If you could change one thing in Indian Education, what would it be?

[dvader]

I have a contrarian opinion here: I think only English should be taught in schools. If there is valuable knowledge in the regional language, it might have already been translated into English by now. If not, then most likely the content is not worth translating. The time saved by eliminating regional language subjects should be used to teach life skills such as money management and financial literacy, digital literacy, human anatomy, cooking, mental health, logical fallacies, and ways to filter fake news and information, among others. Other subjects are essential and cannot be removed.

This is more of a value approach to society in that you want to extract the most value out of it, Spartans were the first to implement such a system. Well, that didn't last long. Belief (Not to be confused with Truth and Facts, it can be but it's not always the case) and Identity (Moral, social, and Personal) are two (among others) non-negotiable entities in the social contract (human social contract ofc, until we meet an alien civilization). They are also the building blocks of Human Psychology, the absence of belief makes you a sociopath, the absence of identity makes one a psychopath, and the absence of both well those are separate bread.......Now Identity manifests itself via Touch, Smell, and Language. A kid knows his/her mother's touch, her smell and knows when she speaks. Touch has language too, and so does smell it can not be put into words but you know your kids smell your mothers..you get the point. And language culminates in itself not just what you get from your mother/family but everyone before them that is a sh*t ton of personal identity right there.

All this jibber-jabber just to show how important language is to the construct of personal identity and belief. Now note the word personal here.....No one, I repeat no one should start a sentence that begins with "I think you should speak this language" or "sing this song" because it's more efficient or more logical, cuz that's not the point. Look at Belgium well they suck but they have made a whole complex system just to preserve this sense of personal identity. Germany is an example of rebuilding a nation from ashes and moving on.

Do I think English is bad, oh hell no, I make money cuz I am good at this Language? Am I proud of this fact? Hell no. I mean I feel proud when I make a custom circuit to do some shit but I am not proud of the soldering iron I used, I mean it's a tool. So what's the solution, well you teach kids their regional language to a point that it's not a burden in their other activities and once they are of a certain age let them decide for themselves. And we let the kids decide in 10th grade just like we force other subjects until 10th grade.

Edit1: I just checked, and I think Egyptians built a value-based society before Spartans but those bast**ards in that era f***d their sisters (not cousins mind you) so let's keep them out of the discussion.
Ref: https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...-psychopathy/E51E502DF6E25F6BD1AE16F4D6D26865
I will try to cite sh*t as I remember....or read it and just ignore it as another internet troll.

Edit2:
Regional languages are already dying, be a sport and let them die their natural death, don't shoot them with English point blank.

Edit3: Indian mothers have another language apart from touch, smell and words....Flying Chappal. Don't quote me in front of my mother though....

 

[TEUser2K1]

@TinTinSnowy
> If there is valuable knowledge in the regional language, it might have already been translated into English by now.

This looks serious misunderstanding.
Even today, people quote studies from westerners to learn writings or treaties from Sanskrit and tons of Sanskrit literature are yet to be translated. Leave alone local languages.
Sadly, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

 

[dvader]

@TinTinSnowy
> If there is valuable knowledge in the regional language, it might have already been translated into English by now.

This looks serious misunderstanding.
Even today, people quote studies from westerners to learn writings or treaties from Sanskrit and tons of Sanskrit literature are yet to be translated. Leave alone local languages.
Sadly, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I understand people in the West quoting English translations of Sanskrit Text cuz If they could understand the original why would they need translation? But Indian universities never do, I know this cuz my Grandfather's friend was a Sanskrit Professor and why would they need to I mean it seems tautological.

And I didn't misunderstand, I got the sense of what you meant, and yes most of the things you interact with daily are translated to English but that doesn't mean it's everything.

Now let me give you an example of why Language is not a barrier but could be a catalyst too

Grigori Perelman - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This guy is the genius of this century. He solved one of the Clay Millennium Prize problems. Now this is not some Oxford University-level stuff, He solved the Poincare Conjecture which along with the Reimann Hypothesis (Another Clay Problem) remained unsolved until now (I mean 2006-2007). He is a Russian and works in his own language, the west didn't even understand his proof for years (4 years to be precise) forget about recognizing it. And once the slow guys caught up, tons of awards, accolades, and money poured in. This gigachad didn't give a single F**k. He denounced all the awards, millions of dollars from Clay and other institutes, and gave a middle finger to security agencies trying to hire him. He even retired from Mathematics and now lives on a farm. Absolute gigachad.........

All of his mathematical genius comes from her mother.....She left her Mathematics Graduation to raise him and the rest is history.....

"In 2005, Perelman abruptly quit his research job at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics, and in 2006 stated that he had quit professional mathematics, due to feeling disappointed over the ethical standards in the field. He lives in seclusion in Saint Petersburg, and has not accepted offers for interviews since 2006."

 

[Clayfire]

I'm not declaring it as THE official language, but as an officially recognized language, which was what was being challenged.

 

[kiran6680]

This is more of a value approach to society in that you want to extract the most value out of it, Spartans were the first to implement such a system. Well, that didn't last long. Belief (Not to be confused with Truth and Facts, it can be but it's not always the case) and Identity (Moral, social, and Personal) are two (among others) non-negotiable entities in the social contract (human social contract ofc, until we meet an alien civilization). They are also the building blocks of Human Psychology, the absence of belief makes you a sociopath, the absence of identity makes one a psychopath, and the absence of both well those are separate bread.......Now Identity manifests itself via Touch, Smell, and Language. A kid knows his/her mother's touch, her smell and knows when she speaks. Touch has language too, and so does smell it can not be put into words but you know your kids smell your mothers..you get the point. And language culminates in itself not just what you get from your mother/family but everyone before them that is a sh*t ton of personal identity right there.

All this jibber-jabber just to show how important language is to the construct of personal identity and belief. Now note the word personal here.....No one, I repeat no one should start a sentence that begins with "I think you should speak this language" or "sing this song" because it's more efficient or more logical, cuz that's not the point. Look at Belgium well they suck but they have made a whole complex system just to preserve this sense of personal identity. Germany is an example of rebuilding a nation from ashes and moving on.

Do I think English is bad, oh hell no, I make money cuz I am good at this Language? Am I proud of this fact? Hell no. I mean I feel proud when I make a custom circuit to do some shit but I am not proud of the soldering iron I used, I mean it's a tool. So what's the solution, well you teach kids their regional language to a point that it's not a burden in their other activities and once they are of a certain age let them decide for themselves. And we let the kids decide in 10th grade just like we force other subjects until 10th grade.

Edit1: I just checked, and I think Egyptians built a value-based society before Spartans but those bast**ards in that era f***d their sisters (not cousins mind you) so let's keep them out of the discussion.
Ref: https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...-psychopathy/E51E502DF6E25F6BD1AE16F4D6D26865
I will try to cite sh*t as I remember....or read it and just ignore it as another internet troll.

Edit2:
Regional languages are already dying, be a sport and let them die their natural death, don't shoot them with English point blank.

Edit3: Indian mothers have another language apart from touch, smell and words....Flying Chappal. Don't quote me in front of my mother though....

1. If the "mother" tongue is to be taught by the school, what is the mother doing ? The family ?

2. Just because school is not teaching something, say the "belief", "identity", does not mean no one can.

3. Many children in India study in states where the children's mother tongue is a minority language. Good luck finding Bengali medium school in Andhra where Bunty's parents moved for work. Even within a state, say Rajasthan, lots of Hadoti origin students are studying in the Shekhawati region, and similar mix-ups of region / language / parentage.

 

[dvader]

1. If the "mother" tongue is to be taught by the school, what is the mother doing ? The family ?

2. Just because school is not teaching something, say the "belief", "identity", does not mean no one can.

3. Many children in India study in states where the children's mother tongue is a minority language. Good luck finding Bengali medium school in Andhra where Bunty's parents moved for work. Even within a state, say Rajasthan, lots of Hadoti origin students are studying in the Shekhawati region, and similar mix-ups of region / language / parentage.

1. Speaking and writing are two different things, then there is literature, grammar, history, significance, and contribution to society in general. I have a degree in Computer science, you expect me to teach Engineering to my kids??
2. Again, a moot point. See 1.
3. So just because it's tough luck finding a Bengali medium school in Andhra, let's abolish it entirely for the entire Bengal Region. I mean solid logic you should represent your region in local elections. Man, you would be fun at parties...And it's not about doing everything in Bengali, it's about teaching the Bengali/Regional language (as a subject) in the curriculum that's all.

Oh logic!!!, thou art a heartless bi*tch.....

Again the point is not to force anything. Kids have a choice to study whatever they want after a certain age. It's as if people already had this discussion and tried to build a suitable system.

 

[kiran6680]

1. Speaking and writing are two different things, then there is literature, grammar, history, significance, and contribution to society in general. I have a degree in Computer science, you expect me to teach Engineering to my kids??

Wow, way to call the mother useless without calling the mother useless. And the family.

I used hundreds of crores of equipment in completing my engineering degree. (Not "used up", but used). Though nothing prevents discussing your identity as an engineer and undoubtedly you have unsubstantiated "beliefs" about engineering as well.

2. Again, a moot point. See 1.

Identity, belief etc. are so personal, it is impossible to please practically anyone, let alone a majority. Your own post is so full of unsubstantiated material, you yourself had to call it jibber-jabber. I hope to God no one else's kids have to go through that.

3. So just because it's tough luck finding a Bengali medium school in Andhra, let's abolish it entirely for the entire Bengal Region. I mean solid logic you should represent your region in local elections. Man, you would be fun at parties...And it's not about doing everything in Bengali, it's about teaching the Bengali/Regional language (as a subject) in the curriculum that's all.

Oh logic!!!, thou art a heartless bi*tch.....

Again the point is not to force anything. Kids have a choice to study whatever they want after a certain age. It's as if people already had this discussion and tried to build a suitable system.

Yeah, as if school is the only place learning can take place.

 

[dvader]

Wow, way to call the mother useless without calling the mother useless. And the family.

I used hundreds of crores of equipment in completing my engineering degree. (Not "used up", but used). Though nothing prevents discussing your identity as an engineer and undoubtedly you have unsubstantiated "beliefs" about engineering as well.

Identity, belief etc. are so personal, it is impossible to please practically anyone, let alone a majority. Your own post is so full of unsubstantiated material, you yourself had to call it jibber-jabber. I hope to God no one else's kids have to go through that.


Yeah, as if school is the only place learning can take place.

Huh No sign of intelligent life anywhere....Anyway you do you man. Peace

 

[burntwingzZz]

haven't gone through past pages , but less subjects even during the university days more focus in deploying building what was learnt .Option of picking a subject /book ( curated) and create a project or some sought of presentation followed up with a open Q&A .less of 99.99 or 100 percentile and more of 75 % to 90% results were kids have lots of aha moments wherein they self learn a topic and the joy of learning instead of rat race right from the school .More of play time (team building ,strategy formation , identifying people ,responsibility /accountability, leadership etc ) could be developed from sports no fancy college degrees and workshops are required.

Would love to see kids accidently discover some interesting subject while searching some books in library instead of finding what they are looking from google and chat gpt.

And more of languages to read and write .Apart from English , I learnt Hindi and Marathi and dragged myself through them for 5 years with increasing difficulty .Would have loved to learn some other languages as well would have really helped me to converse with other people in their language.

 

[dvader]

haven't gone through past pages , but less subjects even during the university days more focus in deploying building what was learnt .Option of picking a subject /book ( curated) and create a project or some sought of presentation followed up with a open Q&A .less of 99.99 or 100 percentile and more of 75 % to 90% results were kids have lots of aha moments wherein they self learn a topic and the joy of learning instead of rat race right from the school .More of play time (team building ,strategy formation , identifying people ,responsibility /accountability, leadership etc ) could be developed from sports no fancy college degrees and workshops are required.

Would love to see kids accidently discover some interesting subject while searching some books in library instead of finding what they are looking from google and chat gpt.

And more of languages to read and write .Apart from English , I learnt Hindi and Marathi and dragged myself through them for 5 years with increasing difficulty .Would have loved to learn some other languages as well would have really helped me to converse with other people in their language.

Interesting and may be that's how few kids even find the things they like. The rat race thing does kill a lot of real learning, but our population works against us no matter how hard it's tried; until you completely revamp the system it's gonna stay, like fungus. Marathi however is my fav among Indian languages, no Idea why, may be cuz it sounds cool

 

[burntwingzZz]

Interesting and may be that's how few kids even find the things they like. The rat race thing does kill a lot of real learning, but our population works against us no matter how hard it's tried; until you completely revamp the system it's gonna stay, like fungus. Marathi however is my fav among Indian languages, no Idea why, may be cuz it sounds cool

truth be told even Maharashtrians cant pronounce "crow" perfectly in Marathi different level of abilities and skills are required .If non native speaks marathi i just test them to speak a sentence where crow needs to be pronounced

 

[dvader]

truth be told even Maharashtrians cant pronounce "crow" perfectly in Marathi different level of abilities and skills are required .If non native speaks marathi i just test them to speak a sentence where crow needs to be pronounced

May be cuz it's full 3 syllables in Marathi and that kinda gives a linguistic shock to non native tongue

 

[TEUser2K1]

@dvader
> I understand people in the West quoting English translations of Sanskrit Text cuz If they could understand the original why would they need translation? But Indian universities never do, I know this cuz my Grandfather's friend was a Sanskrit Professor and why would they need to I mean it seems tautological.

Your expectations from Indian professors about Sanskrit is very very high.
Indian academia very much depend on English translations routinely to understand and learn Sanskrit based articles / books. Lot of studies from Germans too.

Generally mothers do influence language, but mothers are not the sole torch bearers of mother tongue. Mothers have nothing much to do with mother tongue, abject reality is that they marry economically or otherwise higher men than them and uproot themselves there. These days education, mass media, etc. grossly set direction on how languages are spoken. Even local deviations of languages are disappearing and are adopting TV / media slang and pronunciations.

 

[dvader]

@dvader
> I understand people in the West quoting English translations of Sanskrit Text cuz If they could understand the original why would they need translation? But Indian universities never do, I know this cuz my Grandfather's friend was a Sanskrit Professor and why would they need to I mean it seems tautological.

Your expectations from Indian professors about Sanskrit is very very high.
Indian academia very much depend on English translations routinely to understand and learn Sanskrit based articles / books. Lot of studies from Germans too.

Generally mothers do influence language, but mothers are not the sole torch bearers of mother tongue. Mothers have nothing much to do with mother tongue, abject reality is that they marry economically or otherwise higher men than them and uproot themselves there. These days education, mass media, etc. grossly set direction on how languages are spoken. Even local deviations of languages are disappearing and are adopting TV / media slang and pronunciations.

Man, you are tunnel-visioned with women and society in general. But you have made your observations, complaints, and experience apparent and let everyone here decide for themselves what's what after all they are all adults.

 

[TEUser2K1]

> let everyone here decide for themselves what's what after all they are all adults.

That is what I did.

What I said is practical reality of life, in general.
The comment about tunnel vision can be alleged against anyone, but we are not in that kind of discussions here.

Mother tongue is metaphorically used. The compound word “mother tongue” is arbitrary, has no universal agreement, This also mean the word has no universal use. For eg., in contrast, it is called father tongue in Poland. In some tribal languages, it is called 'language of the domain'. In ancient cultures where fathers were on hunting, farming, etc. mothers were primary carers of children and thus influenced language.
Now it is mass media, academics, etc.

 

[TEUser2K1]

Not a single Indian educational institution among world's top 50: President Murmu:

During her address at the 69th convocation of IIT Kharagpur, President Droupadi Murmu stressed the need for good education over rankings but acknowledged that a good ranking not only attracts students and faculty worldwide but also enhances the country's reputation.

Not a single Indian educational institution among world's top 50: President Murmu

During her address at the 69th convocation of IIT Kharagpur, President Droupadi Murmu stressed the need for good education over rankings but acknowledged that a good ranking not only attracts students and faculty worldwide but also enhances the country's reputation.

www.indiatoday.in

Er.. hmm... This thread timing was apt...

 

[ssslayer]

Years late reply but this is general and my messages don't count so hopefully this gets thru??

The whole system, from start to finish. I know multiple people in my class who are good at studying but have shit all understanding of the real world, because "education" in the current form teaches only subject basics like physics and maths but nothing about real world events, how to be social, what introverts/extroverts are, current issues in India like overpopulation and underemployment. This really pisses me off because these people who memorize a book for 4 hours and get some numbers on a paper are praised while people like me who focus more on real world issues like climate change and economics are shunned. I know more about real world events and problems and taxes then any of them yet I'll fail my "boards" because I didn't memorize the 417th idiom in Hindi or study some formula in math that has no applications in the real world - not even for entrance exams.

What I would change is reduce the content of subjects like english/hindi and AI by modernizing and cutting everything that doesn't have a strong value/anchor to exist (poof, english books vanish), and emphasize greater focus on real world issues, HPE (especially in 2023, sports is shadowed subject), how to be a normal person, PCMB subjects, and especially make the school days shorter because why not. Over half of the day goes away to school, add tuitions and oh shit, there goes your life from G1 to G12.

Unfortunately I'll never get to change any of this

Well what do you say about IAS, IPS, IRS, IFS exam then?
What is the UPSC exam selecting?

 

[blr_p]

Learning an extra language is never a waste of effort in my opinion.

Ones that you can use for sure. I remember a sign in my careers advice office.

Speak one language and you cut your job prospects by half

I don't get why Hindi gets so much resistance in South when they have no problem using English that we got from our benevolent colonisers. As a kid, I was technically 'forced' to learn four languages and I got the chance to reduce it to three only when I got into high school. Hindi is not my mother tongue but I love the fact that I am nearly as fluent as a native in it. I don't use Sanskrit anywhere now but I am happy that I learned it.

Language nationalism.

Down south, in the absence of english, language is used as a barrier. It keeps those that can't speak the language out and those that can only speak the language in.

English is the liberator that opens more doors than any other and necessary at higher levels. English isn't seen as a threat to local languages the way hindi was. In any case I think of English as an Indian language these days. If the Brits can appropriate curry for their national dish I think we can return the favour.

Everybody I know can communicate in Hindi and it is not our mother tongue. Learning Hindi unlocks a wealth of content, educational or otherwise. I think that should be taken into consideration as well. Hindi is used primarily by some 590 million Indians which is huge. Plus, basic Hindi means you can communicate with almost all Indians, literate or not. Please correct me if I am wrong in my assumptions here.

With the Internet being able to understand more people helps but it takes effort.

What Nehru couldn't pull off (imposing hindi in the south) was done by bollywood and cricket.

If you ask me the biggest trouble I had with languages was the lack of conversation classes. It was only reading and writing with no emphasis on speaking. Down south if you aren't conversing in hindi at home it becomes an academic exercise or burden as @TEUser2K1 put it just to get past exams with no retention which was the goal of studying the language in the first place

 

[TEUser2K1]

@blr_p
> Down south if you aren't conversing in hindi at home it becomes an academic exercise or burden as @TEUser2K1 put it just to get past exams with no retention which was the goal of studying the language in the first place

There are several other sides to this topic.
As mentioned, learning extra language with so much time, effort, mental struggle and cost is only for students and burden for parents in south. The same trouble is not faced by students in north, with whom students in south have to compete on national level. That is just one part of injustice.

 

[blr_p]

Asking questions has led to people shouting at me, despite professors saying 'ask me anything, no question is dumb' and all that. They just ask me to Google or shout at me for not paying attention to class.

I used to get a lot of that at school because it embarrassed them that they couldn't answer. It's the quality of teacher.

This changed when I went abroad and the attitude was to get you to do just that. Give feedback, what do you think, for the first time in my life MY OPINION is being sought on the subject taught.

Now that is where you learn and it's really tough. This is an arts based style of teaching/learning as opposed to mass rote learning that doesn't teach you the ability to learn. Which should be the goal of any school. The learning continues after school. It doesn't stop once you graduated.

The attitude in India is break your sprit at a young age and get you to follow. Comply. Obey or else. This makes the teachers job easy but it's a very authoritarian atmosphere to grow up in. Military like. And the end goal is what? Not too different from the colonial days. Serve the empire. Just that there isn't one any more.

There are several other sides to this topic.

Care to elaborate

As mentioned, learning extra language with so much time, effort, mental struggle and cost is only for students and burden for parents in south. The same trouble is not faced by students in north, with whom students in south have to compete on national level. That is just one part of injustice.

I've been through this myself and when I reached 9th std opted for French.

Nobody spoke hindi at home is my excuse

I have a contrarian opinion here: I think only English should be taught in schools. If there is valuable knowledge in the regional language, it might have already been translated into English by now. If not, then most likely the content is not worth translating. The time saved by eliminating regional language subjects should be used to teach life skills such as money management and financial literacy, digital literacy, human anatomy, cooking, mental health, logical fallacies, and ways to filter fake news and information, among others. Other subjects are essential and cannot be removed.

Napoleon had a similar idea. There were too many French dialects and he feared soldiers on the battle field not being able to comprehend orders from the higher ups. So he standardised French to the expense of everything else. Did it make things more efficient. Yeah it did. But it required a dictator to pull off.

Not a single Indian educational institution among world's top 50: President Murmu:

Oh, how the mighty have fallen