What kind of basic education would I choose for my daughter? May 9, 2009

I recently watched the documentary -” Two Million Minutes”. The time between the moment a student enters ninth grade to when they graduate out of twelfth grade is about two million minutes. The documentary compares how a a few students in India, China and U.S spend these “two million minutes”.

While the documentary doesn’t make any conclusions at the end, it  seems to drive home a message that students in India and China are spending their time more fruitfully. It seems to say that compared to Americans, Indian and Chinese students seem to be  more serious about careers in math and science and are hence better off. It seems to conclude that America is not doing enough to compete with the rest of the world in the areas of math and science.

Ok, I agree that given what I know about education in USA,  the country can do better in preparing it’s students for math and science careers. But given what I know about education in India, I strongly feel that there is absolutely no need to put the Indian education system on a pedestal and say that it is better than the US education system. How much time the students spend on academics and whether they chose a career in math and science is not the only measure of a successful education system. An education system should be measured with many more outcomes – how well-rounded the students are, whether they are able to critically think about issues and make decisions, whether they are able to problem solve, able to think out of the box, whether they are confident, compassionate, responsible and so on.

First of all, I would like to note that I’m very passionate about developments in both India and America. I am a first generation Indian American who lives in America currently and who has plans of living in India in the future. I received an engineering degree in India and after a Masters and a ten year career in the engineering field, changed my career to one in Education after getting a Masters degree in this field. While my daughter is currently getting a K-12 US education, she will in all probability continue her education in India in the future. Given this background , I would like to think of my opinions on both these education systems to be quite objective.

Given what I know about both US and Indian K-12 education systems, if I was given a free choice without any other constraints to choose between these two systems for my daughter, I would any day go for the US education system. Following are the reasons why:

Firstly, I feel that my daughter will have a better environment in the US to explore her interests and pursue a career inline with her interests. She will have an opportunity to explore many options other than math and science – humanities, arts, sports and what not. She will even get opportunities to be competent in more than one field. I know that in India, unless parents work hard to swim against the tide, the society and the environment will put enormous pressure on the children to pursue a career in science and math even if the children are not interested in these careers.

I feel that even if my daughter decides to pursue a career in math/science after doing K-12 education in America, it will be out of her own interest. There is a huge difference in outcomes when someone pursues a career out of passion as opposed to when someone pursues a career because she was pressured to do so. Research studies have shown that people perform at their peak when they are pursuing something out of their own interest.

And secondly, there is the question of how well-rounded my daughter will be if she does K-12 in the U.S. My daughter will grow up in an environment where creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork etc are encouraged in a non-competitive environment. Research studies have shown that these skills are critical to success as an individual. I also feel that these skills are critical for a successful democratic process in a country. There is a reason why the American democracy is as sophisticated as it is today. If the Indian democracy has to reach this level of sophistication, it is crucial to instill these skills in it’s citizens. Research studies have also shown that a non-competitive environment is crucial for developing competencies at their best. The K-12 education environment in India is extremely competitive which puts a lot of pressure on the children to be the best, which in turn could bring-down their performance.

Apart from these academic skills, I also feel that my daughter would have a much better chance of growing up to be a social-minded, compassionate, confident and responsible individual if she completed her education in USA.

While the documentary “Two million minutes” has made a good attempt to bolster the importance of math and science education in K-12 schools in America, people should not confuse this attempt to mean that the Indian education system is better than US or that US education system is inferior to Indian and Chinese education systems in all respects. All these education systems have a long way to go and success cannot be measured on one dimension alone.

Any thoughts?

About boys and girls November 18, 2007

While it is very natural to stereotype boys and girls according to the gender, research has proven that there are more individual differences between a girl and another girl OR a boy and another boy THAN between boys and girls in general. As surprising as it is for many of us, whenever I reflect back on my daughter’s behavior while at outdoor/indoor play, it seems believable. She doesn’t seem to be interested in princesses and fairies. Moreover, you can often catch her trying to learn a new method to do a somersault or a high- jump at home or trying a new body position while coming down the slide in the park.

I recently attended a talk by Dr. Michael Thompson about his book, “Raising Cain: Protecting the emotional life of boys”. Although during his talk, he focussed mainly on boys, it did help me to understand better about what to or not to expect from my daughter. After years of research, he feels that the boys are not on the same emotional trajectory as the girls. In addition, both nature and nurture make boys have “boy brains” by the age of 8 years. What does this “boy brain” contain that is different from girls? He quoted several research studies that say that in general boys are more physically active and less emotionally mature than girls. Also, the concept of one-on-one dominance is prominent in boys by eight years of age, which could mean that the concept of bullying (both physical and mental) may be more common among boys. These differences between the “boy-brain” and “girl-brain” have led people to wrongly diagnose many boys as having attention deficit disorders and other such disorders, not to mention the day to day struggles that many other boys go through in their classrooms everyday because their teacher is not able to devise effective strategies to teach them. In his book, Dr. Thompson gives several recommendations to both schools and parents, to nurture the emotional life of boys, one of the foremost being to “recognize and accept the high activity level of boys and give them safe boy places to express it”. This book is a must-read for all parents of boys.

Before I went to the talk, I was not really sure how it would help me, a parent of a girl. But I found the talk to be very interesting and helpful because of the following reasons:
As I mentioned earlier, I do find my daughter to be different from a typical girl in several ways. For example, she is physically very active. I see that at home very often and also, her teacher has mentioned to me about how she likes those activities which involve movement of the body much more than other activities. Dr. Thompson’s talk made me understand the importance of rigorous physical activity for my daughter. She is the kind of person who needs a platform regularly to release her unexpended energy. I’ve now started to research some of the indoor play-spaces and gym classes to prepare for the chilly winter ahead.
Dr. Thompson’s words about how the children themselves initiate gender separation struck a deep chord in me. This could potentially mean that as children grow up, even if they can learn several positive things from a peer who of the other gender, they may not do it due to peer pressure to enforce gender separation. This is unacceptable for me. I’ve already seen my daughter surrender to this pressure. When she was three years old, she used to come back from school and talk about “how she didn’t want to do something because that’s what only boys do”. I’ve been thinking about what I can do as a parent to help my daughter develop a open-mind to the gender differences – more play dates with boys, encouraging more and more physical activity and so on.

On the whole, it is quite a set of challenges as a parent these days