The rote way: Absence of critical thinking in classrooms hurting India

In the aftermath of the horrific destruction resulting from WWII, both Germany and Japan have rebounded magnificently – the sun never did set in Japan and the soaring German eagle has grown back its wings. Granted, India has made substantial progress in reducing poverty, increasing literacy rates and setting up successful nuclear energy and space programmes. Yet, post-independence and post-partition, India is still foundering. Why?

The authors would like to suggest that adopting silo models of education across India and not teaching critical thinking skills in classrooms have much to do with why the country has barely progressed in the last 75 years. The last truly seminal contribution from India was the number ‘zero’. There is a saying in Hollywood, “You are only as successful as your last movie”.

If you look at the professional and educational credentials of the last 10 prime ministers of Japan you will notice that almost every one of them has been a lawyer, engineer, economist or political scientist, and that they were all educated at some of the world’s leading universities such as the University of Tokyo, London School of Economics and Stanford University.

Also, many of Germany’s chancellors hold earned doctoral degrees, specialising in areas such as quantum chemistry, history and political science. By way of contrast, in India, aside from Manmohan Singh who holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University, the educational credentials of all other prime ministers in the past 30 years are mediocre at best.

Even if they had graduated from one of the top ranked schools in India (such as the IITs or the IISc), it really wouldn’t matter since none of these institutions is considered top notch from a global perspective.

The IIT curricula were designed to produce competent engineers, not critical thinkers. It is appalling that India’s technical institutes’ singular focus on IT training is resulting in students serving as coolies for Boston (Silicon Valley?) Brahmins.

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Notions of ‘excellence’ and ‘critical thinking’, which underpin much of western and Japanese educational systems, simply do not exist in the Indian model. Imitating western lifestyles is easy but understanding western thought processes is far more difficult. Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi were successful leaders precisely because they understood the western mindset.

In mathematics, where no resources other than pencil and paper are needed, no Indian has ever won a Fields Medal. In computer science, no Indian has received the Turing Award despite the chest thumping about India’s prowess in information technology. In the field of literature, no Indian has been a Nobel Prize winner over the last 100 years. The last architecture marvel was the Taj Mahal, and the last notable artworks were Mughal paintings.

In the arena of sports, especially the Olympics, there have been fewer than a dozen gold and silver medallists. Given India’s population, surely there are a handful of individuals capable of winning more awards?

The sole exception seems to be in chess where even Indian teenagers have done well in an international setting. Chess does require critical thinking skills, doesn’t it?

A cursory examination of the educational system in India reveals that the rigid norms, expectations and the day-to-day practices operating at the societal level are also very much reflected in the way education is approached by parents, students, teachers and administrators alike.

There is little difference between rote recitations of Hindu mantras or Koranic verses at home and that of mathematical equations, chemical formulas or poems. Neither scenario requires any understanding of meaning. This pattern, once established at the kindergarten level, repeats itself through graduate school. Students are taught early in life not to challenge teachers even when blatant nonsense is spouted in classrooms.

The siloed nature of the Indian educational system is focused on preparing students for taking tests. Since there is no core general education curriculum with courses drawn from the arts, sciences and humanities in any of the universities in India, students are forced to pick their fields of study well before knowing where their academic interests really lie.

Moreover, because of arbitrary restrictions imposed by agencies governing education, there are no viable pathways for a student to migrate from one major to another.

This is akin to trying to change from one caste to another or from one sub-caste to another. Also, in most institutions, there is no provision for elective courses. The net result is that neither interdisciplinary education nor interdisciplinary research is envisaged or can be promoted.

Consider a YouTube class on Sanskrit grammar where, even today, the instructor asks and encourages students to memorise the Amarakosa lexicon or the 4,000 aphorisms of Panini when all of that is available at the click of a button. Using the tools of technology to promote rote memorisation doesn’t make sense. It is precisely in such situations that critical thinking skills come into play. They teach one how to compare, contrast, evaluate, analyse and synthesise policies, procedures, techniques and sources of information for decision-making purposes instead of blindly accepting dogma. These skills, once taught, can be employed throughout life in any setting, be it in academia, government, or industry.

Critical thinking skills, which have long been part of western pedagogy, have resulted in numerous innovations to better our lives. However, these skills have been unidimensional, honed to obtain instant solutions to pressing problems but leaving behind collateral damage for future generations to recognise and resolve.

Today’s unicorns could well turn out to be tomorrow’s Hydras. History offers many such examples – nuclear science applications, fossil fuels and environmental degradation, social media and misinformation, deforestation to build cloud computing storage centres and supporting vested interests in mining, paper and lumber industries.

Is it really a good idea to allow IKEA to set up shop in India, the ‘Make in India’ slogan notwithstanding? A critical thinking approach to the question just raised would have been a resounding ‘no’.

A multidimensional holistic approach to critical thinking could have foreseen and forestalled many of the problems cited above. To improve the economic, scientific and social wellbeing of the country, imparting holistic critical thinking in the classroom, starting at an early age, is a must. While it may take two or three generations to see tangible results, it is surely worth the wait.

The chalta hai mindset, along with nepotism, cronyism and corruption, which seem to plague Indian society, are simply not acceptable. AI can solve many problems. A well-educated populace possessing real intelligence can solve even more.

(Kal Krishnan is an entrepreneur and registered Professional Engineer in California; Roger Marshall is a US-based professor of Computer Science)