I believe every student has at least one gripe against their educational system, unless that is, you’re from countries like Finland, in which case I’m really jealous. But for the rest of the world, especially Asian countries, where we have go through a life-time of educational system jumping from one system to another not ever fully in control, I relate to you.
Ever since middle school I always wondered why I was put in a classroom with strangers just to study something i didn’t like and to mug up sentences and throw up everything during exams. It was a constant struggle to get good grades, impressing your parents, teachers etc so they can in-turn impress the next person. Currently as a 3rd year engineering student , I am still a sheep in the flock. A flock of engineers, next to the flock of doctors and teachers. This was a rat race I was lead into, not particularly by my parents but by the societal standard to have a professional degree in order to “succeed”.
India has a highly competitive educational system only behind stupidly competitive ones like China. Here grades always meant success. I don’t know how a letter on a piece of paper decided my future, but that is what I was taught and what is engraved on my brain. Even after so many years of knowing it to be false, I still can’t scratch that feeling away, like a form of PTSD, whenever an exam is near my anxiety sky-rockets as if I fail this single exam my previous all achievements will cease to exists. It might sound stupid to someone who isn’t running this race with me, but it really does feel that way. Sleepless nights, high pressure and news of students committing suicide because of this pressure have become the new ordinary.
I am tired, exhausted and fed up. I do good in my academics because I’m good at memorizing but I feel bad for those who aren’t good at it. Maybe their skill lies elsewhere and they happen to be trapped along with me in this nightmare. And this is evident as students are clueless on what to pursue next after high school or even after college. This is in-part because apart from teaching us how to get good grades, schools don’t teach us how to find our passion. Find what we’re good at, what we love and what we want to pursue. Because of this lack of exploration, most students just goes along with what society thinks is the appropriate. I should know this because I am one of them.
I am in a system where grades reign over knowledge, competition over cooperation and closed thinking over creative thinking. But there is hope. For that I’m going take you back to what I said in the beginning. Finland ranks third in the Education Ranking by Countries in 2021. Finland also has the highest rate of high school completion in the world. The educational system there promotes acquiring skills than standardized test (which there are none*), they have high standard for teachers and they teach actual life skills rather than just text in a book. Finland is just an proof of concept, and there might be more I don’t know about. But this just shows that such a system can work in the modern age. Moreover it proves such a system can produce creative as well as critical thinkers alike.
