There has been much debate going on this country about what is the cause of our bad education system even though we are the smartest people the world.Though I may sound like a chauvinist but it is true that we Indian's are one of the smartest people in the world.Now I will start stating the causes by looking at the life of one brightest mind of India Shrinivasa Ramanujan . He was undoubtedly a genius boy.But the sad part, he was found by a foreigner Prof. Hardy.When he was in school he repeatedly failed exams in English and Geography and was Poor in most of the subjects except Maths in which he was exceptional.He was so much good in maths that he discovered many theorems.He was disappointed that some these were already discovered by the "prince of maths" Gauss ,hundred years before him.. He left school after 3 unsuccessful attempts to clear the inter(comparable to our 10th).He ran away from home because he was so scared to give exams.
Cause 1--Every child has to study for exam. His entire ability is judged on the basis of a 3 hour exam.And there can't be done anything if a Newton fails in the history exam or Picaso fails in maths because according to our system both are failures.
After this ramanujan started worrying about the thing every pupil of this country has to worry about form the age of 10, to get a job. His family was in trouble and wanted him to get a job.He met many people and showed them his "notebooks" but nobody was interested because he didn't pass the 10th exam.At last he got a job as a clerk.His "notebooks" which took mathematicians of world 60 years to solve were not the criteria but a help from the uncle of a friend was.He was told to leave maths and to start doing some "real work" by his family.
Cause 2-- The "real work" what we tell our students to do is not to get education but to get in race of finding a job. Every person who gets a good money paying job by leaving his every quality and becoming a drone is considered as a "success".This is the root cause of every single problem.So who is more successful person ,an ISRO scientist getting 30,000 or a software engineer(originally a mechanical engineer) getting 50,000 ???.off-course the software engineer.
Than came the recognition in ramanujan's life.Earlier he showed his work to many Indian professors and mathematicians but nobody understood him and those who did considered his ability just good enough but not genius.Shattered and convinced that nobody in India would believe him he wrote the letters to some Professors in England.One of them was Prof. Hardy.Prof. Hardy was the key man in killing the notorious "Tripods".Tripod was a maths exam at Cambridge which required immense training and uncreative use of maths.First wrangler(the topper) was considered the Best student.The best part is not a single "First wrangler" was in the list of great mathematicians.Even Maxwell was third wrangler.So Prof. Hardy recognised ramanujan's talent and offered him to come to England.In England everybody agreed that ramanujan was at-least "Jacobi".
Cause 3--We never believe in the talent of our students.Even if he has done some great work ,we don't believe in his talent until someone else tells us that he is good.There is another example of it .After getting Nobel prize for "Gitanjali" every society was in race to give prize to "Gurudev" Rabindranath tagore But He refused them.He said to them that He wrote Gitanjali earlier and it is far better in our language but everyone considered it great work after foreigners gave him some award. How come we never understood the his work. Because he was an Indian and Indians can never believe that an Indian can be that much good.
Cause 4(The Scapegoat)--We Indians are very good in finding the Scapegoats.Like in 2G-spectrum case we found A.Raja.We also have a Scapegoat for our bad education system,"We don't have enough equipments for doing practicals" or "We are bad because we don't do practical But we are very good in theory".Now if that is the case than how come we never made a single simulator software even though we are the best programmers of the world.USA can even simulate an "Atom Bomb" and its effects but we can't.It is not the practicals or lack of equipments but lack of faith and vision.
Our education system is designed to make us pass exams,to solve given problem and find cheap solution, not to make new problems or different solutions.