Last Day in Delhi

I met with my Indian partner teacher to discuss everything we’ve learned so far about their education system. She gave me new insights as to why things are the way they are. Most of their curriculum is driven by the expectations of Indian Universities (ex. IITs and New Delhi University) which teach a lot of theory and less application. In order for students to be successful at these universities, the primary and secondary schools must teach in that same manner. The government is aware that students are not able to apply their knowledge as well as they should so they have changed their textbooks to have more activities and application problems. They want to move more towards an inquiry/constructivist approach, but they also feel they are time-bound by the short class periods. At first I was opposed to a lot of the pedagogy in India, but I’m beginning to understand why it is the way it is and the ways they are intending to improve their system. I feel the way we teach isn’t perfect. We’ve moved away from memorizing facts and more towards processing information. Is this the best method of teaching/learning? Indian students can solve the most difficult math problems, way beyond most U.S. college students/graduates. Most Indian students who have applied to U.S. colleges said our SAT math problems are easy and they scored 790-800. And if we look at Indians who come to the U.S. to work in industry, they are extremely successful. Direct teaching and rote learning can still have very successful outcomes (if success means going to college and finding a good job). Isn’t there a shortage of U.S. engineers?

Another Fulbrighter commented that in U.S. math classes, he’s noticing students are losing “number sense”. He feels there is too much emphasized on inquiry and not enough on straight up memorizing number tables and basic arithmetic. Students are too comfortable using a calculator and they can’t add simple fractions. Do I see this in science? Not so much at Gunn. I think our science department does a pretty good job and mixing up the rote learning of facts with applying to real life situations. And as far as I can tell with math, students in accelerated and honors classes have good number sense. I don’t know about the other classes. Are students too dependent on using technology (i.e. computers, calculators)?

As we go to other cities of India, we’ll be asking more questions to get a better sense of education as a whole here. So far the students in Delhi are happy, not pressured, feel what they are learning is important, want to get good jobs and will try to stay in India if they can have a good life. It’ll be interesting to see if the same is happening in the other schools we visit. Off to Kolkata tomorrow.