The education system in India is something that’s quite dreadful in so many different ways. The emphasis seems to be almost completely on percentages and marks scored in examinations, and it’s not at all uncommon to find students only studying from the ‘scoring’ parts of the course while ignoring the rest as it’s simply not considered worth their while to actually get knowledge. As for the pressure on students (and their parents, in most cases!) to crack various entrance exams, it’s quite legendary and could take up an entire post in itself. It’s also not at all uncommon to find students who are forced to sacrifice their real passions for courses which simply guarantee better returns. The Bollywood movie ‘Three Idiots’ rightly lampoons the education system in India.

Out here in Sweden, one of the first people I met and interacted with, outside my workplace was an extremely interesting gentleman called Alexander Neckovski. Alexander was staying at the same hostel where I had been temporarily put up, upon my arrival in Sweden. A long term resident of Sweden, he had after more than fifteen years of a successful career in the banking sector, changed his career path completely by becoming a physiotherapist. He was pursuing further studies in the field of ergonomics when I met him, and all this because that’s where his passion lay! I was pretty amazed to learn that, as a change of that magnitude is something which is not even contemplated, much less attempted in India!

Alexander told me that the system in Sweden made it possible, even for somebody advanced in years, to seek and obtain education/training in the field of one’s choice. What about cost of education? The state provides student loans which need to be paid back, but the very fact that such study loans are accessible and available makes it possible for many individuals to pursue their dreams. I told him that in India, not only is there no support from the government/educational institutions for such training, but any person who even contemplates such a change of career faces immense pressure and potential ridicule from the society and his/her family. Isn’t that dreadful? Isn’t the whole point of living supposed to be enjoying one’s own Life? Isn’t pursuing one’s passions a big part of that?

The 2008 movie ‘You don’t mess with the Zohan’ has a character warning the protagonist against taking up a job in an electronics store, calling that job a ‘dream killer’. Isn’t that also true for the education system in India? I wish and fervently hope that someday, education institutions in India will be more than the mere dream-killing, engineer-churning machines that they have become today.