Mob-Mentality Regarding Indian Education
As an Indian who has been schooled in an Indian Education system (CBSE)[1] for his entire life before coming to Cornell, I want to share my first-hand experience regarding the career path majority of Indian students are pushed towards – engineering and medicine. Engineers and doctors command respect in the Indian society. They are admired as “successful” men and women while people pursuing any other profession are seen with a lot of skepticism. The majority of the parents dream their children to become a doctor or an engineer and this dream becomes a burden of millions of students.
At some point of time in the past, engineers and doctors were perceived as professionals who were financially secure and in great demand by the employers. Hence, the people at that time aspired to become one. This acted like a “signal” for the general population and its effect can be seen till date. The parents of the current generation of school students have seen their parents admire these two fields who have seen their parents and so on and this has led to the ignorance of their own desire. Children are somewhat pressurized and persuaded to study STEM subjects in high school. The field of arts and humanities is not seen with the same respect as the science subjects. This forces many students to give up their own aspirations and study a certain set of subjects even though they dislike it.
There have been too many student-suicide cases that the people have been almost desensitized towards this serious issue. The general perception that only a few career paths can be a way of being successful and well-off, whereas other professions are treated with a very little amount of dignity is due to information cascading, continuing from generation to generation. Fortunately, this perception is changing slowly with time as the Indian society is starting to view other career paths with more respect than before such as comedy, DJ, painting.
[1] There are various curriculums or boards within the Indian Education system. CBSE – Central Board Of Secondary Education (cbse.nic.in) – is the most popular curriculum.
Link: http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/careers/give-up-the-herd-mentality/article2025900.ece