In India, high-pressure exams are creating a student suicide crisis
wired.co.uk
wired.co.uk
I've personally hired a number of people in my Delhi office from the local IIT, and these are a few things I've noticed amongst new grads: parrot fashion learning is rife across the board. Despite being smart, they often struggle to think on their feet. It's as if they want a fully defined a problem domain, AND want to solve problems only within that defined domain, much like an exam! Anything outside of their comfort zone is met with a rather damp response equating to "we haven't covered that in class yet". In business (and even development), that attitude is not a good one to have.
What's funny, however, is that if you walk past an Indian shanty town, you will find examples of (often illegal) innovation at every corner, from stolen electricty to rigged water meters etc - usually concocted by people with little education. The innovative mindset exists in the heart of Indian society, but the education system somehow seems to restrict it by making people believe that the path to success is narrow and the same for everyone. Hence the competition.
I feel the education system needs to encourage free thinking more than rote learning. I believe it would allow students to enjoy their subjects, rather than just looking at them as a stepping stone to success. Perhaps if students approached their studies with a sense of wonder and excitement, rather than competetive aggression, their mental state would be significantly better during their years of education.
In that sense I would say it is unfair to claim that Indian students graduating from an IIT can't do this or that; it is actually an achievement in and of itself that they managed to get there and out without turning out to be entirely dysfunctional. While I would not argue that competition in India (in the context of these national examinations) is much higher than the competition in the West in various spheres (sports, sciences, tech, etc.), the reality is that the breadth of options to a good place in life is extremely limited, and the competition is rather concentrated to a few possibilities. You cannot opt to become a YouTuber, pro basketball player or a digital nomad if you're born Indian. There is essentially a bunch of careers in science, engineering and medicine, and a few top institutions for each of these ends, whose pedigree can get you very far, and failing that, there is much uncertainty to be faced. And most Indian students, while unable to articulate this, clearly feel these pressures and act accordingly.
Students are younger and much more curious about the world and about what to make of their lives. I would argue its the parents that feel these pressures and transfer that onto their kids. And I don't believe it is simply to give them a good livelihood: both rich and poor parents want their kids to get into these elite institutions. And that is a huge problem.
I grew up in India. While I lucked out that I was naturally inclined to find science and math interesting, a lot of the people I went to college with found it absolutely boring and even torturous to go through their coursework, which was deeply saddening for me personally. I would ask them why they did it if they wanted to do other things? Usually the answer would be because their parents wanted them to be an engineer.
The degree to which your sentences contradict each other seems remarkable to me. Surely, the student who relentlessly prepare for these exams also don't have time to reflect on whether or not their activity is worth it and so X being "simply their perspective" seems meaningless. Similarly, it would seem to be a failing of the system that there is no other path to success here.
If the system / economy were capable of providing a more varied set of jobs like acting opportunities, regular gigs for bands, apprenticeships in various blue collar jobs, etc. then people will be able to choose professions that better match their interests and skill sets. Why force someone who likes to work with wood into a degree in engineering or science. This is largely what is happening in India.
I am not saying that there are no actors or bands or bike mechanics in India. Rather, it is assumed that everyone needs a degree from college and even if this is an entirely ridiculous proposition for many people (based on their interests) and they endure four years in college doing something they don't enjoy in some of the formative years of their life.
So the people who might have benefited from an apprenticeship or taking a year or two off from this career sprint suffer the most, and the final allocation of people to jobs is dismal (the fact that hundreds of thousands of Indians work at call centers is a symptom). The system fails by not providing such kinds of alternate opportunities at the scale that is necessary for a country so huge.
Finally, all middle income Indian parents will continue to pick some career in a STEM discipline for their kids very early on, preventing any investment of time in discovering their interests, keeping this carousel spinning.
One of the US's biggest advantages is that low regulation environments help build a meritocracy of sorts as long as obvious corruption is curtailed.
Try being a French tech startup compared to the US and tell me how bad the US's credentialism, education, and regulatory processes are. I think we have it easy and a lot of our culture rewards and encourages 'free thinking' at least for now.
>the USA.
>USA
Yes, of course. As always and forever. It is really all about the USA. And Americans. Please tell us more about where you live. As we all know, the USA is so much more interesting than the subject of the article. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the USA whatsoever. But that's boring. So, why don't you take the floor and tell us about what we're really all here to discuss. The USA.
If anything, America has slowly drifted towards the old British model. India though is not copying anything.
People who are desperate have no interest in free thinking. Their goal is to escape. That's it.
Right. In the computer field, for example, private "institutes" offering "post-graduate diplomas" are a dime a dozen, in every city, in the downtown as well as suburban areas. The standard signboards or ads for them show that they teach "C/C++, Java, .NET, web design, ASP.NET, Oracle, AutoCAD, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, ...". And it's mostly former "graduates" of the institutes that do the teaching, with no real life experience. As for the virtual version of these, I regularly get contacted by training companies (middlemen) for conducting courses for clients on Python, Linux or other skills I have. Many of them turn out to be shady in their practices and I have to fob them off.
On the other hand, I've done a few certifications in my day but mostly to force myself To learn something. I usually leave the certifications off of my resume because of the stigma. I will talk about projects that I've done using the technologies.
That being said, I just got my AWS Architect Associate certification this past weekend. The entire journey of me getting it, wasn't about the certification. I already had a job and probably by the time I am looking for a new one, I will have to renew it.
It forced me to learn about platform that I was just starting to build on and I was able to talk the talk - that's very important when you are an "architect" by name and/or responsibility.
In 2009, I did the same thing with respect to the MS architect cert - I took 6 tests got the certifications but by the time I was looking for a job, I had let them expire. I was transitioning from being a C/C++ bit twiddler to being an "enterprise developer". It forced me to learn about the technology.
In both cases, the certifications were about learning, not the certifications and in both cases, I was able to apply what I learned on the job. I put the projects on my resume - not the certs.
I would say the same thing about the Coursera certs. If they force you to learn and allow you to apply that knowledge to a real world project, preferable on the job but at least with a side project, it doesn't hurt.
It's a lot like when I was training to run a half marathon. It wasn't about the race, it was about the training. After I did them two weeks apart, I was never motivated to do that distance again.
Everyone wants to do well relative to their peers. Talk to suburban high school seniors and they’ll rank themselves from the Ivy League to the people who settled for Duke, down to the future townies getting a job or girls who got knocked up.
From my observation, kids with certain strong cultural affiliations have the added pressure of family. It’s tough to be an American born Chinese kid whose extended family assumes you are a lazy loaf who has it easy — they are under intense pressure to succeed.
But that simply fails to capture the stresses of everyday life. The average person on welfare checks can hardly be assumed to happy and is probably facing intense, if subtle, negative societal feedback for the choices he is forced to make. Do you think this person is happy to eat at McDonalds and wear cheap clothes when everyone around him is upgrading their smartphones. That's why I say that providing for basic material comforts hardly does much to improve the mental well-being. The pressure to succeed is present everywhere, and failing to do so is stressful in all such circumstances, and I would imagine that it would be roughly the same.
Again this is an article on suicides and it is the most extreme form of pressure that anyone can face. The extent to which we can compare the stress on people that aren't doing well (by societal norms) is hard to pin down exactly, and I don't want to make any bold claims there that the stresses must be exactly the same. But I do see that there is a basic similarity here.
I think pressure and poverty are not as highly coupled as you suggest.
Many of the students in this article who are committing suicide come from well off families.
On the other hand the majority of Indians are not facing such high levels of pressure despite facing far higher levels of poverty.
Chemistry education research describes US pre-college chemistry education content as "incoherent". A challenge when teaching high-school stoichiometry, is students not viewing atoms as real physical objects.
... I've had repeated conversations of the form "What do you think of this alternate way to teach X, which seems to yield a deeper understanding?" "Nifty! But... my students take the MCAS [high-stakes exam for medical school] soon, and all they need to know there is [rote-memorized superficiality]. Instruction time is short, and I'd be doing my students a disservice to spend time doing better."
... Plug-and-chug is a thing. Among teaching staff too. A widely-used text, repeated revised, for years had a problem 'apply the idea gas law to <conditions which would make it a solid> Argon'.
... Innumeracy is pervasive in society. There's more than a half century of journal letters from professors complaining that their physics/geology/other PhD candidates lack a quantitative feel for the field. http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/ started with one graduate student realizing their own lack, and trying to do something about it.
... A five-year old wishing to know what color finger paint to use for the Sun, had best not ask first-tier astronomy graduate students, who pervasively get this wrong. Of the few local outliers, as many learned it in a seminar on misconceptions in astronomy education, as in their "successful" astronomy education. Asking a follow-up question of "what color is sunlight?" often elicits as double take, as two rote-memorized inconsistent factoids collide, apparently for the first time.
You can do good astronomy research, without an informed five-year old's knowledge of Sun color. Years ago, a front-page NYTimes article went by, accurately reporting(!) a claim... that the Universe is green. Some folks working with spectra, had for outreach pushed them through some buggy open-source color code, and lacked the basic understanding to recognize the result as nonsense.
The then Brazilian education system was capable of training for rote regurgitation. But not for research. The US system is capable of training for research. But not for numerate multidisciplinary understanding. As is perhaps needed, for example, to create non-wretched science education content.
So as we look at the dysfunctional memorize-and-regurgitate of the Indian education system, it's worth remembering that we're facing similar challenges^W opportunities for transformational improvement.
>What's funny, however, is that if you walk past an Indian shanty town, you will find examples of (often illegal) innovation at every corner, from stolen electricty to rigged water meters etc - usually concocted by people with little education. The innovative mindset exists in the heart of Indian society,
Yes, very true. Seen stuff like this myself. A couple of examples:
1. When living in Bhopal (city in central India) in teens, I used to frequent auto mechanic shops to get my bike or jeep fixed. Over many such visits over years, I was often amazed to see the way they innovated and managed with less resources, scrounged, adapted, etc., to get parts, to fix things, etc. I remember multiple cases where they were fixing a vehicle problem and needed a rod or wire or screw, and would just look around a bit, and almost inevitably would find some piece of metal nearby that fit the need, and make use of it, maybe with a bit of tweaking, such as filing, bending or hammering it. Of course, in a mechanic's shop you expect parts and scrap to be lying around, but still, it was uncanny. In North and Central India they use the word jugad a lot (some spell it jugaad, and it has a Wikipedia entry too, IIRC), for this ability or approach (not just related to mechanic's work but for anything in life), and that is what inspired me to name both my blogs "jugad", since the broad topic of both is software innovation. The older one, jugad's Journal, which was at jugad.livejournal.com, is not available now, after LiveJournal was acquired (except maybe via the internet Archive), but I've been blogging at the newer one, jugad2.blogspot.com, since 2008, except for some gaps.
2. In Pune, once, I was looking for C. K. Prahlad's book "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid". [1] I first went into a well-known bookstore, Manny's, and asked the salesperson there for it. He had a lackadaisical manner and almost did not bother to reply, just mumbled something. maybe saying no. Then I went out and just nearby, saw a bookstall on the footpath. I mentioned the book to the guy. Not only did he know the book title, he also knew the author's name, and mentioned a few other books by him. He then said he did not have the book right then, but could arrange to procure it in a few days. Sure enough, when I went back there a few days later, he had the book available, in the original, and I bought it. Very enterprising people, they often are, the roadside vendors and such, often more than more privileged people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._K._Prahalad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_t...
>and that is what inspired me to name both my blogs "jugad", since the broad topic of both is software innovation. The older one, jugad's Journal, which was at jugad.livejournal.com, is not available now, after LiveJournal was acquired
Interestingly, I checked again just now, and that older blog of mine, jugad's Journal, now seems to be accessible:
https://jugad.livejournal.com/
Anyone interested, feel free to check it out, there are some interesting (IMO) posts about software and startups there. I ran it from 2005 to 2008, so there are quite a few posts on it, just like on my later blog, jugad2.blogspot.com, which I've been running from 2008.
Yours truly.
I'm Indian and I remember the summer of my 12th grade exams back in 2007 just like yesterday because of some latent awareness that something very important is happening here. I sat in so many exams that summer. First was the CBSE boards aka AISSCE (which was the all-important failsafe), then AIEEE (for admission to the NITs), then BITSAT (for admission to BITS), and finally the IITJEE (for admission to the IITs). All these exams are fairly long, and you compete at the national level.
Already back then the competition was fierce with kids enrolling in tuition centers half a decade even before their first attempt at any of these exams (it was quite common for people to try a few times). I could write a very long essay about the depth of preparation that goes into attempting these exams. It is quite natural that the competitive pressures has worsened over the years with students attempting to out-prepare one another by even bigger margins.
In a country so huge, of course not all students attempt this route, but landing a seat in the small list of prestigious institutions is the only ticket to a good career in India for the most part. This is not unlike American students who take AP level courses, demonstrate exceptional talent in sports or music, or volunteer their time in different ways to stand out in the application process at one of the big name schools. So in that sense, this is describing a very relatable struggle among students across nations, though the means are substantially different.
That's what happens when a nation of over a billion people has only a few hundred thousand spots on a top. It is insane competition. Wired is writing about it because this level of competition is absolutely foreign to the last few generations of westerners.
It is a norm for India, China or Russia. And these are the people who will be competing with us in 10-20 years.
However, exams like this are still stressful in Japan where high standards of living are far more accessible. Which suggests it's more about importance and being zero sum that's the core issue.
Go to school at 6:30 ( didn't give much attention in classes), come home at 2:30, go to tuition from 4 to 9, come home, have dinner and then be forced to "study". Looking back, i still don't know how i survived that.
Contrast that to my undergrad in Canada where it was fun to study and do assignments.
Yep. It matters less apparently if millions of people wander around feeling suicidal as long as they don't actually commit suicide. For what? So we can pick candidates for the professions more efficiently.
The underlying issue is that billions of people around the world are being squeezed through an ever shrinking funnel in a desperate attempt to escape poverty. The pressure continues to build, year over year. Looking at it as a "mental health" problem is only one less level removed from the source than looking at it as a "ceiling fan" problem.
They are simply trying to prepare better than the competition.
Also you seem to get wrong some basic facts about how well the global economy is providing for and improving the state of people around the world. There are no billions that are attempting to escape poverty in the light of some shrinking funnel.
The actual facts show that the world is better than it ever has been in history, and there are more opportunities than ever.
We still have a ways to go to solve all of the world's problems, but we should be proud of how quickly things are getting better, and not worse.
- Ridiculously redundant number of tests : AIEEE, BITSAT, IITJEE, AIIMS MBBS, JIPMER MBBS, EAMCET/KCET/KEAM/TNEA (state level entrance tests in south india).
- Lack of common syllabus, common books : When every student's ultimate goal is to become a good engineer or a doctor , why so much disparity in the syllabus being taught in various high schools.
Sheer stupidity !
This article states that "from the start of 2014 to November 2017, 45 Kota students committed suicide". Please make up your mind about the facts, but it seems like lazy journalism and a stretch to make the connection between the exam and suicides without accounting for deviations from per capita rates.
Unfortunately time is not on our side, as it takes a long time to make institutions and good institutional habits.
To compound the problem- for most of 50 years there was huge bran drain. All those people who would become professors, or experts used their English advantage to move abroad and use their talents better.
Not to mention the years lost due to license raj.
I’d say things are slowly working out and improving. Whether it’s in time to help the demographics, I don’t know.
Having lived in multiple countries, it is often clear to me that the reason for any country's woes almost always stems from their culture. Things may be different now, but historically Indian culture valued credentials and degrees a lot more than they did gaining knowledge. And many aspects of culture interfere with education. India is a country where relationships matter a lot more than, say, in the US. Part of that dynamic is the pressure to do favors for each other. This can be a huge problem when trying to objectively measure performance. I know a teacher in a 3rd world country who was given a hard time by society for not going easy on a student who happened to be a child of a relative. Stuff like that.
Culture is hard to change. Another example from another comment here: The fact that many students go to school, expect to learn little, and then spend hours with a tutor after school. I've spoken to parents from similar countries who:
1. Viewed the fact that their kids had tutors as a status symbol (clear barrier to change!)
2. Seriously could not comprehend the notion that teachers are supposed to teach well enough that going to a tutoring academy would not be required. I kid you not - quite a few refused to believe I was a top student and did not have a private tutor, and that my school had top teachers. For them, that's simply not how the world works.
With the right culture, you can build great institutions in a lot less than 70 years. But examples like the above are examples of a culture getting in the way of institution building, and you end up clashing with the culture at every step.
Firstly, Indian culture is incredibly diverse. If you live in Gujarat, you are respected a lot more for having your own business (whether its a Multi National Company or a corner shop) rather than an employee, even if you have a great job. If you live in Kerala, I imagine you are respected well if you go abroad and send remittances back. This is just a couple of difference on how different the cultures can be.
Credential ism is a very recent phenomena in Indian society, in place mostly because of the police-state like rule imposed on Indian society by the British. When all other methods of livelihood are elliminated (mostly, the textiles industry, but also local armaments and artists) and the only good jobs available are those in Government, of course the society will re-orient itself to satisfy those requirements.
There are many other, very good reasons for why Indian Institutions aren't as strong today as they should be. The Origin of Political Order is an excellent book if you're more interested in these things.
>If you live in Gujarat, you are respected a lot more for having your own business (whether its a Multi National Company or a corner shop) rather than an employee, even if you have a great job.
So most kids in Gujarat are not pressured to complete high school?
>If you live in Kerala, I imagine you are respected well if you go abroad and send remittances back.
To be honest, in my very limited experience, Indians living abroad are responsible for trying to improve quite a few institutions in India (in particular trying to build more educational/social institutions that benefit society in a way that existing ones fail). I honestly don't know if they are from Kerala though.
>Credential ism is a very recent phenomena in Indian society, in place mostly because of the police-state like rule imposed on Indian society by the British.
While I accept blame on the British, things that happened over 70 years ago is not "recent". The failure of not moving away from credentialism does not lie with the British.
>of course the society will re-orient itself to satisfy those requirements.
Incidentally, much of the credentialism existed in Britain as well in those years. Their implementing it in India was merely a way to mirror their own structures. However, the UK today is significantly less focused on these things, yet the sentiment is still strong in India. Yes, of course society re-orients itself to satisfy requirements, but the burden is on the society to re-orient itself once those requirements are no longer there.
BTW, my aim is not to minimize the impact of colonialism. I'm trying to point out that blaming colonialism will never be part of the solution to a country's woes.
Blaming doesn’t fix the problem, which we can agree on.
My point is that expectations of what can be achieved will have to be adjusted. India needs a huge investment of talent and money, and people would rather spend that talent and money to earn US$. The rational choice for individuals is clear.
On top of it class size, difficulty in testing at scale, job scarcity, language issues, discrimination, lack of teachers - make it an intractable problem.
Well, that depends on the individual. It may be a rational economic choice, but many of my friends do long for their home country and the social networks back there. Or just to not stand out from the general populace. So they will still go back.
The people who got the material, as opposed to just memorizing it, and could explain it in their native language - they’re not here.
While culturally there are issues, these are not responsible for the whole of the problem.
Also do note - Japan, China, and other nations also have this pattern for education.
At our population scale, the American system ceases to be useful since the classroom size is far too large. The problems am imdividual child has multiplied by the class of 40 students means that no teacher has the ability to customize fully.
Colleges mushroomed from 6 to 23!
But suicide rate is just one symptom that this industry engenders. The immense pressure these kids are subject to is depressing as fuck. They (and their parents) all have been fed the dream that working 15 hours/day is a sure-shot way to make it in. And once you make in IIT, you don't have to fret about anything else.
Some kids have been working towards this dream, right from 6-7th grade. Yes! six years before they are to take the actual exam.
I was very lucky to escape this trap. I considered myself to be very dumb and knew that there's absolutely no chance I was going to make it.
Looking back, it just escapes me how so many people can come to believe that a single exam is going to narrate your whole fate in life.
so what did you do instead? and can that be replicated by 100,000 other young people?
Theoretically, it can be replicated. The tools that I have used to learn everything are accessible to most of the people I have met. But, whatever may be the reasons, it just doesn't happen.
I love that the English language has two words ("anyone" and "everyone") that seem to be similar, but which in fact lead to vastly different scenarios.
Too many "solutions" people give for societal problems are of the "anyone" kind.
I'm skeptical that an individual suicide is single-factor and deeply skeptical that a population-wide rate of this magnitude is driven by a single factor.
India just doesn’t have the reporting or data to showcase it. This will improve over time and the scope of it will be clear.
You need a little bit of caution here. It's very difficult to compare rates of death with other countries because there are different definitions for suicide, and different levels of recording and reporting.
In particular, there are problems in some areas of India of under recording deaths.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2090536X1...
> In the last two decades, the suicide rate has increased from 7.9 to 10.3 per 100,000,8 with very high rates in some southern regions.9 In a study published in The Lancet in June 2012, the estimated number of suicides in India in 2010 was about 187,000.10 According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB); state of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka have registered a consistently higher number of suicidal deaths during the last few years and together accounted for 56.2% of the total suicides reported in the country. Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state (16.5% share of the population) has reported a comparatively lower percentage of suicidal deaths, accounting for only 3.6% of the total suicides reported in this country, but this researcher feels that this is due to the underestimation of suicide cases in this area. There is a general agreement that previous statistics on the incidence of suicide in the Lucknow region were grossly inadequate and that their comparison based on the figures available is inaccurate and misleading. This causes the suicide problem to be underestimated and, thus, neglected by the government, although this problem seems to be universal. In addition, the features of deaths due to suicide are changing constantly, revealing complex social and cultural developments.11 Prichard and Amanullah (2007)12 suggested that, to avoid the under-reporting of suicides, both formal suicide verdicts and other violent deaths should be considered together because the other violent deaths may include hidden suicides.
Well, that's terrible. Surely we should discuss why they even get to this point, and how this could be prevented?
"Most suicides happen by hanging from ceiling fans, so let's make anti-suicide ceiling fans."
Nailed it.
You are clearly posting a comment comprised of letters of the alphabet. How would one do so without knowing the alphabet, assuming you typed it out rather than dictated it. And well, you also read the original reply. So are you having all that dictated for you? Or are you implying the reading/writing does not require knowing the alphabet (which is difficult to believe, but who knows)?
About the use of an alphabet, have you used a dictionary or any other system that is alphabetically ordered?
The last time I used a system that is alphabetically ordered was in a CD shop 10+ years ago. Im not being sarcastic but I use a dictionary regularly, I just search for word using Google.
By this, do you mean that you can't read? Or you can't remember the ordering of the letters? Or that you can recognize whole words but not as being made up of individual letters?
Even worse if it is a foreign alphabet.
People talk about method substitution, but that doesn't always happen.
There was a point in my life where I chose to die, and the reason I'm alive right now is because I didn't have immediate access to lethal means. Every extra minute that it takes to figure out how to kill yourself is another minute of opportunity to change your mind, and that's what saved me. We absolutely should be focusing on mental health, but means restriction (particularly gun control in the US) is also an important thing for people to understand and consider.
[1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/449144?jou...
A lot of people equate academic brilliance with intelligence and build up on that logic that it'll lead to financial prosperity, which in turn will lead to a good image in society and hence happiness. Don't have good marks, you are worthless. Never bother if you are a great athlete, singer, artist or any of the other vocations.
Even within academics, if you can't make it into one of the areas which pay a lot, like CS/EE/Medical science etc, then society views you with pity about your wasted talent. Doesn't matter how skilled of a Civil/Mechanical engineer or architect you are.
I feel lucky to have been exposed to the western system to get out of such a though process and hope that India can pick up some good things from the west in the field of education.
Having said that, Indians solicit social approval as a report card that evaluates their life. And due to this people face irrational pressures from total strangers who have no stake in their lives. I remember suicide cases were common even during lay offs.
Thank fully now the society is gradually gaining numbers in non-conformists. This is now considered cool. I remember as a teenager I was largely treated as a rebel outcast, if didn't care for social approval.
People need to understand they can do what they want, how they want, and on their terms. Social approval means nothing, especially if people granting the approval have no real stake in your life.
Not to be nit picker...but while encouraging to hear, that sentence seems a wee bit exaggerated. I think the main takeaway from your post--which I 100% agree with--is that social approval being the motivator in your life is a recipe for disappointment.
Ask any psychologist and they will confirm that 'soliciting social approval as a report card to evaluate their life' is basically a human condition affection close to 100% of the species.
The only thing 'Indian' about it is that maybe only Indians think that its an 'Indian' thing.
I am an Indian and I disagree with this. A large fraction (yes it is changing) of Indian society cares a lot about what relatives and neighbors would think about our lifestyle. There are so many taboos and restrictions inflicted upon family members simply because pressure from relatives and neighbors. My own family keeps quoting things like "what would relatives say" about my life choices. Now I live in a western society and I don't have to worry about it.
Relatives are quick to tell you, some times even through sadistic remarks about things they don't like. You also seem to become an object of ridicule in case of failure.
Other irrational expectations include wedding expenditure, gifts and other show off stuff. Even clothes. You won't believe how many people seek social approval and standing from these things.
In case of exams and lay offs, the kind of discussion going on here. Many people play out the whole thing as some gory dead doomsday outcome, after which you would never be worthy of anything ever. Of course this doesn't do well for conformists, they just get anxious and end up taking these extreme decisions.
My mother-in-law (who's not even religious, just really into appearance) threw a huge fit, and pulled the same sort of shame stunts that my parents do.
I don't think this is Indian at all, except Indians are more introspective about it.
As per your American/Canadian in-laws I cant comment much on that as I never lived / be part of those societies. I am married to a German and met his extended family including grandparents (now in their 90s) uncles and aunts on several occasions. Never once anyone had any such discussions (I speak German). Including when we were living together before getting married. There are so many things which no one cares about them here but in India they still do!
There are varying degrees of "social approval". Cultural anthropology studies envision societies to be broadly divided into shame vs guilt societies. In a guilt society, social control comes through via inculcation of guilt for undesirable behaviors. In a shame society, the primary means for social control is the inculcation of shame and fear of ostracism [0]. Generally, Eastern societies like India, China and Japan tend towards the shame society spectrum while Western societies like US tend towards the guilt society end.
[0] Wong, Y., & Tsai, J. (2007). Cultural models of shame and guilt. The self-conscious emotions: Theory and research, 209-223.
But enough about Japan. The dangers to India are very real.
- 1 million people entering the workforce every month due to demographics.
- 50% population engaged in agriculture providing 14% of the GDP.
- Difficult labor laws, swamped Judicial system makes for only technology intensive industries that employ fewer people.
It is a unique experiment in the history of Democracies where ~600 Million people need to be lifted out of poverty and into sustainable jobs. This has not been done before.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2017/11/paying-fo... [2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B06Y1JVLD4
Highly misleading. Only a small percentage of people actually go to Kota for preparation, and the number of students in Kota coming from poorer sections of society is exetremely low. The coaching institutes are not cheap, sometimes costing almost as much as college tuition.
This paragraph paints it as some kind of pilgrimage that every student goes through.
I've been out of school well over a decade and still have those nightmares. Usually correlates with work-stress for me now, but at least once or twice a year I wake up terrified out of a dream where I'm walking around my highschool (always highschool, never college, oddly, despite my college courses being MUCH harder; I think because the artificial stakes and utter lack of autonomy) trying to find the classroom for some test I didn't realize I had.
I had this same conversation with my wife recently as well. It still blows me away that I'm hard pressed to think of situations where I felt as stressed/panicked as I was in parts of highschool, and I've not shirked challenges by any means. I both respect and would not want to be a kid growing up nowadays.
This whole article exists for this one pun.
But you’re right — this seems to be a marketing article for this silly fan.
"Engineer Sharad Ashani is fond of demoing his anti-suicide ceiling fan by attempting to hang himself on Indian TV."
You'd think/hope somebody making this kind of product would at least be aware of the Young Werther Effect.
If people in India are hanging themselves from ceiling fans a safer fan would be an important suicide prevention measure.
Why is it "stupid"?
If kids don't have access to fans, they'll find something else.
as a child, you are not allowed to have your own decisions, like ever. You eat what your parents tell you to eat, you take admission to undergrad/postgrad about what your parents tell. You study hard as they told you, they even decide when and to whom you lose virginity! (arranged marriage)
No wonder if there is a little pressure then kids can't handle it. This is not a governmental issue, this is societal one. and the government can't do shit, pardon my language.
Now what will happen? The govt will panick and reduce the quality of exams, the exams which are already pathetic in quality, the proof for which can be found by counting the number of Indian instituties in top 100 in the world, ONE!!
Ranking is based on a number of factors like funding and number of foreign faculty and students. It has nothing to do with the toughness of the entrance exams.
In fact, if you rank institutes according to acceptance ratios, IITs will nearly be the top institutes in the world (the acceptance percentage, roughly 10000 among 1200000, or approx 0.8 percent), along with places like University of Tokyo. If you say restrict to the 5 old IITs, the acceptance ratio is around 0.4 percent. Acceptance ratios have been kept out from ranking parameters.
Tell me how many googles, facebooks have been started by IIT grads. That number ought to count for something right
Arguably, Sun Microsystems has had a much larger impact than facebook or google, which are mainly notable for their money making ability rather than their technical prowess. In comparison to Java, Google's attempt at programming languages (Go, for example) are exceptionally pathetic. Coming from someone who thinks Java is awfully engineered, that's really saying something.
Can't you see my point? Sun was bought by Oracle because of Java, so Khosla basically developed a language which Oracle bought.
I am not belittling the achivements of Khosla, but other institutes outside India have achieved far greater than what Indian institutes can hope to attain
you can't compare Go and Java. Both languages have widely different. Java was meant to writing softwares for systems like fridges Go was meant to write softwares by a large team and exploit parallel processing architecture of modern CPUSs
And trust me, Go is much better when it comes to writing backends and web services
Java is good for enterprise software
Also, other than Google or Facebook, I can't mention any company of that size founded by Harvard or Stanford Alums (in the computation industry at least). Can you?
Other examples BTW are Cirrus Logic, Zoho, Infosys, etc.
The top school on the list, Stanford University, claims 51 unicorn founders as alumni while runner-up Harvard University has 37. Rounding out the top three is the University of California with 18.
This is the truth but I can just tel you the truth, I can't make you believe it.
I'm not sure what point you were trying to prove with your graph. I never claimed that IIT produced more superstars than Harvard or Stanford, only that it does produce some.
You said:
> Tell me how many googles, facebooks have been started by IIT grads.
The number is 18, according to your data, which makes it #4 in the world, which is a very respectable position.
Well, the problem is people treat degrees from these institutions as lifelong aristocratic privilege. Once you start going in that direction, its now in your interest to keep the myths alive about your alma mater.
How else are you going to earn higher than everybody else? You have to convince the society nobody can ever be good as you, by very social design, and you have to keep things that way.
So the pedigree obviously is valuable.
Interests, skills, background, ambitions and the human behind the degree all goes to hell.
Yeah, things like preparation classes can kind of turn it all into gaming the system, but on the other hand I'm quite curious what percent of people that scored e.g. perfectly on the math on the SAT actually took these classes. I did, and I never did any preparation - but I've always enjoyed and done well at math, and I think my performance was reflected in this. And I don't think somebody who had no ability or enjoyment of math is suddenly going to start scoring very well just because of some prep classes.
The former can be crammed and quickly forgotten. Not knowledge. The latter skill isn't knowledge of the relevant field.
In the less rigorous, more arty fields (shall we say) the trick is usually to flatter the examiners by firing their own opinions back at them in original ways. This can be highly skillful and requires awareness of the academic milieu. But not knowledge of the relevant field.
What counts is depth, and depth depends on semantic connections, including connections to other fields. These are all differentiated and can't be meaningfully added to yield a number, as if we were counting eggs or measuring a distance.
I took a look at chemistry, english, and CS. I noticed that there were relatively few multiple choice questions compared to American exams. All exams had a written component, and the questions seem thought out. The english test in particular seemed to actually focus on real-life use cases for language (speech writing, ad drafting, and mannerisms), which is arguably more important than what American schools typically spend all their time on (the literary essay or persuasive essay).
Somewhat related, I recall stories of riots in China due to anti-cheating measures -- teachers and proctors were dragged into the streets and beaten, and one parent indignantly proclaimed "It's not fair! If they cannot cheat, how will they succeed?"
Although, now that I think about it, my country does the exact same thing for university admission exams, at least the public ones.
Name = "3 Idiots"
The exploding population of India has put a huge pressure on the public infrastructure. Any credible university/college (because of numerous swindling orgs) which usually means govt. run has a flood of candidates, the IITs being the archetypal example. Add this to the social pressure put by the definition of success according to the culture and you've got yourself in an Indian pressure cooker[1] which shapes you to perfectly fit the mold of the educational system- effectively quenching creativity.
I wouldn't generalize though. The smart still are able to wiggle through and come out the other end without selling their soul. But the opportunity cost for the others who would have excelled given better instruction and infrastructure is unfathomable.
Every suicide is a tragedy, but what's the base rate? I have no idea if 45 is a lot or a little without knowing how many people were Kota students during this timeframe and what the overall youth suicide rate in India is. For all the reader knows, the suicide rate is lower in this population. Why doesn't the media report the basic information that would make their case? It's bad, innumerate reporting.
I bring this up because the way this is reported is similar to the Foxconn suicide "scandal" where it turned out the suicide rate among Foxconn employees was lower than the national average. (https://www.zdnet.com/article/media-gets-its-facts-wrong-wor...)
IMHO, the problem lies with the parents who push/force their children into a race that they don't want to be a part of. Then it doesn't matter if they excel or not, they feel lost and hopeless. The number of classmates I had during engg who had no interest in engg/CS was huge.
Solving this problem would solve a lot of issues. It's getting solved as people are getting disillusioned from Engg == Money. The number of students applying to engg is gradually decreasing every year (80K less this year).
I agree that something needs to be done.
A few of my relatives went into depression and have serious mental health issues due to the stress of preparing for IIT JEE. Having seen both sides of the story, I don't have a solution.
A good job can be life changing, while the human toll it takes along the way cannot justify the means...
Yeah it puts a huge amount of pressure on kids because it might not be just them, but their families too. They are making huge sacrifices too for their kid to succeed.
... and then...?
Smash the institutions providing a way to raise themselves up, and then...?
I assume you'd want them to build up new ones, to which I'd ask, out of what, exactly? And when they build up new ones, how will these new ones avoid having the problem that they must inevitably pass through a period where the number of people who want to use them will grossly exceed the available capacity of the system?
Rebelling against the school system is inverse tragedy of the commons - large individual loss and small societal gain. There is no real incentive to do that.
The 10th year of school is a very important stage, transitioning to university, and the exam has always been stress inducing. On the day of the result, there were policemen guarding a lake called kukkarahalli kere in order to stop students who failed from committing suicide.
This is the very obvious result.
Our minds are remarkably robust and most will handle immense pressure. Some minds just aren't. Sure, they'll crack under pressure. But that pressure can come from literally anywhere, including existential angst that comes from nowhere but the person's own mind.
Hence why suicide rates tend to remain constant no matter the situation.
So if you dont cheat you will fall behind everbody else is doing it so you do it as well
> So, whether we are teachers or students, is it not important to ask ourselves why we are educating or being educated? And what does life mean? Is not life an extraordinary thing? The birds, the flowers, the flourishing trees, the heavens, the stars, the rivers and the fish therein - all this is life. Life is the poor and the rich; life is the constant battle between groups, races and nations; life is meditation; life is what we call religion, and it is also the subtle, hidden things of the mind - the envies, the ambitions, the passions, the fears, fulfilments and anxieties. All this and much more is life. But we generally prepare ourselves to understand only one small corner of it. We pass certain examinations, find a job, get married, have children, and then become more and more like machines. We remain fearful, anxious, frightened of life. So, is it the function of education to help us understand the whole process of life, or is it merely to prepare us for a vocation, for the best job we can get?
> What is going to happen to all of us when we grow to be men and women? Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be? Have you ever asked yourselves this question? Should you not ask it? If your family is wealthy you may have a fairly good position already assured, your father may give you a comfortable job, or you may get richly married; but there also you will decay, deteriorate. Do you see?
> Surely, education has no meaning unless it helps you to understand the vast expanse of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a very good job; but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid? So, while you are young, must you not seek to find out what life is all about? And is it not the true function of education to cultivate in you the intelligence which will try to find the answer to all these problems? Do you know what intelligence is? It is the capacity, surely, to think freely without fear, without a formula, so that you begin to discover for yourself what is real, what is true; but if you are frightened you will never be intelligent. Any form of ambition, spiritual or mundane, breeds anxiety, fear; therefore ambition does not help to bring about a mind that is clear, simple, direct, and hence intelligent.
> You know, it is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear. Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death. Most of us have fear in one form or another; and where there is fear there is no intelligence. And is it not possible for all of us, while we are young, to be in an environment where there is no fear but rather an atmosphere of freedom - freedom, not just to do what we like, but to understand the whole process of living? Life is really very beautiful, it is not this ugly thing that we have made of it; and you can appreciate its richness, its depth, its extraordinary loveliness only when you revolt against everything - against organized religion, against tradition, against the present rotten society - so that you as a human being find out for yourself what is true. Not to imitate but to discover - that is education, is it not? It is very easy to conform to what your society or your parents and teachers tell you. That is a safe and easy way of existing; but that is not living, because in it there is fear, decay, death. To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself.
> But you are not encouraged to do this; no one tells you to question, to find out for yourself what God is, because if you were to rebel you would become a danger to all that is false. Your parents and society want you to live safely, and you also want to live safely. Living safely generally means living in imitation and therefore in fear. Surely, the function of education is to help each one of us to live freely and without fear, is it not? And to create an atmosphere in which there is no fear requires a great deal of thinking on your part as well as on the part of the teacher, the educator.
> Do you know what this means - what an extraordinary thing it would be to create an atmosphere in which there is no fear? And we must create it, because we see that the world is caught up in endless wars; it is guided by politicians who are always seeking power; it is a world of lawyers, policemen and soldiers, of ambitious men and women all wanting position and all fighting each other to get it. Then there are the so-called saints, the religious gurus with their followers; they also want power, position, here or in the next life. It is a mad world, completely confused, in which the communist is fighting the capitalist, the socialist is resisting both, and everybody is against somebody, struggling to arrive at a safe place, a position of power or comfort. The world is torn by conflicting beliefs, by caste and class distinctions, by separative nationalities, by every form of stupidity and cruelty - and this is the world you are being educated to fit into. You are encouraged to fit into the framework of this disastrous society; your parents want you to do that, and you also want to fit in.
> Now, is it the function of education merely to help you to conform to the pattern of this rotten social order, or is it to give you freedom - complete freedom to grow and create a different society, a new world? We want to have this freedom, not in the future, but now, otherwise we may all be destroyed. We must create immediately an atmosphere of freedom so that you can live and find out for yourselves what is true, so that you become intelligent, so that you are able to face the world and understand it, not just conform to it, so that inwardly, deeply, psychologically you are in constant revolt; because it is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love; and you cannot inquire, observe, learn, you cannot be deeply aware, if you are afraid. So the function of education, surely, is to eradicate, inwardly as well as outwardly, this fear that destroys human thought, human relationship and love.
From Think On These Things (or This Matter of Culture), Chapter 1, The Function of Education
By Jiddu Krishnamurti
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13470.Think_on_These_Thi...
> Questioner: If all individuals were in revolt, don't you think there would be chaos in the world?
> Krishnamurti: Listen to the question first, because it is very important to understand the question and not just wait for an answer. The question is: if all individuals were in revolt, would not the world be in chaos? But is the present society in such perfect order that chaos would result if everyone revolted against it? Is there not chaos now? is everything beautiful, uncorrupted? Is everyone living happily, fully, richly? Is man not against man? Is there not ambition, ruthless competition? So the world is already in chaos, that is the first thing to realize. Don't take it for granted that this is an orderly society; don't mesmerize yourself with words. Whether here in Europe, in America or Russia, the world is in a process of decay. If you see the decay, you have a challenge: you are challenged to find a way of solving this urgent problem. And how you respond to the challenge is important, is it not? If you respond as a Hindu or a Buddhist, a Christian or a communist, then your response is very limited - which is no response at all. You can respond fully, adequately only if there is no fear in you, only if you don't think as a Hindu, a communist or a capitalist, but as a total human being who is trying to solve this problem; and you cannot solve it unless you yourself are in revolt against the whole thing, against the ambitious acquisitiveness on which society is based. When you yourself are not ambitious, not acquisitive, not clinging to your own security - only then can you respond to the challenge and create a new world.
> Questioner: To revolt, to learn, to love - are these three separate processes, or are they simultaneous?
> Krishnamurti: Of course they are not three separate processes; it is a unitary process. You see, it is very important to find out what the question means. This question is based on theory, not on experience; it is merely verbal, intellectual, therefore it has no validity. A man who is fearless, who is really in revolt, struggling to find out what it means to learn, to love - such a man does not ask if it is one process or three. We are so clever with words, and we think that by offering explanations we have solved the problem.
> Do you know what it means to learn? When you are really learning you are learning throughout your life and there is no one special teacher to learn from. Then everything teaches you - a dead leaf, a bird in flight, a smell, a tear, the rich and the poor, those who are crying, the smile of a woman, the haughtiness of a man. You learn from everything, therefore there is no guide, no philosopher, no guru. Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.
> Questioner: It is true that society is based on acquisitiveness and ambition; but if we had no ambition would we not decay?
> Krishnamurti: This is really a very important question, and it needs great attention.
> Do you know what attention is? Let us find out. In a class room, when you stare out of the window or pull somebody's hair, the teacher tells you to pay attention. Which means what? That you are not interested in what you are studying and so the teacher compels you to pay attention - which is not attention at all. Attention comes when you are deeply interested in something, for then you love to find out all about it; then your whole mind, your whole being is there. Similarly, the moment you see that this question - if we had no ambition, would we not decay? - is really very important, you are interested and want to find out the truth of the matter.
> Now, is not the ambitious man destroying himself? That is the first thing to find out, not to ask whether ambition is right or wrong. Look around you, observe all the people who are ambitious. What happens when you are ambitious? You are thinking about yourself, are you not? You are cruel, you push other people aside because you are trying to fulfil your ambition, trying to become a big man, thereby creating in society the conflict between those who are succeeding and those who are falling behind. There is a constant battle between you and the others who are also after what you want; and is this conflict productive of creative living? Do you understand, or is this too difficult?
> Are you ambitious when you love to do something for its own sake? When you are doing something with your whole being, not because you want to get somewhere, or have more profit, or greater results, but simply because you love to do it - in that there is no ambition, is there? In that there is no competition; you are not struggling with anyone for first place. And should not education help you to find out what you really love to do so that from the beginning to the end of your life you are working at something which you feel is worth while and which for you has deep significance? Otherwise, for the rest of your days, you will be miserable. Not knowing what you really want to do, your mind falls into a routine in which there is only boredom, decay and death. That is why it is very important to find out while you are young what it is you really love to do; and this is the only way to create a new society.
> Questioner: In India, as in most other countries, education is being controlled by the government. Under such circumstances is it possible to carry out an experiment of the kind you describe?
> Krishnamurti: If there were no government help, would it be possible for a school of this kind to survive? That is what this gentleman is asking. He sees everything throughout the world becoming more and more controlled by governments, by politicians, by people in authority who want to shape our minds and hearts, who want us to think in a certain way. Whether in Russia or in any other country, the tendency is towards government control of education; and this gentleman asks whether it is possible for a school of the kind I am talking about to come into being without government aid.
> Now, what do you say? You know, if you think something is important, really worth while, you give your heart to it irrespective of governments and the edicts of society - and then it will succeed. But most of us do not give our hearts to anything, and that is why we put this sort of question. If you and I feel vitally that a new world can be brought into being, when each one of us is in complete revolt inwardly, psychologically, spiritually - then we shall give our hearts, our minds, our bodies towards creating a school where there is no such thing as fear with all its implications.
> Sir, anything truly revolutionary is created by a few who see what is true and are willing to live according to that truth; but to discover what is true demands freedom from tradition, which means freedom from all fears.