An Indian education?
Thane Richard finds his study abroad experience in India an enormous disappointment.
I recently read an article
in Kafila written by some students from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi that
really made me think. To quickly summarise, the piece criticised the draconian
views of the Principal of St. Stephen’s College regarding curfews on women’s
dormitories and his stymieing of his students’ democratic ideals of discussion,
protest, and open criticism. The students’ frustration was palpable in the text
and their story felt to me like a perfect example of what happens when an
unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Except Indian students are not an
unstoppable force. Not even close.
In 2007 I was a
student at St. Stephen’s College for seven months as part of a study abroad
programme offered by my home institution, Brown University. In as many ways as
possible, I tried to become a Stephanian: I joined the football (soccer) team,
acted in a school play written and directed by an Indian peer, performed in the
school talent show, was a member of the Honors Economics Society, and went to
several student events on and off campus. More importantly, though, I was a
frequenter of the school’s cafe and enjoyed endless chais and butter
toasts with my Indian peers under the monotonous relief of the fans spinning
overhead. Most of my friends were 3rd years, like me, and all of them were
obviously very bright. I was curious about what their plans were after they
graduated. With only a few exceptions, they were planning on pursuing second
undergraduate degrees at foreign universities.
“Wait, what?! You are
studying here for three years just so you can go do it again for four more
years?” I could not grasp the logic of this. What changed my understanding was
when I started taking classes at St. Stephen’s College. Except for one, they
were horrible.
This was not an
isolated incident — all my fellow exchange students concurred that the
academics were a joke compared to what we were used to back home. In one
economic history class the professor would enter the room, take attendance,
open his notebook, and begin reading. He would read his notes word for word
while we, his students, copied these notes word for word until the bell
sounded. Next class he would find the spot where the bell had interrupted him,
like a storyteller reading to children and trying to recall where he had last
put down the story. He would even pause slightly at the end of a long sentence
to give us enough time to finish writing before he moved on. And this was only
when he decided to show up — many times I arrived on campus to find class
abruptly cancelled. Classmates exchanged cell phone numbers and created phone
trees just to circulate word of a cancelled class. I got a text almost daily
about one of my classes. My foreigner peers had many similar experiences.
I would sit in class
and think to myself “Can you just photocopy your notebook and give me the notes
so I can spend my time doing something less completely useless?” I refused to
participate. Instead, I sat at my desk writing letters to friends. If it were not for the
fact that attendance counted towards my marks, I would have never showed up at
all. There was no need. I calculated the minimum attendance required not to
fail, hit that target square on, and still got excellent grades. In one
political science class the only requirements for the entire period between
August and December were two papers, each 2,500 words. I wrote more intense
papers in my U.S. public high school in a month. Readings were required but how
can this be enforced when there is no discussion that makes students
account-able for coming to class prepared? The only questions I heard asked
during my classes were about whether the material being covered that day would
be on the exam. Remember, this was not any regular liberal arts college - St.
Stephen’s College is regarded as one of, if not the best, colleges in India.
The best learning
experience I had was hundreds of miles from campus with four other students and
one professor on a trek to Kedarnath during the October break. We had multi-day
conversations spanning morality, faith, and history. During one memorable
overnight bus ride our professor told us the entire Mahabharata epic from
memory while we leaned over seats or squatted in the aisle to be closer to the
campfire of his voice while the rest of the bus dozed around us. The thirst in
these students was there and this professor exemplified passionate teaching,
but the system was and is broken. Bearing in mind the richness of India’s
intellectual tradition, my entire study abroad experience in India, from an
academic standpoint, was an enormous disappointment.
To pause for a moment,
here is the problem with me talking about this topic: right now many Indians
reading this are starting to feel defensive. “Nationalist” is a term I have
heard as a self-description as they defend Mother India from the bigoted,
criticising foreigner. They focus on me rather than the problem… read more:
