On Manufacturing Educated Zombies

This is an article I've long considered posting but never did, the writing style dating back to October 2020.

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India is plagued by diverse problems. Some of these issues are the very cause and effect of other problems. What’s interesting is that such a problem has managed to penetrate through the myriad differences between people like religion, language, caste, etc. and has earned the hatred of nearly every Indian, in the process, performing an impossible task – earning the hatred of a billion people together, a billion who generally stand divided on most matters. Behold the elephant in the room– the education system.

When my older friends would bemoan the colossal amount of information that they had to vomit, I thought myself to be infallible to these petty little problems. Well, that conceited part of me couldn’t be any more wrong for as soon as the exam results for the first exams of ninth grade came, I was introduced to a new villain in my life, keywords.

Tests until the ninth grade had you write what had been given in the book, but a certain level of autonomy had been granted to replace the words in the text, most of which seemed lifeless to me. But this year was different. Science required you to use words that were scientific, which translated to writing the exact words in the book. Acceptable, because that was the way that science had to be written. So did the Social Sciences. However, this was ridiculous as there is no true ‘way’ for the Social Sciences to be written; but this paled in comparison to the outrageous new rule that the very same words from the English textbook had to be used because now, whether or not you wrote these words decided the marks you received and also, your fate. To me, this had been the only subject that gave me the freedom I so cherished, to use my ‘style’ of writing. But now, my marks had begun to fall - my ‘style’ was fraught with replaced words, because, I only opened the textbook on the last day, meaning, as I sat in the exam hall, there wouldn’t be the slightest inkling in my head of the ‘textbook words’ that had to be memorised, as I had understood the idea of the lesson and not ‘mugged it up’ entirely like the brilliant education system wills you to.

The teachers told me they were helpless. They had to correct the papers this way. And this was because of a fundamental problem: the Board exams’ papers were going to be evaluated solely based on whether students had written these keywords. So, they needed to prepare us for the Boards, which are incidentally, the second most important thing in an Indian kid’s life. Obviously, second to the dream of getting into IIT, which is, of course, the most important thing in a human’s life.

Keywords had been introduced to make correction easier for teachers. I must digress, my respect for teachers for the work they do is immense; they work tirelessly and despite the gargantuan workload, manage to teach a class full of absolute brats every single day. But what needs to be said is of utmost importance, for the welfare of students and the nation. (What is an article in this political climate without bringing up talks of ‘the nation’?) One of the gravest faults that CBSE is guilty of is the way exam-papers are evaluated. They allow teachers to correct subjects they don’t teach, let alone specialise in. This results in the need for keywords, resulting in nothing short of disaster. Evidently, as teachers stress on regurgitating the words in the text, it gives birth to the already prevalent breed of students who are live versions of Chatur from 3 Idiots. Disappointingly, the very same teachers vehemently discourage original writing, in effect, burying thousands of talented individuals under the shadow of those unimaginative rote learners. I say ‘nation’ because these ‘educated zombies’ have migrated all around the world, and this has resulted in Indians labelled as nerds and geeks. Many other issues can be traced to this root cause. This discouragement of forging new paths and innovation is why all the ground-breaking new inventions and discoveries come from nations that don’t even possess half our population. Why, the child prodigies and other genii in Britain and the US are touted proudly as ‘Indian- origin’ in the news. But what is amusing is this doesn’t show our country’s capabilities, instead, it displays how incompetent our country is, because their parents had to leave in order for their children to succeed. It is crystal-clear that this incompetence was built through years of suppressing the innovative spirit in youth instead of inculcating it; something needs to be done about it. And that something is to not hack down marks when a child writes a point that is not in the book but is right, using key points in place of keywords, and encouraging the use of varied vocabulary, in the languages at the very least. Crucially, it is to check whether the answers are correct and not if the answer key and the test sheet match.

Today, it is also surprising to see people supporting this outdated and tedious system when I complain about it. They argue that memorisation was how the Vedas were learnt and whatever our ancient culture did must have been right. They are also the people who believe the Pushpak Viman was a nuclear-powered spaceship. The education system in India is in shambles today. While foreign schools and colleges are springboards for bright minds, our schools and colleges are but factories manufacturing educated zombies.

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It's funny because I like to think that the future me would treat the current me better than the current me treats the past me. But that couldn't be further from the truth, almost like a tech geek, anything I made that is now obsolete is anathema and no attempt at trying not to cringe at past writing is of any use. Yet, every TV show without character development bombs, so that's some consolation.