Nita has an interesting post on tuitions/coaching classes and this actually began out as a response, but it grew so very long, I decided to post the long form here, the short version is on her site :

There are coaching classes for practically anything. There are kids who take coaching for maths and science, yet others for economics, accounting, history, geography and political science, yet others for languages. By the time the average student is finished with all the tutoring for the day - college & tuitions - there is a) no time to learn and absorb, and b) no time for anything else.

So after 15 years of education, what we get out are people with great memories, a great ability to reproduce someone else’s work without any problem…. and pretty much little else… And while Nita rightly points out the various interest groups that allow for a flourishing coaching class set up, there is one that is as important than the rest. Parents.

Parents in India have this insane innate sense of competitiveness when it comes to their kids. Where I live there are kids in pre primary who start tuitions. ….

When I was a student only weak students took tuitions or those who were aspiring for IIT - we used to end up in all these summer classes run by our teachers in college or at Agarwals….

But, this coaching class - which is a school away from a school - has been in place and attracting large numbers fro the last 15 years or so… Kids spent hours studying till they probably peak too soon… and they are egged on by their parents.

And, I don’t blame these parents. India is a country of a billion - with education always been considered a path to power & wealth - and parents are worried that if their children didn’t go to classes to get those extra percentage points - they will be left behind…… Now, however good the education system is, you still cant’ get away from the fact that there will always be too many students coming out of the system, chasing too few jobs.

Unlike the west, where children move out after a certain age, and lead lives independent of their parents, In India education of children is also seen as a ‘pension plan’. Now, unless the fundamental way of looking at the family changes — and I am not sure that it should — and parents stopped pressurizing their kids to greater and greater heights, I can always see private tuitions / Coaching classes being in place….

Technorati Tags: India

Tags: Coaching Classes, Education, India

…..Indians will take your job, warns Uncle Bush.

“It’s important to understand if children don’t have those skill sets (in maths and science) needed to compete with a child from India, or a child from China, the new jobs will be going there,”

This happened at almost at the same time that the education minister of Maharashtra has proposed to make maths an optional subject in the state, replacing it with options like Computer Science, Agriculture and Handicrafts.

I think that one of the things that went wrong with the west, was its completely crummy educational policies. Rather than provide competitive skills - including language and numeracy - they dumbed down education so that the lowest common denominator would be advantaged.

As a result skills, rather than being widely available, became scarce. And, scarce means dearer. And dearer skills means a more expensive work force. Rather than provide better support for the less advantaged, the educational policies ended up churning out functionally illiterate people - who could barely manage to add 2 and 2 together. Who could barely manage to string a comprehensable sentance to gether. Today western jobs are suffering because of inappropriate and insufficient skill sets.

In India too, instead of making education more interesting and appropriate so that everyone benifits, education policy makers are looking to dumb it down to make sure that no one benefits.

A long time ago, when I was a student in London - i remember buying something worth 32 pence and giving a pound for it. While the shop assistant was busy hunting for the calculator I told him that the change was 68 pence. They called me a genius, and I sniggered in my mind. Last week, I was at a shop and spent 35 bucks and gave a hundred to the shop assistant. As they dived for the calculator, i had an awful sense of dejavu.

Tags: Education, India, Society

A few months ago AP began the trend of reserving jobs for Muslims on the grounds that the community was ‘backward’.
Now the RJD and the Congress in Bihar have made a similar promise.

There is something fundamentally wrong, if in a secular nation, we introduce reservations on the basis of religion.

If a community is backward - there are other ways of bringing them on par with the rest of society. Compulsory education is a start- especially for the girl child. Business loans at favourable rates is another. Additional Tax breaks for companies that are equal opportunities employers is yet another. Ensuring that ministries concerned with rural development deliver. Penalise corruption that prevetns allocated funds from reaching targets. Ensure that the rule of law is followed. In fact the Government should be moving towards equal opportunites, and away from reservation. Equal opportunities is economics led. Quotas, on the other hand, are hand outs. The first empowers, the second allows for stagnation.

Incentivise companies to hire people. Incentivise banks to give loans to certain communities. Incentivise mentors to mentor these businesses. Incentivise schools and colleges to follow equal opportunites. incentivise self help groups that set in villages. facilitate the buying of land on easy installments.

Quotas are a bad idea. It leads to complecency - and the Government and industry and the rest of us get into this comfort zone that because reservation exists, the problem has gone away. It hasn’t. Which is why 58 years after independence political parties are still tripping over each other screaming reservation. Reservation has worked in a very, very limited manner - and the problem still remains. The communities in question have attained political weight, which has not translated into economic weight. (and in India - like elsewhere - economic weight is social weight).

If you travel around India - especially rural India - and talk to Dalit Activists - most of them tell you that the benefits of reservation are cornered by a few who don’t let the rest take advantage of it. Their argument is that if your parents are middle class, then you aren’t a Dalit. A dalit is someone who doesn’t know where the next meal is going to come from. Who doesn’t have money to buy books or pencils.

If You (as in the politicians) want to do something for economically backward groups in India - go right ahead. You need to . But, reservations may not be the solution. You need to start wtih providing security. Start with physical security, move on to economic security. The rest will automatically follow. Ensuring that the rule of law is followed when crimes are committed against weaker sections - and it economic deprivation that makes them weak - is a start. These crimes can be discrimination, rape, violence, . It could be companies that don’t hire people from a particular caste or community - or don’t promote them. Ensure that the full force of law is brought against the people who discriminate. But, no. Those who commit these crimes probably support some major Party or the other. The problems of the poor and the dispossessed remain unanswered until election time, when vague - and possibly unconstitutional - promises are made to them in return for votes.

Finally, if we are to continue with the reservation policy, and the parameter for reservation is “backwardness” surely then - reservation should be on the basis of economic status - not caste or religion. But under the income of x thousand per annum does not a vote bank form !

Tags: Caste, Education, Gender Issues, Poverty, Religion, Society