Indian Education: Separating System from Products

Earlier today, I came across this post on the state of education in St. Stephen's College in particular, and India in general. I had first read it nearly three years ago, in the midst of preparing my application for the Rhodes Scholarship. I cannot recollect what emotions it had stirred within me, but do clearly remember my curiosity about who the professor referred to in the article was. I then also read this response by Saattvic, which is what prompted me to message him, and that was the beginning of a valuable friendship. Three years later, having completed an M.Phil. from Oxford, having worked in London for substantial periods of time and having paid taxes (does that entitle me to have an opinion?), I can possibly reflect on my time in India, and how it set me up (or not) for the world out there. I cannot but whole-heartedly agree with Thane's point that the Indian education system is not working. Thane rues the lack of 'inquisitive magnetism' among Indian students, the 'cookie cutter' approach to foreign applications and the 'depressing epiphany' of realising that the Indian student only wants to know what to copy next. I believe there can be little debate about the fact that the Indian education system is not working. However, my point of departure from Thane's argument is that I believe that the education system is not working because it does not know what it is working towards. It is trying to cater to basic educational needs of the masses, while pretending to promote innovation at the same time. Which is what, I believe, leaves the system in the kind of soup that we are in. 

Does that mean I believe that the product coming out of the system is sub-par? Absolutely not. My argument is that this education machine is churning out products - good or bad - but has little role in shaping the nature of the product. I was recently at a discussion with my peers in Rhodes House, and heard the American scholars, in particular, lament about the lack of mentorship in Oxford. I was amazed, and I said it in as many words, because I believed I had access to significantly more mentorship at Oxford than I had ever had (or have needed). The point I am making is this (and Einstein unfortunately beat me to it) - if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. Similarly, if you judge an Indian student by her ability to write an essay for an Ivy League, you will quite likely be disappointed. But put that Indian student in a situation where she does what she's passionate about, and I'm sure she'll do well. I fail to see how the Indian students' penchant for the professors' dictation (as per Thane) is any different from the Americans' for academic support. There exists an Indian system and an American system, and all the others, and I would be wary of extending the flaws of the system to the products of the system - the students themselves!

In my experience, I have found Indian students particularly enterprising. Many of us adopt a design-to-value approach to academics - for example, when I was forced to study Macroeconomics in the first year of my degree at Oxford (despite having an unambiguous interest in microeconometrics), I simply studied enough to score well. Subsequently, when faced with subjects that I enjoyed in the second year, I did significantly better. Don't get me wrong - I do believe that the Indian student cares greatly about her academic performance. But our endearingly flawed system has taught us to distinguish between learning and academics (sigh) and I believe that it provides an opportunity for us to be less wedded to our academic interests. Some utilise that opportunity, while others don't; and that is a problem that any system - no matter how well designed - will have.

Thane's article offends me slightly because it makes very sweeping statements without much of a fact base. Of course, I understand that he had no option, given that such statistics either do not exist, or are not readily available. I would have preferred a more nuanced approach, but perhaps that makes articles less engaging. I will therefore respond to those generalisations with less-than-rigorous arguments of my own. Firstly, about the substitution of the 'useless Indian liberal arts degrees' with 'real ones' in the west. I was, unfortunately, the only member of my class with an undergraduate degree from India, and I must say I have done reasonably well for myself. Moreover, it seems to me that the percentage is non-lower among Indian Rhodes scholars than Rhodes scholars in general. To me, therefore, the 'best Indian minds' (however defined) are performing equally well academically. This is not a self-congratulatory rant. It is important because, much like Einstein's fish - I was told that I cannot do well in Oxford because I came from an inadequate system. Not true.

Saattvic makes the point about the distinction between the learning cultures in the East and the West. He then lists some challenges with the latter. I would add to it. My experience with students of the Western systems (in the context of the MPhil and Rhodes House) was the expansiveness of their thoughts. I would often talk to them, and wonder why they would choose to use more (and difficult) words to explain concepts that seemed so simple to me. My hypothesis is that they grew up in a system where 'intellectual curiosity' dictated that they engage with the content of their problem very deeply (or simply, that my sample was biased due to the inclusion of Rhodes scholars). The Indian system, I would like to believe, dictates that one addresses the issue and moves on to the next problem. Both have their places. To posit one as intrinsically superior to another can be, in my opinion, reflective of a Euro-centric world view that dismisses something different, rather than engage it to understand its merits.

None of what I wrote here is an endorsement of the Indian educational system. It would be difficult for me to find the (intended) merits of the system. But that doesn't blind me to the merit of the students emerging from this system, or to the cultural intricacies and context of the system. I believe that all of us should mould the system in the ways we feel best. For me, it took two forms. One is my belief in peer-to-peer education as a means to overcome challenges in the educational system (American or India). This lead to my engagement with the fantastic initiative, EurekaWow, and a youtube channel with video lectures on econometrics. Secondly, I was equally concerned by the average Indian students' inability to summarize their life with the skill that those in the west possess. Therefore, I started Absolute Interview to provide a 'cookie clutter' solution (a set of do's and dont's) and one where I invited and reviewed CVs of students from across the country. All of this not because I believe that the 'ability to summarize' is intrinsically valuable, but because I know that the labour market values it, and I would rather that the average Indian student have a 'design-to-value' solution to it than not.

I believe we can do better that critize. We can learn, and then adopt the practices that work best for us. Much will be dictated by the system we grew up in, but a lot will depend on our individual personalities. I found that the Oxford MPhil (with 3-5 exams a year) worked quite well for me (both in terms of learning and lifestyle), but I can easily imagine another person for whom the American system (with lots of supervision) or the Indian one (with lots of examinations, perhaps) works better. All I would guard against is derision - one that is equally applicable to an American judging the Indian system as it is to a St. Stephen's graduate judging one from the Uttar Pradesh hinterland. It is incumbent upon us, the privileged few who are propped up by the existing (labour market) system, to make this system work for those who aren't its natural participants. Let them not be Einstein's fish, please!

Two Years @ Oxford

Last year after my first year exam results, I posted about how the entire year had been an experiment in 'letting go' of the compelling need to perform well academically. The second year was a continuation, and intensification, of the experiment. I engaged with life, and with academics, in a way that I haven't done earlier - travelled a fair bit, started going to the gym, perfected some of my recipes and tried my hand at others (gobi manchurian!). Three days back, my results came out and I seem to have scored significantly better than last year. At the end of this journey at Oxford, it is therefore quite natural to ask what the last two years mean to me?

What I take out of these two years is a better understanding of who I am. I'll give a short example. When I came to St. Stephen's, some of my friends would refer to me as 'DT', an abbreviation for Delhi Topper. For me, it was easy to let the noise of my academic achievements drown out who I am. I believe that would be the case with many other people. We probably see the symptoms, and confuse that with the underlying cause. For the last several years, I was told that I'm a smart guy. Maybe. Maybe not. I saw a steep ascent in my academic performance starting in the late 2000s, but I don't see why I wouldn't see a decline (steep or gentle) later. But there are other things that have remained fairly constant, and I got a better understanding of those things while at Oxford. For example, I now think equanimity is one of my core features. There is an inherent 'mean-reversion' tendency in my emotions. Whether I am sad or happy, I tend to maintain roughly the same demeanour. I don't characterise this as a strength or weakness, just a feature of who I am.

Through these two years, in a context where my past achievements meant very little to my (far more distinguished) peer group, I got to see how people perceived me. A friend pulled me aside on the last evening at Rhodes House, and said to me that he saw many distinguished people in the room, but what he appreciated most about me was my goodness. That's a sentiment many of my closest friends here seem to have shared. In contrast, at St. Stephen's, arrogance was a word that I often heard, and maybe for good reason (the haughtiness of youth!). Of course, 'good' is a very big word and I'm not sure either I or many of them comprehend all its facets, but there are some aspects of goodness that I have noticed in my behaviour. One, for example, is compassion. I believe that violence (physical, mental, verbal or emotional) can only come out of a fundamental imbalance in power. I now increasingly see people as genuine peers - neither superior nor inferior - and that has meant that I am unable to inflict any form of violence on them. Which now dictates my style (or idea) of leadership, one of a genuine partnership and equality. One where leadership is not a privilege, but a moral obligation. I am looking forward to implementing these ideas in the real world soon, and hopefully they will prove to be robust.

Why all of this is important is that once I have a good understanding of who I am, or what my tendencies are, I can build my life around that. For example, I have been often been able to lead a very disciplined life because of this equanimity. There are days when I am working very hard for no apparent reasons, and some days when I am not working hard despite an approaching exam. My emotions in both cases aren't very different, which therefore allows me to front-load a lot of my work. This last term, I front-loaded much of my exam preparation, starting as early as March, and then kept taking breaks as I approached the examinations (including a trip to breath-takingly beautiful Iceland).

The last two years have pushed and pulled me in various ways. I came to Oxford, sailed smoothly for a while, then had a major crisis, emerged from that, then had a prolonged period of bliss, had another crash and finally ended in a bit of a redemption. These challenges intensified an ongoing process of reflection and, by often reducing me to nothingness, helped me see more clearly. The ebb and flow of life will continue forever, and if I wait to live my life 'fully' tomorrow, that tomorrow will never come. So I chose, instead, to live a little bit of my life everyday, and perhaps one day I will look back at these bits and say that it was a life well lived!