We do need some education

Seeing two ends of the spectrum of the educational system is a unique experience. While it would seem rather churlish to compare one in a country of 300 million and that in a country of 1 billion, it would be interesting to contrast the diametrically opposite aspects of each. It would become a tome if I were to enumerate all such differences, but these are a few things that struck me as stark contrasts in terms of attitude.

Disclaimer: These are a few scenes I have witnessed and wouldn’t dare to extrapolate them to any generalisations.

Scene in an average-Joe undergraduate Indian classroom:
Enter professor: students rise to wish him, like he is an emperor who just made a royal entrance in front of his subjects and begins to hold session without much effort.

Scene in an average-Joe undergraduate US classroom:
Enter professor: everybody is seated and is playing with their laptops, clickers, mobiles, chewing, eating and drinking till he draws their attention to the session. In many cases the students proceed with auxiliary activities despite the professor's efforts, which I attribute to their limited attention span spawned by handheld digital distractions. So the professor has to use technology to fight technology: he makes animated power point presentations, uses the overhead projector to write down the keywords for inattentive students.

Scene when an Indian professor doesn't know an answer:
a) Professor lets his imagination run amuck without any statutory warning about where real ends and fantasy begins and students initially accept the gas. Students later realise that it was a load of dino-shit and stop asking questions in the lecture.
b) Professor is creative enough to retune the question so that it is within the realms of his knowledge. He answers the question he frames and assumes he has answered the original question.

Scene when a professor in the US doesn't know the answer:
The professor acknowledges that he doesn't know and requests the student to email the question to him so he could find the answer.

Scene in an Indian classroom when the class does not perform too well in the test:
Professor has a smug look and blames the truancy and inattentiveness of the students for the miserable performance, when in fact most students would study from the textbook rather than attend his lectures. He frightens them with dire consequences of failure and the high likelihood of tough questions in the next test that cannot be found in any textbook.

Scene in a classroom in the US if the students don't perform well in a quiz:
Professor urges the class to do better in the next class and even bets that 90% of the class will do well. He encourages and lures them with easy and sometimes mind-numbing questions, which some dimwits still get wrong.

Scene when a lecture is extended by an hour without prior warning:
Students begin to whine and protest, eventually the dissent dies down and the extended lecture proceeds without much ado.

Scene when a lecture spills over by two minutes:
Students have packed their bags and evacuated the classroom like it is on fire, while the hapless professor still shouts out the last words of his sentence so they can hear it on the corridor.

Scene in a laboratory in India:
Limited equipment, unlimited students. Students crowd, push, kick and pull other students out of the way to gain access to touch, feel and see the elusive piece of equipment even if it is a dissected rat.

Scene in a laboratory in US:
One piece of equipment for two students period. Students can take their time to fiddle around and get the hang of it, but they’d rather get it over with and scram.

It is not just the method or approach towards pedagogy that is different; essentially it appears to me as an attitudinal chasm in the educational system of the two countries: both of the students and the professors. In India the professor is many times unduly albeit grudgingly given the kind of respect that is superficial but inordinate. The students seldom learn in class, what they learn is only what they study at home and yet they show respect to their professors. In the US, the professor-student relationship is blurred by an informality in interaction, in that there is no "pretence" of respect. It is actually the lack of respect when it is due, that comes across as apathy and ungratefulness of the students despite the fact that they sometimes have better faculty and facilities. But then again, they have not seen worse to know what is better.

Given the factors like higher population, higher emphasis on academics and therefore grades and the fact that teaching is not a highly coveted profession in India, one would think the condition of the education system is perhaps the best in these circumstances. But what really exacerbates the situation is the fact that we also have reservations, so not only is it fiercely competitive purely because of the population, but also because of the unfair handicap that undeserving candidates get over meritorious ones by virtue of their caste. The learning process is never relaxed, enjoyable or stimulating because it is always about one-upmanship and unhealthy competition.

Having said that, one feel good factor about the mess called Indian education system is that, its made us somewhat resilient: most students from India manage to survive and adapt to the US education system; what are the chances of the reverse happening?