering since a long time how a deeply ingrained educational system can quickly be turned around to encourage public service. Though government laws are now being drafted to reduce rote-learning and emphasize more creative thinking in school curricula, it could be years before such laws trickle down to the bedrock of everyday student-teacher interactions.
Instead, I feel the answer lies with efforts at the micro-level. We need schools that can provide excellent resources to painters, musicians and sports-persons, even at a loss to their bottom-lines. We need young entrepreneurs to setup NGO's promoting education as a career. We need quality college-level programs in government and social work, even if the short-term costs of maintaining such programs exceed their immediate monetary benefits. More than anything else, we need to ask ourselves who we would like to govern our country and who we would like to teach our kids in school.
I remember my days in the financial services sector where my colleagues and I would skim through countless resumes of highly talented and intelligent job applicants and end up shortlisting one candidate. With hefty reforms in the Indian education sector underway and with individual efforts cropping up from time to time, the day when such a system of choosing teachers and Principals becomes norm rather than exception are not far away. It is up to people like you and me to usher in tomorrow's new band of leaders.
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