Rote Learning vs Creative Thinking: Why Indian Education Must Evolve to Match Global Standards

Rote Learning vs Creative Thinking: Why Indian Education Must Evolve to Match Global Standards

My life revolved around "almosts" when I was nearing my 10th boards. I almost solved the circle problem, almost submitted the Merchant of Venice workbook, and was almost done with the river mapping. I settled maybe for this; I had to. But what my blunt soul couldn't do was accept the almost doing of ray diagrams for mirrors and lenses in physics. Our then-sir almost asked us to remember the image formation results, and my brain would get asphyxiated metaphorically from considering it. I started learning physics on my own just to realise it's a money for old rope. Just a simple statement: draw at least two rays from the object and let it pass through the focal point, either converging or diverging, and with a few other necessary rules and practice, I can draw without simply learning the outcome. I did actually settle for this. Maybe I did not have to.

This education system keeps dwindling us in rote learning and is no better than Nero's guest.  The carriers of imparting knowledge, the frontline implementers, are trained in the traditional method of textbooks and the subject matter written within. Paulo Freire criticised this banking education, where students passively receive information. This passive learning system defeats the whole point of education. However, to drift from the conventional memorisation technique actually requires a subtle step of disruption and questioning. For instance, in class 6, a chapter of the Vedic system contains the varna vyavastha system. When one teaches about brahman, kshtriya, vaishya, shudra and the origin of them from Adipurush's body parts—brain, arm, thigh, feet. At the same time, teachers continue teaching this. A simple disruption like asking the students a neutral question of "write the four varnas, one varna in each line." At the same time, this may seem harmless. Still, the hierarchy of writing exposes the internalised casteism ingrained in our brains. Asking and disarranging the sequence would impart a more holistic and empathetic value, instilled in students. Students would see people beyond the caste system and hierarchy as rotten and unjust. Emile Durkheim, a sociologist, emphasised that education transmits social norms and values. Thus, by this disorder, a caste-neutral thought where humans are treated just as humans would be developed. We need not make a 360 turn. Some simple creative steps within the structure can offer remarkable results. 

Karl Marx gave the concept of alienation, a feeling of estrangement, where people in the capitalist system lose control over themselves and the product. The human potential to express themselves isn't fully realised, and the ability to engage in free, conscious, creative labour is destroyed. Schools in India do it every quarter, half-yearly and yearly. The education system relies on a systemic organisation of curbing the creative potential of students by stacking them with textbooks and coercing them to vomit the text in exams, marking in red ink how much out of 100 they have excelled in crushing the talent that is not bookish-academic. While surrendering to the fact that books are the source of knowledge and humans are to be bestowed with it, the precondition to acknowledge other areas of ingenuity is ignored like a clockwork. Why is it even practised to date, for mediocrity is the outcome, and licking the boots of the people who broke the system is the alley?

Marx mentions how capitalists give enough wages for subsistence so that they return to work alive. The traditional education system copies the same to keep the students just in place for them to return to their workbook, rough notebook, or textbook. Otherwise, looking out of windows and thinking why does inequality still exist in democracy is a tomfoolery in civics class because that kid had not yet remembered: did the French Revolution give the term fraternity, or was it born out of the Russian Revolution? In addition, questioning why the word "fraternity," and not some neutral word—did women not form any bond amongst themselves—doesn't find any significance as a question to be addressed by the teacher. 

If the maths syllabus is completed, and students get a games period, then how shall India proudly accomplish zero medals in the Paris Olympics like in 2024, while China shyly won 40? Let China build a sun, and India learn all the solar system planets. Iran students shall win gold in INEX 2021, while we shall wait to memorise the human jaw, fishing rod, as a class 3 lever without actually knowing where the fulcrum is truly located at the part of the broom. How hard would it be for the cloud soft hands to lift a broom and show the students the pivot, fulcrum, and take them to the lab and really let them experiment, not scared to pay Rs 500 if a beaker is broken? For I heard no scientist to frutify their innovation in one clean, swift go. Everyone does their best with the level of awareness they have. The work of education is to raise awareness, not subjugate. 

A vital question that needs to be pondered is why we should evolve from the teaching pedagogy. One major setback a kid faces in educational institutes is when their calibre cannot be measured in the standardised parameters. They get into the system of learned helplessness. Nawal El Saadawi said, "Creativity is to use our common sense, to use our brains, but education prevents us from using our brains. We use the brains of our professors, and we quote them all the time; we never quote ourselves, and we lose self-confidence through education. Because that's how the educational system serves the political system. Each political system has a system of education to control the minds of the people. Without controlling the minds of the people, you cannot rule them, you cannot dominate them.

The education system is more or less a police system to control the mind. It's like veiling the mind. We need to metamorphose from this to create a worthwhile place of living."

When people are infused with empathy, equality, creating dissidence to the conventional, questioning the obvious, the whole point of the education requirement is fulfilled. Otherwise, humans' DNA matches 98.7% with bonobo, 85% with mouse and 80% with cow, which sustain without a formal education. More than matching global standards and questioning who sets it, one should focus on how India shall improve its methodology. That would be the foundation stone to enhance India's finance, cultural preservation, gender disparity, inequality, low in-house production of technology, and less funding for research and development.

Now that the focus has shifted from matching others to introspecting and creating a considerably healthier India, the reason that stands clearer and crisper is to treat humans as humans and to realise everyone's full human potential without shoving them into mechanisation. And the steps to achieve it are iota. Cramming up about disaster management can draw inspiration from floating schools in Bangladesh, while learning about mimosa pudica, the scientific name of mimosa pudica. A trip to the botanical garden can improve it.

While learning about democracy, an internal voting system, where monthly PIL systems shall be welcomed. Asking students why they think the school dress of boys and girls is not uniform. At the same time, the name suggests uniform dress. And the lecture where students learn to write a letter to a principal for health issues that won't help in the long run, they can write letters to authorities, citing the disparities. While solving maths, students can figure out why only Reena cooks 5 chapatis, and Ramesh builds walls in 5 days. Encouraging to create anything half yearly which solves a problem, be it a motor boat, robotics hand or a law to maintain the classroom decorum. Via these processes, we built humans who would verily contribute to society because they understand society rather than mugging up the conventional. 

When I was in my first year of undergrad, our sociology professor started with a template where he asked us to write the names when he called out a profession: snakecharmer, went to a bus stop where exchanged food with the bus driver and met a long lost friend who is a kindergarten teacher. The genders/names that get filled in our brain without long thought result from an ingrained training system of conventionalism, where education didn't fulfil the job of being creative and opposing the notion. An elementary act yet exposed the slow submission of our exceptionally curated brain to a mechanised patriarchal society, aided by education and dominance. 

This is precisely why we need to evolve our education system into a creative pool, because Nawal El Saadawi said, "Good education means to create disobedience, and what is good education, it is to create dissatisfaction, to create dissidence. Dissidence is to say no to the system that is unjust. If the law is unjust, I have to break it—this is common sense. Creativity means common sense." Well, it's now the thing.