An Indian Parent’s First Time Experience with the US Educational System – Part 2

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Comparison US vs Indian Education, Indian Educational System, Kindergarten, US Educational System

Note: This is Part 2 of an extended article. Click here for Part 1. When I started this article, I was looking to recount my eye-opener of an experience at my 5 year old daughter’s first parent-teacher meeting. It ended up meandering into topics far beyond my original intent. So I’m breaking the article into two for better palatability!

A Totally Off-the-Cuff Comparison of Indian and US Educational Systems

As an expat from India, I’m inevitably going to do the half-baked comparison of both the Indian and American educational system. Clearly not a Malcolm Gladwell level of analysis and discussion but I definitely got an opinion like your average-everyday-harried-overworked parent.

The focus in the US seems to be critical thinking at an early age. Children are encouraged to dissect and deconstruct everything from language to Math and progression is rigorously tracked. I’m sure we do this at some level in India but definitely not in the measurable standards being implemented in the US. The system in the US also seems to provide a standardized and objective platform for the teacher to teach and measure progress. Most the material I received showed footnotes and references to studies done by experts in the education field. This very fact gives me more confidence in the way material is being taught in schools here.

Another aspect which caught my attention that levels the playing field is standardization. Whether it’s the US or India, there are good and bad teachers. But the differentiator here is that teachers here have a slightly more objective method to the madness which minimizes biases in teaching and grading. The system in India is a bit more skewed to the subjective side. God help if your teacher is in a bad mood or another teacher other than your favorite ends up correcting your paper. I’m sure the Indian reader knows what I’m talking about!

Another thing which is bothering me is whether we are doing anything actively to improve the education system in India. There seems to be a great deal of study, debate and research going into improving the science of education In the US. The nation maybe divided here on common-core, no child left behind and other standards, but at least they are having a debate about it and moving the ball forward. I readily admit I have not done any research into this aspect in India and been out of the school system for decades, but I’m in touch with many younger kith and kin coming out of the school and college systems. I feel not much has been done to change the system in India. We are stuck with an old, antiquated and rigid system which favors mass-producing students and graduates which was ideal for British times doing service-oriented jobs but not innovation or entrepreneurship. The changes that seems to happen once in a blue moon seems to be politically motivated and ill-conceived. Regarding career choice, you got to pick the route even before knowing the destination. For some reason you are expected to know what you want to do for the rest of your life at 16 and do course work related to that. Once you chose that path, there is no going back!

One of my biggest pet peeve in the Indian education system is this – memorization and regurgitation or ‘mugging’ as it’s known in India. The emphasis is mostly in reproducing what’s in a text book in varying degrees. I remember the system being more liberal in CBSE and I could reference material outside of prescribed school books. This took a complete nose-dive in the State Board system and two years of high-school in this system was a harrowing experience to say the least. You were encouraged to memorize and Xerox the contents of the books verbatim, word-for-word. A little deviation and you will be scraping the bottom of the barrel! This got much better at the University level though I understand that you will never get away from memorization, which is fundamental for any learning. But my point is this – if you encourage a child to ‘mug’ vs. improve critical thinking at a young age, how are you going to turn out when you are in college, career or life? To be fair, I have not seen how the system hold up in the US across the entire spectrum of schooling, but what I see and hear and my own experience doing a Masters in grad school here, the focus is heavily on application vs. theory and critical thinking. For those of you in IT, you might understand this – Why is solutioning almost always done here and implementation done in India?

When I started this article I just wanted to narrate my experience at my daughter’s parent-teacher meet. But it ended up as a quasi-ramble-and-rant session with copious amount of digital ink being sacrificed at the altar of education! I’m very much looking forward to seeing how the US educational system plays out as my daughter goes through school. I expect to learn as much as her, I suspect. Hopefully I will provide an update in a few years. Let’s keep rolling for now!

Part 1: Expect the Unexpected: Surviving My First Parent-Teacher Meeting

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An Indian Parent’s First Time Experience with the US Educational System – Part 1

Tags

Comparison US vs Indian Education, Indian Educational System, Kindergarten, Parent-teacher Meeting, US Educational System

Note: When I started this article, I was looking to recount my eye-opener of an experience at my 5 year old daughter’s first parent-teacher meeting. It ended up meandering into topics far beyond my original intent. So I’m breaking the article into two for better palatability!

Expect the Unexpected: Surviving My First Parent-Teacher Meeting

This Monday, I was at my 5-year-old daughter’s public school, McSpedden Elementary in Frisco. This is my first ever parent-teacher meet as a parent, did not know what to expect at all in the slightest and vaguely anticipated a run-of-the-mill activity. Another item to check off my list – or so I thought. We waited a bit for our turn outside the KG class and few minutes later, the teacher called us in after she got done with the parents before us. My wife and I sat ourselves on the kiddie chairs in front of the teacher. I was acutely aware of how small the chair felt and wondered how large or heavier people would fare in the same situation. As I was contemplating this and other random thoughts, as I’m usually wont to, the teacher laid out a folder on the table between us and proceeded to walk us through the first page.

I clearly wasn’t prepared for the barrage of ‘ism’s and stats being spelled out. It took me about a minute or two to realize what was happening and shook myself out of my stupor. I was looking at a page full of graphs, scores and percentile ranks. Each graph corresponded to different skills being tested like reading, comprehension, letter knowledge, phonemic awareness and so on. My brain still churned slowly like molasses. I think I was still in shock that the page corresponded to the progress of a 5 year old……a five year old, in the first month of Kindergarten!!! Somewhere in the fog of my brain, alongside being a bit overwhelmed and bewildered, all I could tell myself was “Impressive”, over and over again. The precision with which the teacher has tracked periodic progress on different aspects of linguistic cognition, noting deficiencies and what was made to correct it send me into a paroxysm of reverence and respect. At this point, I was acutely aware of how low I had set the bar and the teacher was clearing it somewhere in the stratosphere.

This was just the beginning. The teacher proceeded to show some of my daughter’s works and some finer points on how the work was evaluated week over week. At this point, my geek mode had set in and I was listening with rapt attention. She might very well be giving me a TED talk at this point. Next came math. I have some difficulty reproducing the exact terms, but at a high level, math problems were given as word problems and the kids were being taught and evaluated on different aspects critical thinking and approaches being taken to solve the problem. The focus seemed to be on deconstructing and dissecting the guts of the problem and constructing a logical and mathematical path to the solution rather than shortcuts. Each mini-step within this process was evaluated at levels ranging from novice to practitioner and expert. Never in a thousand years would I have used the word ‘Practitioner’ with a five-year old, but it made perfect sense! The fundamentals that get ingrained at this age is going to last a life time. It definitely made the big picture clear with the articulation provided by the teacher.

Its mind-boggling to think about the amount of the work the teacher does on a periodic basis to produce this data-driven picture of where my daughter is in her developmental cycle – multiply the effort with the number of students in the class; that’s worth a mental Iron Man triathlon right there. On top of this, she has games, songs and other infotainment activities going on for the kids. Being a teacher is hard work!!! I’ve always known that the teachers here work hard but clearly I’ve been blissfully unaware of the complexity of the educational system and the degree of hard work done by the teachers!

Part 2: A Totally Off-the-Cuff Comparison of Indian and US Educational System

Donating to National Public Radio – I just did.

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Corolla, Dallas, KERA, LinkedIn, National Public Radio, NPR, Radio, Toyota Corolla

I just saw off my ‘97 Toyota Corolla to be donated to KERA, the local National Public Radio (NPR) station in Dallas. I bought the Corolla as my first car to commute to my first job in the IT field in 2004. It sure warmed the cockles of my heart when I made the decision with my wife to donate the Corolla in 2012. The warmth evaporated and I started having misgivings when the tow-truck guy started hitching my car to the truck. This car had never died on me and had been resilient and reliable. In fact I drove it exactly 995 miles from Minneapolis to Dallas in the dead of a snowy winter and pulled through some rough snow storms in January 2011. The moment it was being towed away, I panicked. I felt horrible, guilty and had this empty-hollowed out feeling in my gut. I had my Sam Witwicky – Bumblebee moment and I wanted to call it off. Fortunately for NPR and KERA, the tow-truck pulled away fast before I had a strong urge to plunge myself in front of the truck to stop it. And that’s that.

When I started the article, I fully intended to expound on why we should donate to NPR. Somehow it turned out to be a quasi-obituary to my Corolla. I fully intend to finish this at a later date. My only message for now – If you are willing and able and share a worldview that knowledge needs to be shared, donate to keep NPR strong. There are some trolls out there who think otherwise.  Let’s keep them thinking.

How can you donate?
http://www.npr.org/stations/donate/ (Search for local stations to donate)
http://www.cartalkvdp.com/ (For donating cars)
http://www.kera.org/donate/ (For Dallas/Ft. Worth/Denton local station)

BBC Sherlock Season 2 in the US

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221b baker street, 221b baker street london, BBC, Benedict Cumberbatch, Doctor Watson, john watson, LinkedIn, Martin Freeman, PBS, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes, United States

January 2012 is not a good time to be a BBC Sherlock series fan in US. I was totally misled by the PBS site into thinking that Season 2 of the BBC Sherlock series starring the brilliant Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and the equally fantastic Martin Freeman as Dr. John Watson, was to be broadcasted on January 15, 22 & 29, 2012 at 10pm. I was positively giddy that each episode was only 1 week behind the BBC air date in the UK and that episode 1 ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ should start things off with a bang. Short of shouting from the rooftops, I made sure to pound the US broadcast date into friends, family and anybody who cared to listen.

At 10:01PM, January 15, 2012 I experienced an odd mixture of intense disappointment, cold dread, absolute horror,
deep embarrassment and frantic monkeying with the remote when the local PBS didn’t broadcast anything remotely similar to the BBC Sherlock series. Not even the encore presentation of Sherlock Season 1, A Study in Pink, was running. At that moment, I was ready to strangled the PBS scheduler/webmaster who put that information on that site if I could. I was totally bummed out. Some digging into the PBS site at this location revealed that Season 2 of Sherlock would start on Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 9PM ET.  January 15, 22 & 29, 2012 at 10pm would be encore presentation of Season 1.

Why in God’s name did PBS have to bury it somewhere in the nether regions of the website instead of putting it under ‘Schedule’? I’ll be damned if I had to wait till May. A year long wait between the two season was torture enough.

Ahem, I can’t say much but have you tried Googling the search terms “Sherlock season 2 watch in USA“?

For those who prefer to wait, here’s a list of BBC Sherlock Season 2 episodes with their US broadcast dates and times. The game is afoot!

Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 9pm ET – A SCANDAL IN BELGRAVIA
Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 9pm ET – THE HOUNDS OF BASKERVILLE
Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 9pm ET – THE REICHENBACH FALL

You can read my review of BBC Sherlock Season 1 here. Happy sleuthing!

Some Favorite Superhero Movie Soundtracks

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Comics, Soundtrack, Superhero, YouTube

I am a huge comic book and movie buff. Obviously, another qualification if you need to be a part of the geekdom :). So why not share my enthusiasm for rousing, goose-bump creating, fist pumping, pound-concrete-with-bare-hands effect inducing superhero movie soundtracks with like-minded aficionados? I’m starting to put together a playlist of some of my favorite superhero movie soundtracks in YouTube. It’s a work in progress and hopefully I will be adding more soundtracks to the playlist when I get some time.

I’m kidding you not, I tried to telekinetically lift a car like Erik Lensherr a.k.a Magneto did with a submarine in X-Men First Class, while listening to rousing track 4 in the playlist called “X-Men First Class Soundtrack -16- Sub Lift”. You’ll know what I mean if you watched the movie. Needless to say while my effort was a terrible failure, I’ll not be surprised if a fair number of you folks will try doing the same. Soundtrack 4 can do that to you. Let me know who did.