The educational news headlines across the United States today are about the PISA (Program for International Students) results and what can be done to improve the Math and Reading abilities of American teens.
I did my engineering in India and MBA in the US and I have a first hand feel of average American students screaming out in distress when the professor happens to write a formula on the board and God forbid if it has variables and even worse if the variables are Greek alphabets..while the average International Students in the class will exchange quiet "there they go again" glances. But that is just the average population. In fact, there are some super smart Math ( Science, Economics...you name it) wiz kids too, the thought leaders and the geniuses who are better than the rest of the world - the only problem is that they are not always idolized and glorified like the sports stars and pop icons who seem to capture the imagination of the nation. In short, it is not cool to be a genius in the US. The Americans import a lot of these uncool geniuses from China, India, Russia, Poland and have absolutely no problem doing it, while they continue to cry hoarse about exporting low skilled, low paid jobs to China and India!
Indian students on the other hand, famously from the land of Aryabhata and Shakuntala Devi, don't bat an eyelid as they dive into complex mathematical problems and effortlessly do Math in their heads, remember their times tables and other formulas - Math is child's play and it is worn on the sleeve - proudly, like a badge of honor!
So I looked through the PISA results to see where India stood in the ranking. I started looking in the space above the United States - No, I looked below the United States - No. I looked at the bottom of the table - No - where was India? Apparently India did not participate in the tests. Why? The last time India took the test in 2009, it ranked at the bottom of the table, worse than Kazhakstan and Moldova, so India backed away from taking the test in 2012 explaining that Indian students were not prepared - Really?
2009 to 2012 was not sufficient to prepare students who inherently enjoy Math - at least with a focus on Math and Science to start with? Do we see a pattern here? Why does India lose in cricket to Pakistan even when it has a better team? After 50 years of Independence and with a population of over 1 billion, why does India still not have a single gold medal at the Olympics? India is supposedly one of the oldest of civilizations- why aren't there enough Nobel laureates? India once considered herself better than China and now China is topping the PISA ranking in Math, Science and in Reading. Does India get cold feet when she sees competition?
