An ode to schooling - revisited!

I just now came off a call with a very interesting person. She clearly has had a very colorful life (don't get me wrong!) and we had a very colorful conversation (don't get me wrong - again!) We talked about a whole bunch of things including renaissance, classical architecture, music, drama, past and most importantly future. My future, I believe, involves imparting education. She said she wanted to do the same - although she sounded like Osho for quite a while before I cleared my head. For now, I will ignore that clarity and being the down to earth guy I am, I will focus on my thoughts. For past many years, I have been singularly focused on opening a chain of schools. Those who have followed my blog since the beginning know about my obsession with education. You can check out my previous posts on schooling.

The roots of this obsession lies in the important role academic success in professional schools has played in transforming my family's fortunes. I was extremely poor at one point of time. I don't want to get there, and when I see a poor person, I know how it feels (perhaps!) I have expended significant energy in building a wall of skills by going to IIT and Chicago Booth to protect myself from poverty. I have done my best - rest lies in the hand of fate. Like a well-fed dog, I have now started barking - in other words - have started worrying about what I can do for others who are now in the position similar to the one I was in when I was a kid. I believe that since I was able to tunnel out of misery with a spade made of books, others can too. In other words - salvation lies in TEXT books.

It is very myopic, but that is all I know. I agree that everyone can't ride the boat of knowledge, but quite a few of them can. One step at a time, please! After figuring out where I can change the world, I drilled down into the problem. I was blessed with having seen best and worst of schooling. My father is a retired professor, and my mother is a retired teacher. Therefore, my life has been full of teacher talk. To top that up, I spoke with a bunch of people including government school teachers, NGOs, private education businesses and so on.

After long sleepless nights of staring at the roof, I formulated my objective. Make millions of Indian children productive members of society in a very flexible manner at a very low cost. Now starts the bitching session. Below is the list of things which get in the way of achievement of my objective.

1. If the student-teacher ratio is not 1-many thousands, it is inefficient and unfair. This simply means that the rich or the brightest get the best teachers

2. Teachers' salaries are obscenely low as compared to other highly skilled professions. One cannot motivate the stars to join the teaching at such compensation levels.

3. Teaching infrastructure is concentrated in Grade A cities. Other cities and villages are totally deprived of even basic academic resources.

4. The government cannot do a good job of providing universal education.

5. The classroom today looks like the classroom thousands of years ago. The pace of modernization of teaching is woefully lagging behind pace of modernization of other institutions of society

6. Education system is too rigid. We have grade I, II, III till XII, and then Bachelors I, II, III, IV etc. Within each class, there is little flexibility. The world is moving towards flexible and custom production guys!

7. There is too much reliance on human beings as delivery agents of education, and too much focus on standardized exams

8. The kids mostly want a cool job after graduating. Very few think business.


9. For many parents, kids are just a tool of fulfillment of their own unfulfilled desires. This is very retarded!

I have spent a lot of time thinking about way out of this unfortunate problem. But a discussion of that, my friends - will come later…