Indian Kids - globally competitive??

I am amused when I see fantastic statistics on how well Indian students are doing internationally and predictions that Indian and Chinese students will overtake the world.
Chinese kids I don’t know much about, but Indian kids have a really long way to go -
- Untrained Teachers - India needs to invest a lot more in educating teachers today. Most teachers were educated like us-in schools that focussed on rote and paid little attention to creativity. And because teachers don’t have the correct skill set, they are unable to help children think out of the box too. At a recent science fair submission, a couple of kids decided to do a project on the sub-conscious and conscious mind with some interesting hypotheses...the teacher shot it down saying it was too boring!
- Poor Infrastructure - How many schools have good labs and good teachers who can demonstrate concepts? Good museums that help children assimilate classroom learnings are just not there. Not all kids can go to apno London to see the Natural History Museum or the Science Museum to understand how things work. A visit to the heritage sites is a lesson on good storytelling gone bad. Nishna came back terribly disappointed from a trip to Lothal, an Indus Valley site - they were shown a boring audio visual presentation and the guide who accompanied them was not clued on.
- Connecting the real and book worlds - Have you ever noticed how boring the Civics lessons in Indian school text books are? Civics might be the most important subject for our kids and us, because it tells us how our country is governed and what the roles and responsibilities of the government are? So if schools can organise a trip to a biscuit factory, they can also connect with the local panchayat or gram parishad and take children for a trip there. How about a trip to the Police Station? Or a government hospital? How else can we make learning valuable for our kids?
- Pursuit of perfection - we just don’t have it. Indians do chalu , chalta hai type jobs and no one has patience to learn something really well. I have to stifle a guffaw when kids get their black belts in martial arts or top honours in piano and ballet, because they don’t have the right reference points. One viewing of Jaden Smith’s Karate Kid was enough to make me aware how sorely lacking we are in the pursuit of perfection.
Lost opportunities - Brought on, for instance, by over zealous parents who out-source simple school projects that the child presents as his own. Or bolstering the letter of intent in college applications by waxing eloquent about great deeds done in Community Action Service. Kids bask in the glory of work that is not their own - these are opportunities lost as the child has not worked towards acquiring a skill set. And sooner or later all these things will come back to haunt us - And we will be the world’s most populous country with a poor skill set and no way out!