{"id":6984,"date":"2017-06-20T06:44:40","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T06:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6984"},"modified":"2017-06-20T06:44:40","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T06:44:40","slug":"wasting-indian-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/06\/20\/wasting-indian-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"Wasting Indian minds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist, last week, had an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/leaders\/21723105-worlds-biggest-school-system-also-one-worst-india-has-made-primary-education\">editorial<\/a> on the poor state of India's schools. \u00a0It begins:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"In\u00a01931 Mahatma Gandhi ridiculed the idea that India might have universal primary education \u201cinside of a century\u201d. \u00a0He was too pessimistic. \u00a0Since 1980 the share of Indian teenagers who have had no schooling has fallen from about half to less than one in ten. \u00a0That is a big, if belated, success for the country with more school-age children, 260m, than any other.<\/p>\n<p>Yet India has failed these children. \u00a0Many learn precious little at school. \u00a0India may be famous for its elite doctors and engineers, but half of its nine-year-olds cannot do a sum as simple as eight plus nine. \u00a0Half of ten-year-old Indians cannot read a paragraph meant for seven-year-olds. \u00a0At 15, pupils in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh are five years behind their (better-off) peers in Shanghai. \u00a0The average 15-year-old from these states would be in the bottom 2% of an American class. \u00a0With few old people and a falling birth rate, India has a youth bulge: 13% of its inhabitants are teenagers, compared with 8% in China and 7% in Europe. \u00a0But if its schools remain lousy, that demographic dividend will be wasted. ...\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you think these stats are bleak, you probably shouldn't read any more as the story gets worse when teachers are considered. \u00a0In fact, there seemed no positive\u00a0news at all, which probably explains a drift to cheap private schools. \u00a0When it comes to a quality education, getting children to school in the first place can be a huge challenge; India shows that deciding what to do once they are there can be\u00a0equally problematic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist, last week, had an editorial on the poor state of India's schools. \u00a0It begins: \"In\u00a01931 Mahatma Gandhi ridiculed the idea that India might have universal primary education \u201cinside of a century\u201d. \u00a0He was too pessimistic. \u00a0Since 1980 the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-6984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates","tag-the-economist-had-an-editorial-last-week-on-the-state-of-indias-schools"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}