There’s a long tradition of “Dubious Trend Line” (DBL) stories in the New York Times, and today’s article on how Japanese parents have suddenly become interested in the Indian educational system seems to more or less fit the pattern.
The idea is, Japanese students are no longer tops in Asia when it comes to math and science. While India itself is nowhere near the top, there are apparently numerous signs that Indian ideas about education (including rote “memorization and cramming”) are becoming more popular:
Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills†and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.†Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.
And Japan’s few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.
At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian, and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales. The kindergarten students even color maps of India in the green and saffron of its flag.
Little Angels is located in this Tokyo suburb, where only one of its 45 students is Indian. Most are Japanese. (link)
This quote presents us with some amusing titles (“Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills”! Catchy…), but it also contains the article’s first major problem, which is statistical: the only concrete example in the entire piece is based on this one school (“Little Angels”), which only has 45 students. (Other Indian International schools are mentioned in the second half of the article, but in those schools the vast majority of students are currently Indian expatriates, not Japanese.)
The second major problem in reasoning is in the following passage:
Much of Japan has long looked down on the rest of Asia, priding itself on being the region’s most advanced nation. Indeed, Japan has dominated the continent for more than a century, first as an imperial power and more recently as the first Asian economy to achieve Western levels of economic development.
But in the last few years, Japan has grown increasingly insecure, gripped by fear that it is being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication. The government here has tried to preserve Japan’s technological lead and strengthen its military. But the Japanese have been forced to shed their traditional indifference to the region. (link)
If a Dubious Trend Line journalist goes to broad geopolitical generalizations when trying to explain a much more specific cultural event, they’re likely grasping at straws.
In general, I don’t disagree that a focus on the fundamentals might be useful in the early years (and I have my doubts about the Montessori method), but there’s nothing especially “Indian” about that, is there? Isn’t the memorization simply a hold-over from the old British educational model? Overall, the article does little to convince me that this is anything other than a mini-fad — if that.
(Note, check out the comments on the News Tab for more detailed dissection of this article.)
That’s one handy neologism. I am going to use it.
Hello, Jack Shafer! 🙂
i wouldn’t diss the indian education system automatically as many of you are prone to. lots of things wrong with it, but it also gets some things right. perhaps the biggest flaw in the indian (not just educational) system is the lack of opportunity based on merit—the system doesn’t know what to do with you if you are really good in anything—this i don’t think the japanese lack.
i would think this will work for them even better than it works in india.
ahahaha maybe one day there will be the indian eqivilent on kumon centers in the united states . . . ..
Hello, Jack Shafer! 🙂
Rahul, I knew I was stealing that from somewhere — thanks for reminding me where! (I was thinking I might have seen the phrase on Gawker.com back in the day… )
I agree that the thought of Japanese parents lining up to enrol their kids in an Indian school sounds somewhat dubious. I used to have nothing but contempt for the Indian method of rote memorization, but now I think there may be something to it after all. Would love to find out what the specific effects of these different forms of education are. In any case, in the U.S., I find it somewhat shocking that people who are otherwise very intelligent are unable to calculate simple things in their heads. Can it only be about knowing the multiplication tables, or could cramming be related to other mental capacities (either positive or negative ones)? Creativity is great and everything but when everyone starts to believe they’re an artist there’s got to be something wrong. I blame it on the “there are no wrong answers” mentality so prevalent here.
I think memorization is a very old Indian learning technique practiced in all sorts of areas and pre-dates British in India. Rote memorization of vedas, slokas happen first and then only the meaning of such is explained to students. I think even Quran is taught that way in madrasas.
Should we equate education centers started by Indians in other countries to the ones run in India? NRIs tend to be high achievers and would wish to educate their children in the best facilities. I know Indians in Thailand who left the country and a well paid job because Thai schools were not good enough for them. There are many Indian software people in Japan and they would want a English medium school just like the best in India. Maybe the Japanese want to get into these schools that the Indians started in Japan. I don’t see anything odd about it. If Indians ran schools in America, I bet all kinds of parents would try to get their kids in.
5 · Amardeep said
Let me guess. Rahul had Indian education 😉
NO!
4 · fallen jhumki said
My thoughts too. 🙂
Oh, the irony…coming so soon, as this newstory is, on the heels of Aamir Khan’s latest (now tax-free!) , lamenting the sad state of primary education in India, in particular the dependence on “memorization and cramming.”
Oh, wasn’t implying that, but the, er, trend of puff pieces on “trends” based on anecdotal data is a pet peeve of his, and he’s devoted many acres of column space to it on Slate.
You might be on to something here, Divya. On the other hand it, what to speak of “creativity”, the ability to take charge and come up with original ideas on your own in given situations is also a skill worthy of being learned at an early age. Some educators (and employers) have argued that the hierarchal nature of Indian culture (which seeps over into it’s educational systems, stifles that skill, that ability. Left alone without a teacher or other elder telling you what to do, how will you guide your own life? Can you guide your life? That is the question. I myself found it amazing that while in India you find many highly “educated” people – several degrees and such, still some such people can still be somewhat “childlike” in their lack of awareness, experience or openness to issues that they are not aware of. It’s a dichotomy my company has dealt with on several occasions and it’s covered in our 3 week training course. But yeah, I agree that rote learning does have a place.
Haha.. Why would you want to memorize multiplication tables beyond nine times nine?
Amardeep, I share your overall skepticism regarding the ‘trend’ claimed in the article (BTW, shouldn’t it be DTL, not DBL, or is that a joke within a joke :)), but the broader issues the article raises are worth discussing. It seems to be using the Japanese example to focus attention on trends in America and projecting America’s concerns regarding Indian and Chinese educational achievement – on to the Japanese.
My overall take: (i) American paranoia in these matters is misplaced (ii) If the average achievement level in India is considered, Indians have much more to be concerned about than the Japanese or Americans (iii) There’s already way too much pressure on Indian kids and Japanese kids – in India, in Japan and in America, and this kind of paranoid’trendspotting’ isn’t going to help. (What, your kid is 18 months old, and he can’t count to 100 yet?)
Also, in case people missed them, there are comments on the NYT site itself, over 200 so far. I’ve read only the first page so far, and saw this one, from someone who attended the first six grades in India and the next six in the US, to be quite succinct and nuanced.
There was also a comment from a Japanese English teacher who was extremely skeptical that Japanese five year olds could be writing one-page English essays, which the NYT article claims Little Angels kids are doing. And a Japanese mathematician who thought the Indian kids are learning tables which give them 67 X 43 right off the bat.
The ‘trend’ extrapolated in the article seems dubious enough, even the ‘facts’ seem that way.
$2000,
I agree, there’s a big gap in Indian education. I was in India for a summer and had to find my high school summer reading books there. I didnt know how hard it could be. I had to have my mom mail it to me from America. I was looking for Lord Jim by Conrad and Mark Twain’s Huck Finn. Why they didnt have Huck Finn in a town the size of Coimbatore with a large English speaking population, I dont know! You dont have to wonder about their lack of awareness about ‘issues’.
Why didn’t you search for it online? Both those books are well out of copyright, and freely available on various websites.
pingpong,
the year was 1994. I hate you!
…Back then you actually read “BOOKS”
And my success with the ladies continues.
Yeah, looking back on 1994, I had read Tom Sawyer several times and Huck Finn once, (as stories, not metaphors or accounts of times gone by) but never heard of Joe Conrad. In fact I didn’t hear of Joe Conrad until well into college (me, not Conrad), and for a while I thought that he was this dude who fought with Marlon Brando in Vietnam. (Yeah, characters and actors and authors and stuff, but postmodern storytelling transcends the medium and all that).
But then, I’d bet a decent amount that very few US school discussed, say, Sarojini Naidu’s poetry. To each country its own writers…
7 · circus in jungle said
Yes, memorization is at the heart of many ancient and continuing Indian systems of education. If you think of “conceptual” knowledge as discontinuous from the rest of life, you will be tempted to dismissively call this memorization “rote” or “cramming”, as opposed to the development of living memory. You don’t learn to speak your language by having its grammar told to you; you learn it, so to say, by rote. The way you got started on other forms of language–at the very least, if you are Indian–was not very different: it was your mother saying “repeat after me”–repeat this verse, repeat this multiplication table, and (if you were a lucky child), repeat this tune.
Japan has nothing to fear–with Hello Kitty bringing out a new “more rugged, cool look” to appeal to men, I will be sending my hard-earned $$ to their IP-creators for the foreseeable future.
There were a few really nicebook shops in Coimbatore. Higginbothams used a carry a large collection of classics. I know for certain that they had Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Pudding head Wilson — my brother brought it off them (mid – late 80s). You probably just did not know where to look, or had truly awful luck.
Getting classics whose copyright had passed was never a problem in India (and looking back, at really cheap prices too!). What was diificult was to get more recent books, books by off beat writers, etc. That too changed after liberalization
The root cause was Japanese’s discovery of the brilliance of some of its citizens. Given the growing importance of the importance of a quality english based education, the rest was inevitable
Its really upside down. Laughably so. If anything, its Indians who should be learning from the Japanese.
The countries that were colonized by the japanese and adopted its educational system, South Korea and Taiwan, became prosperous developed nations; while the countries that got stuck with the macaulayite english medium system, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Kenya, are among the most abjectly impoverished and backward nations on earth.
No indian college ranks in the top 200 in the world; Indian students perform poorly in international academic competitions; the great majority of indian graduates in engineering are considered unemployable by international corporations; indian infrastructure, created by graduates of the indian educational system, is absolutely pathetic; indian bureacrats, products of indian colleges, are abysmally corrupt and incompetent; and so on.
Yeah, this was very dubious. If anything, the system used in most indian schools has profound flaws both in teaching math to average students and to those in the top 1%. As you’d imagine this is doubly bad. For the average student, the current method in your typical bombay high school is have a mediocre teacher show 1-2 examples (if you’re lucky) and then have to work through everything else on your own. Compound that with the enormous pressure high school kids are under (both in 10th and 12th grades) due to the lack of spaces in decent colleges, and an overwhelming tendency towards engineering and mba’s — I don’t think this is the Indian education system the article was referring to; which is to say it was terribly written!
Really, the article should read “a few NRIs started primary schools and a few hundred japanese students have joined them”. From a pedagogical point of view, while primary education in things like math is important, the most crucial element of math education for math/science/tech-oriented careers happens in grades 9-12. And here, the system has deep problems (though this varies a great deal from DPS-type schools to, say, the maharashtra state system).
A potentially even bigger problem is how indian may be squandering the chance to provide advanced topics and opportunities to gifted students! The math/physics/chem-olympiad system in the US, in addition to things like Intel ISEF/STS and Westinghouse is unparalleled and profoundly important in promoting more creative skills and unconventional thinking in these fields. India pales here, and I don’t think Japan does that great either — this is probably one area where effort could yield some awesome rewards as well.
Hi, It’s nothing special about it, if we consider our true potential. From centuries India is the seat of knowledge and wisdom of world. Only British rule faded it for a while. Now we are again back to the field. This is just one such instance. Read my article about this topic on http://vidya.ravisblognet.com
With Regards, Ravi http://www.ravisblognet.com Education & Career Technology & Gadgets Spirituality & Self Awareness
I studied in a CBSE school (in the 80s) and I can say that the prescribed syllabus was very good – gave a fairly comprehensive overview of all the subjects and prepared me for college (both for choosing a field and in providing a solid foundation). When I travelled to the US, to do a Masters in Physics, I took up a TA job and discovered that first year and second year engineering students were having a lot of difficulty with their Physics and Math classes. The reason, I found, was that they had not had any foundation/exposure to the basic concepts in high school.
Regarding memorization – I think that in my younger years (from 5-9), it was a great period to learn up stuff! What I memorized then, I still remember very clearly! I learnt tables (upto 19×10). Also, since my school was one of those started by Swami Chinmayananda, we also learnt some chapters from the Bhagavad Gita – it is just so easy now, when I am studying a commentary, to know the verse by heart. At some point, it starts getting hard to memorize stuff – you have to put in more effort, but until then, I think it is wise to learn up as much as you can!
“Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die” There are several uses – I learnt to multiply upto 20*20.
I am still amazed that a Indian “hot-shot” executive who commands a multi lakh salary in Bangalore ask me “Who did America gain independence from?”, “Why is there an independence day?”. I know, I know, a sample size of one is a poor sample.
Heh me too and knew squares of numbers till 30, could even find square root arithmetically have forgotten to do that now. We couldn’t even use calculators in high school and had to use log tables for physics and chem. Devicing neat little approximations to simplify stuff was fun. Who used to do those excruciating exercises in grammar from Wren and Martin? I think Indian school education from K-12 gives you a solid foundation (I am talking about big cities here) but unless you are in one of IITs college education is not that much to write home about.
i don’t have anything to back me up, but i always thought it was a consequence of centuries of passing on our religious texts orally.
In the Indian system of learning, memorization or cramming plays a small part and doesn’t get you far. Memorization does not help you get through the many competitive exams you have to take such as the JEE/Pre-Med/State Engg. Entrance tests etc., to enter undergrad programs. The high school (grade 10 and grade 12) exams too are tough in their own way and require you to think through. It takes extreme ignorance to assert that the Indian learning system is based on “memorization and cramming”. Great things about learning in India are its teacher-proof nature, unvarnished and frequent feedback, and clearly defined outcomes. It does not matter whether your teacher is good or bad, you know what your child should work on, and you know how well your child is doing. It takes a lot to be a dedicated teacher in India, an extremely thankless job, even as thankless jobs go. In an opportunity limited land like India, where commuting to school is a ordeal (1 to 1.5 hours each way is the norm) teachers never tell you that anything goes, or any outcome is OK, and that the road is success is easy. This is sort of atmosphere that conditions Indian students to compete and excel. The system emphasises analysis and comprehension over expression, educators reasoning that expression can always be learned if one knows how to create the content. The Vedas and Upanisads are not texts, rather they are guides for discussion. Upanisad among other thing means to “sit by and discuss/learn”. That is why a classical course in the Upanisads in India begins with the Upanisads and quickly moves on the bhashyas or commentaries that are vastly more detailed and complex.
Frankly, I think the only reason the Japanese are lining up for admission to any international schools is to learn English. A Tokyo transplant, I know firsthand the bucks Japanese parents are willing to shell out in order for their kids to learn the language. But why stop at English tutoring. The new trend now is complete immersion in an English-speaking environment – hence the increasing enrollment.
BTW, principal Nirmal Jain of India International School in Japan is my momma. She started the school a few years ago for Indian IT families coming to work in Tokyo so that they could bring their children with them. Tuition at the main international schools in Tokyo is astronomical and frankly out of the financial reach of many of these young families. On the other hand, tuition at IISJ, a non-profit, is doable. And because the school is certified by the board of education in India, the students can fit right back into the system there without skipping a beat.
So not only does the school keep families together, but it also affords the children the opportunity to experience another culture.
Yes, I am very proud of my mom!
Amardeep,
So you have caught on to the recent trend in the Western media to make mountains out of Indian molehills. I discussed a similar inflation in my blog post on the ‘outsourcing of wombs’ on Accidental Blogger. ‘Dubious Trend Line’- is an apt phrase. I’ll remember to reference it the next time I issue an alert for such stories popping up at regular intervals in the main newspapers and news websites.
Word.
India is a overpopulated developing country that is why the competition of limited resources is fierce. Kids sacrifice a lot to get admission in a good college, and trust me it is not because hectoring “desi parents” it has more to do with competition and peer pressure. Whatever strategy is used by thse kids is their business because an overwhelming majority of these kids do very well after they graduate.
For every one of India’s executive “type” who did not know about revolutionary war I have met a 50-60 Americans (including ABDs) who thought Indira Gandhi was Mahatma Gandhi’s daughter.
I was attended a meeting where introductions were being exchanged, one non-DBD (not sure he was ABD) asserted that in India people do not have last names (The guy was Tamilian). Later on after the meeting the same guy derisively asked me if I was “Bombay ka aadmi” — somehow he had “memorized†these three words.
Slightly off-topic here, but has anyone seen this new film? I am curious as to your opinions on its merit/ability to effect change in education in India. It’s getting quite a bit of buzz.
For the last few months, I have seen a jump in india related articles in nytimes.com, I guess they figured out that is the easiest way to increase the hit count of their website and increase their online advt revenues. Any india related artcile get fwd-ed among millions of desis and get discussed in many blogs and get quoted in most of the indian newspapers ( nytimes says so about india/indians etc). You guys might have noticed that most of these articles end up in the top emailed list.
7 · circus in jungle said
Very good point. The Vedas were memorized, and after centuries, the entire meanings were lost. Isn’t that amazing? Ironically, it was the European colonialists who encouraged the Brahmin Hindus to write down what they were saying. So around ~1800s AD, the meaning of the Vedas were deciphered, and a wealth of data to aid in Indo-European linguistics was uncovered.
Regarding the madrassahs of Pakistan/Afghanistan area: You are correct. Those kids rocking back and forth don’t know what the heck they are talking about. It is, however, astounding, that they memorized a whole book, but they don’t know what it means. So they have a lot more in common with Brahmins that I realized.
They could, if they were taught vedic mathematics.Anyway, in math you Have to cram initially until you get the basics rock solid.
Actually math (or for that matter any thing else) becomes much easier if you understand what you are doing. Knowledge without understanding can only take you so far.
Boston Mahesh, I’m not at all sure this assertion is correct. The British Empire sponsored and disseminated many tendentious accounts of Indian history. Many of these (such as the persistent myth that they “introduced” us to our own history) continue to be circulated – and the blame lies with our terrible social science and humanities curriculum that does very little in imparting an understanding of historiography, or a criticism/appraisal of methods of historical investigation (Ironically, the Hindutva movement in India also buys into the Victorian characterization of Indian history, especially the typical tropes on Hindu-Muslim relations and India’s millenarian past. This is especially hilarious to me because those who conceive of themselves as fierce and devoted nationalists assume that British imperialist accounts of history must be true.)
For now, I’ll just link to a short review of Bayly’s Empire and Information, who is but one among many historians who have analyzed mistaken and prejudiced (both deliberate and inadvertent) conceptions of Europeans on Indian society and history, from 17th to 19th c., as well as the role of knowledgeable Indians in providing information, intelligence, and history to the British/Europeans [link]
Boston Mahesh,
I hope that the last part of your comment was tongue in cheek, this is a quote from Profs. Clingingsmith and Williamson “India was a major player in the world export market for textiles in the early 18th century, but by the middle of the 19th century it had lost all of its export market and much of its domestic market…While India produced about 25 percent of world industrial output in 1750, this figure had fallen to only 2 percent by 1900.â€
I did – far too many of them. The maths tables are often useful in real life to ‘show off’ 😉
why should he know? Many American executives dont know the difference between Australia and New Zealand – sample size of ~ 20. The Ignorant are found all over the world.
.
The “meaning” of the vedas has apparently always been lost. The first commentaries on the vedas are called the Brahmanas (to add to the confusion). These date back to 3000 years or so, almost as old as the vedas themselves, and are full of speculations on what the Rishis might have meant by this or that ritual/verse. Centuries later, there was someone called Saayana who wrote a commentary on the vedas, also speculating on what things might have meant. Maybe there just isn’t supposed to be much meaning there – ritual does not really have meaning, it’s the doing of it that’s important. I read an interesting theory about how ritual actually preceded the development of language in homo sapiens.
In any case, the vedas were aleady written down well before the Brits arrived. They have never really been deciphered (except by yogis where the verdict in general is that they’re superfluous).
Yogi #32,
I agree with most of your comment, I think there are other undergraduate institutions in India, disciplines other than engineering which are as good as IIT, at the top of my head, Sriram College of Commerce, Lady Shriram college and St. Stephens in Delhi, St. Xaviers, Sydneham and Poddar in Bombay, Xaviers in Calcutta and Presidency College in Chennai are great institutions. Additionally many RECs and BITS Pilani are excellent engineering colleges.
Agreed. I am sure there are some other colleges too that we haven’t thought of that are just as good. What is not so great about the Indian system is that doesn’t give you the academic freedom to take say classes in history and physics at the same time, also switching majors is difficult to impossible.
Yogi,
Hope my comment didn’t come across as harsh because I agree with your comment in 32. You are right about variety during undergrad and difficulty in changing majors, heck a lot of professional colleges have a maximum age restriction.
No it didn’t and don’t worry no offense taken. I think when you are younger you need more structure which the Indian educational system provides and when you get older you need more freedom to grow intellectually and try out different things which schools (I mean Universities) in the US provide, while college education in India can be more of a straight jacket especially with the excessive focus of middle class parents wanting their children to be doctors and/or engineers.