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Ellen Greaves, Ed.D., J.D.,
Executive Director,
Professional Educators of North Carolina |
LEARNING
FROM INDIA:
How Education Policy Has Impacted India’s Rise as
a Global Economic Power part
1
A group of 26 legislators,
business leaders, foundation leaders, and education policy
leaders traveled to India in January to study the education
system in India, and specifically how their national
education policies led the country’s emergence as
a global economic power. The trip was sponsored
by the UNC Center for International Understanding and
the Public School Forum of North Carolina, with funding
from the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund, the Kenan Family Charitable
Trust, Cisco and Wachovia. I was fortunate to be part
of this group. This piece will describe our preparations
and itinerary for the trip. In a subsequent article, I
will share with you what we learned in India that we may
use here in North Carolina as we seek to ensure that our
children receive an education that is second to none.
The trip itself
was inspired by the Thomas Friedman book The World
Is Flat*. Friedman
focuses on India’s development from a socialistic
democracy, in dire economic straits in the early 1990s,
to an entrepreneurial country that is home to offices
of high tech companies from the U.S. and the rest of the
world. Our fundamental question was:
How
did India’s education policy help them develop a
work force that attracted these companies and jobs?
In preparation for
the trip, we had three days of orientation during which
we received information about India’s history, its
economy, its education structure, and “survival”
techniques.
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| Women
maintaining bermuda grass, Fort at Agra |
Travel
to India is challenging on many levels. We were going
to travel almost halfway around the world, so we knew
we’d need to deal with travel fatigue and communications
challenges, since there were small windows of opportunity
to be in touch with home. We faced the
challenges of unsafe water, so we all made preparations
to purify our own water. We
were advised that we would be most affected by the sheer
numbers of people and the poverty we would see. But no
amount of preparation would have been sufficient.
Our trip was planned
so that we could observe Indian culture in both Bangalore
(India’s Silicon Valley) and Delhi (India’s
capital, and the site of a world-class engineering university).
Our trip there took 31 hours and four flights.
We left Raleigh at 12:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon.
We passed through Indian customs in Mumbai (formerly Bombay),
where we were amazed at the number of mosquitoes and people
in the airport at midnight. We flew from Mumbai to Bangalore,
arriving at 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning.** As
we walked out of the airport to take our luggage to the
awaiting chartered bus, we encountered a wall of people
and air that seemed filled with smoke.
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Temple
next to Tipu Sultan's Palace, Bangalore |
As our briefings
began, we soon realized we would have to work hard to
understand some of presenters because of thick accents
and a different way of using English. We
also came to realize that Indian education is delivered
to students who respond to questions the teacher poses,
but who do not ask questions in class. Those
who presented to us (who had not been educated in part
in the United States) took that same approach …
and it frustrated us not
to be able to ask questions.
Most of our experiences
were arranged through the United States Education Foundation
in India (USEFI). Ours was the first state delegation
to visit India through this program. We visited high-tech
companies, universities, and high schools, as well as
significant cultural locations. Eszter Vajda,
a reporter and anchor with UNC-TV, traveled with us and
will produce programming that chronicles our travels.
Eszter’s husband, Tom Alexander, is a native of
India. Tom’s family helped set up dinners in private
homes in Bangalore; they also hosted a dinner party for
us in Gurgaon, a Delhi suburb and the location of many
call centers.
While
in Bangalore, we visited the Karnataka Chamber of Commerce
& Industry, CISCO Systems, the Indian Institute of
Management, the Indian Institute of Science, the
MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Infosys Technologies,
Tata Consultancy Services, Mindtree, and the Department
of Education for the State of Karnataka.
 |
| Taj
Mahal, Agra |
Midweek, we flew
to Delhi and spent our first day at USEFI, where
we heard presentations on how India is addressing the
tension between the need for mass education versus their
tradition of a more elitist education approach, and on
the connection between Indian education policy and economic
development. While in the Delhi area,
we visited a private secondary school, two government-supported
schools, the Indian Institute of Technology, and two call
centers (NIIT and Inforam). We spent Saturday visiting
Agra and the Taj Mahal, an all-day trip that was
stunning in the contrasts between the rural poverty we
witnessed and the indescribable beauty we saw in the intricate
carvings that cover the Taj Mahal.
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Buildings
at Fort, Agra |
India
is a country of contrasts: incredible beauty and new-found
wealth, and incredible poverty and filth. At the same
time we saw indescribable traffic jamming barely paved
roads with motorized rickshaws,
motor scooters, small cars, trucks, and buses incessantly
honking their horns and jockeying for space in apparent
chaos, we never saw an accident, for they all knew how
to coexist. We were overwhelmed with the mass of people,
yet we were also impressed with their peaceful, harmonious
lifestyle on—for most—the equivalent of $1
a day.
In following articles
I will share with you what we learned about the Indian
economy and their education system.
*Friedman, Thomas
L. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First
Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
**India is 10.5 hours ahead of North Carolina.
Dr.
Ellen
Greaves
became
Executive
Director
of
Professional
Educators
of
North
Carolina
in
December
2003.
Dr.
Greaves
is
an
educator,
an
attorney,
and
a
professional
association
manager
with
years
of
experience
representing
state
employees
and
managing
non-profit
organizations.
She
served
on
the
Illinois
State
Treasurer’s
Advisory
Board
on
Women’s
Issues.
She
served
as
senior
staff
attorney
and
corporate
counsel
to
the
Illinois
State
Employees
Association,
representing
approximately
1,000
management-level
state
employees
in
civil
and
administrative
matters
concerning
their
employment.
She
was
a
faculty
member
and
Director
of
Campus
Recreation
at
the
University
of
North
Carolina
at
Greensboro
for
twelve
years,
where
she
built
a
large
and
diverse
campus
recreation
program
culminating
in
the
design
of
an
$8
million
facility
devoted
to
student
recreation
on
that
campus.
