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My personal experience was that Western schooling was much kinder than Asian (Indian) schooling (parent's job had me moving countries every 3 years). Having be
by dotnet00 4y ago
My personal experience was that Western schooling was much kinder than Asian (Indian) schooling (parent's job had me moving countries every 3 years). Having been a bit of an outsider in both systems (didn't have the years of shared history in Western circles and accent was too American in Asian circles) and extremely timid, while I did initially get bullied in Western schools, it was nowhere near as pervasive, underhanded or nasty as it was in the Asian schools I attended.
In the Western system I could more often rely on just ignoring or complaining to a teacher to result in some action, in the Asian schools I went to, many of the teachers and other parents seemed almost complicit in the bullying (somewhat unsurprisingly, especially the English teachers).
I still remember that on my first day in an Indian school in 4th grade after having gone to school for ~3 years in NY, I had been mocked and called stupid in front of the class by the math teacher for writing out how I answered a problem differently from what had been taught to the rest of the class. Completely ruined me on math for several years because it made me too hesitant to ask questions about fundamental things I didn't understand and as a result I had terrible fundamentals. I only really managed to get over that by spending the entirety of 8th grade self-teaching myself math after school.
The way I like to think of it these days is that Western education made me enjoy learning and helped build up my confidence, while Asian education made me cynical and better at reading people (which isn't a bad thing to me now, but I'd still rather never go through that again).
Of course this is just anecdotal so it doesn't say a lot overall.
- cliquecover 4y agoAs someone who went through the Indian education system, teachers were some of the worst bullies who would frequently abuse their power. - A teacher posed a question to the class and I and another boy answered immediately. The teacher was upset and said "cliquecover and boy are always putting themselves forward" - A few senior students demo'ed a cool robotics toy they'd built. Our science teacher mocked our class for not being as intelligent as them, instead of explaining how we could build one (doubt he knew anything about it). - A university lecturer openly ridiculed all the female CS students as "useless" - A tendency to obscure their incompetence and lack of understanding by focussing on petty details: eg a math teacher ridiculing us for not knowing our multiplication tables and forcing us to memorize them, instead of teaching useful skills, English teachers being obsessed with spelling and handwriting instead of general reading and composition skills - Universities engaging in extortion by refusing to release student's personal documents unless they would take up the first job offer they obtained via university placements. Very few intelligent people in India would become teachers in the kind of school I went to. They would rather take up software/IT/private sector jobs, so you get mediocre non-entities who have free rein to treat students as they please.
- dotnet00 4y agoYes that roughly agrees with my experiences and the stories from friends and family. Luckily I just barely dodged having to deal with board exams and Indian university.