The success of an education system should be measured with a wide range of outcomes

Bertrand Russell once said –“Education should have two objects: first to give definite knowledge, reading and writing, language and mathematics and so on; secondly, to create those mental habits which will enable people to acquire knowledge and form sound judgments for themselves”

I recently watched the documentary called “Two million minutes”. It was produced by an American who has traveled all over the world and compares how high school students in India, China and U.S are spending their time during these four high school years – which actually equals two million minutes. I recently had a discussion with Bob Compton, the producer of this documentary on my other blog. Click here to access it.

The documentary points to the fact that during these two million minutes, students in India and China are spending a large part of their time studying math and science subjects, preparing for competitive exams to attend college and pursuing economically profitable careers. The documentary follows the life of two typical students in each of these countries. Parents provide all the support they can, to help their children succeed. During the documentary, in one instance, an Indian parent goes to the extent of feeding dinner to her high school daughter with her own hands while the daughter is studying.

The documentary compares these high school students in India and China to two typical American high school students who spend a good part of these two million minutes in sports, entertainment and working odd jobs.

The documentary talks about how many of the economically profitable jobs today are in the hi-technology world. Because many of the American hi-tech companies are not able to find enough people in America to fill these jobs, they are resorting to outsourcing these jobs to India and China whose students are better prepared to work in these jobs.  In order to make America self-sufficient and to raise the income-levels of it’s own citizens, America needs to add more rigor into it’s school curriculum and prepare the students for these kind of jobs by motivating students to choose careers in math and science.

Being a first generation Indian American, and as a person who is passionate about education systems in both these countries, I completely agree with this point. Being a educationist, and having seen how America educates it’s students today, I agree that more rigor needs to be added in the curriculum to get kids interested in math and science careers.

What I don’t agree with in the documentary is the impression it creates about the Indian education system. I don’t know much about the Chinese education system so, I don’t want to comment on that. But the documentary  puts the Indian system on a pedestal, and says that it is better than the US system. The documentary fails to talk about what the students in India are missing out on during their school years

I feel that how much time the students spend on academics and whether they chose a career in math and science is not the only measure of a successful education system. An education system in any country should be measured with many more outcomes – how well-rounded the students are, whether they are creative, able to critically think about issues and make decisions, whether they are able to problem solve, collaborate, able to think out of the box, whether they are confident, compassionate, responsible and so on. I know that in India the elementary and middle school education is not well rounded. I have seen many children in India as young as four and five year olds even in upper middle class homes being put to a lot of stress due to the competitive environment around them and are forced to rote learn concepts.

I visited Bangalore, India recently to look for a school for my daughter. I could find only a handful of schools in the city where I felt she could retain her joy of learning, get a well-rounded education and grow up to be a compassionate,  social-minded and responsible child.
So companies like Microsoft, Google, Oracle are opening R&D centers in places like China and India – I agree that America needs to do a better job of developing it’s citizens to meet it’s growing market needs. But it also means that India needs to do a better job of educating it’s citizens to think more critically and creatively and form mental habits of many of the higher-order skills that are needed in a person so that rather than serve American companies, which is what many students are preparing for and most of the engineering graduates do, more citizens are working on indigenous products to serve the country’s own market needs and enough of them are working on solutions to solve it’s social problems.