Education in India – Too Competitive?

One of the issues that are currently plaguing the education system in India, is the competition between students.

Currently, education in India is more about competition and not about cooperation. This fosters an individualistic mindset in the students who pass through the system. This makes the youth think about themselves, thereby making them obedient workhorses, since companies offer them good a significant amount of money. This is detrimental to Indian society as a whole, because there are no ‘leaders’ coming from these schools. This high level of competition is due to the fact that the academic cutoffs are extremely high. As I said in my previous posts, the educational cut-offs are ridiculously high. As I also previously mentioned, this is having an adverse effect on the children, diagnosed by the climbing suicide rates amongst teenagers.

There are far too many students in the India schools, too few competitive colleges, and the assignments are progressively getting more and more difficult.  All these three circumstances are leading to greater and greater levels of competition between students, which is detrimental to a child’s psychology.

These children who have had a sense of competition hammered into them since 1st grade, become global citizens, and even then continue to compete with other colleagues.  This can have negative effects on the employer, because having an employee not working well with other team members can lead to a loss of profits.  Furthermore, these children are so incredibly competitive, that won’t hesitate to watch a colleague fail their educational pursuits. What’s worse is the fact that not only will these children happily watch colleagues fail, they will also do as much as possible to ensure failure for their colleague. This is completely immoral, and is not what the education system is supposed to teach our children.

These children who are lacking in their moral compass then feel that it is already to ‘play dirty’, and not abide by the rules. Their motto for life is literally, ‘The ends justify the means’. This is exactly the point, the end DO NOT justify the means, if the means are immoral. These are the people who pollute and litter Indian streets, and these are the people who bribe our police officers, thereby perpetuating corruption at all levels of the government.

What the education system has instilled since the start is that ‘Winning is beating the opponent’. The point is that the children view each other as opponents, which is detrimental to the group cohesiveness. This is effectively a ‘temporary win’ for the victor, however it is an overall loss, because now there is no team work.

The lack of cooperation leads to almost no synergy in groups, or teams in the work or school environment. This lack of synergy is also something that needs to be improved.

Synergy

(Noun)

the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or     other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their             separate effects : the synergy between artist and record company.

This lack of synergy between children will not help India sustain academic levels to economic boom due to which expat populations may increase, and may later on leads to India making very little progress to actually improving. When I say ‘improving’ I mean abolishing corruption, cleaning up the country, and giving more people more money (thereby making the economy larger).

I feel that the competition in India could be tearing the youth, and potential productivity into tiny shreds. This sense of competition has to change, because I feel it has reached unhealthy levels.

At the end of the day, however, it is extremely easy to point at the problem, but it is impossibly difficult to ameliorate, or even cure the problem all-together.

Synergy is also the heart and soul of Teach India.

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