MY CROSS-CULTURAL EDUCATION By Parmeshwarya Adya Bhagat

In my final year of schooling, I write about education.

I have the unique distinction of being schooled in the US and in India. That makes me insightful into schooling systems in the oldest and the largest democracies of the world. And the contrast can’t be starker. I am glad I did well in either case.

I keep my emotions at bay writing this piece and describe my experiences analytically. There’s no denying the fact that education is the most powerful weapon to change the world—for the better. I have a view as to how the information should be disseminated to young reformative minds. And this insight has helped me in more ways than I can fathom. I can say with conviction that an enlightened mind never slips back to darkness.

I was a shy girl, and going to school, leaving the comfort of home, was a bit traumatic to start with. I would cry, get so tense that would throw up, and it took my parents a lot of doing, not just a bar of chocolate, to convince me to go to school.

I didn’t particularly enjoy the initial years in school. I encountered some mean-spirited teachers, one of whom is etched in my memory, her thoughts horrify me to this day.

I was barely 8 years old when I shifted to the US and joined Fallsmead Elementary school. The school was remarkably different, so much so that it didn’t look like a school to me. Let me explain, first of all, the teachers were so accessible, and the relationship with students was casual, not the regimental hierarchy kind that I experienced in my school in India. The students could walk up to a teacher and strike a conversation that may have little to do with what they were teaching.

Thanks to my tryst with learning in two distinct setups, working with a multitude of excellent and diverse minds, teachers and students alike, I have become resilient. Experience has taught me to work hard and things will work out. I feel empowered at the cusp of my school life and I write this piece from a position of strength.

The teachers were communicative too. They would start of the year by spending a sizable time describing themselves, their family, their teaching methodology, so that students had a better idea of what was expected of them and what’s in store. It broke the ice, and there was warmth. Teachers humanised and personalised the process of education.

Initial days were best described by the term ‘culture shock’. Me, a little girl of 8 years, was tense in an environment so alien to her. I was suddenly vested in with freedom, it was a bit destabilising initially. Thankfully teachers took care of us individually. I still remember this thin, blonde teacher, Ms. Fox. She sensed my predicament, and gave me what I needed the most at that moment, a hug of reassurance. She took extra care of me in the initial days. Whenever I think of her, I think of kindness.

Then the classrooms were high-tech, black\white boards were conspicuous in its absence. There are no uniforms, which, I reckon, in the Indian context is an important sociological leveller as the society is marred with acute inequalities. The school had prescribed many books instead of just a few standard textbooks. Laptops were used in the classroom, instead of just notebooks. The students were encouraged to conduct their own research and figure out a way to deal with a situation or problem. Nothing was patently wrong or right, and in the process, we learned to think creatively and independently about issues and problems.

Standardised state examinations and tests were conducted frequently even in elementary school, however, they were not the be-all and end-all. Instead variety of methods, not just grades or standardised tests, but classroom assessment and scientific progress monitoring tools were used used to track progress and identify where the student needed support and help. It is pertinent to clarify, I was fortunate to have studied in Fallsmead Elementary school, was in an affluent locality and with abundant resources at its disposal.

This was a big change for me, there was a lot of freedom. I could pick certain electives (optional courses students can choose) of my choice. Art made me express and drama made me believe. The pursuit of knowledge was a personal affair, and helped develop personality creatively. And mugging was a skill one could do without. Above all it taught me to think. I agree with Margaret Mead, an American cultural anthropologist, when she said, ‘children must be taught how to think, and not what to think.’

That said, I found some of my fellow students in a multicultural environment a bit lost. They can be so full of themselves. And their general knowledge is fairly localised to their small privileged world. The kids in the West have a freakish impression of the East. Someone asked me, earnestly, with no malice, ‘do you have electricity in India?’ Who says ignorance is bliss? It’s not. To me ignorance is an impediment to think clearly, creates a fanciful world, a life in denial.

The West is the reference point to the kids in the US, a tendency that is not confined just to school going kids. I sense it in the writings of adults, and, therefore, an alternative way of life, or cultural diversity, makes them jittery, judgemental. That's parochial.

Despite being modern in the way knowledge is dispensed, their modernity became, I have a feeling, a limiting factor in experiencing varied cultures and societies in their beautiful diversity. A similar world would be so boring, be it cuisine, attire, language, ethnicity, and so on. I made good friends from varied ethnicities, and it was fun growing up there.

When I returned to Delhi, I was in the 10th grade, and adjusting back to schooling was not easy to put it mildly. It was more a test of endurance than a place of learning. My day was a fourteen hour marathon with unimaginable paperwork. My classmates in India preferred to stay home and study rather than attend school. I share their sentiments when they feel they were not getting any real value from being in school, which explains why on any given day barely 15 pupils are present in a class of 45.

The schooling here is not a test of knowledge but ability to retain knowledge and reproduce it at the slightest provocation. And these provocations are the examinations—on a weekly, quarterly, also yearly basis. The final examinations serve as the sole determinant of one’s whole grade. No other factors are taken into consideration.

It's more than stressful, not just for the student but also the parents, that makes the whole process of education bordering on a nightmare. Given the sheer size of our population and lack of good higher level educational institutions, the competition is fierce. And some can't deal with the pressure, the burden of expectation of the family, and the competitive nature of examinations. Though, I'm not one of them. Therefore, the headlines of students suicide is not a rarity. One thing is ample clear: our colonial-era schooling system needs major reform. For a student in India, it can never be easy.

Thanks to my tryst with learning in two distinct setups, working with a multitude of excellent and diverse minds, teachers and students alike, I have become resilient. Experience has taught me to work hard and things will work out. I feel empowered at the cusp of my school life. And I write this piece from a position of strength.