Lost in translation

Indian-run schools in Tokyo, set up to cater to expatriates, are reported to be considering quick expansion. According to a report in The New York Times, Japanese parents are lining up their toddlers for access to Indian-style instruction. And failing entry into these schools, they are anyway buying Indian textbooks to put their children on the rote-track to competitiveness. The aspiration is intriguing but not flattering. Japan’s education system is known for its reliance on memorisation. Students even go for after-school classes to acquire the skill of learning by rote. The ability to remember reams of facts and data is important, after all, to clear the cascade of competitive examinations for higher education and to get a good job. Japanese parents are said to be distraught that their children are not getting this survival skill from their schools, thus the recourse to books like Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills and The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.

India is, alas, trying to move beyond the rote formula. In the National Curriculum Framework great emphasis has been placed on the need to make the child more questioning and less reliant on memorisation. For this, it has been suggested that in primary school, children should be assessed more sensitively and creatively. Educators hope that children will consider their textbooks to be guides, and not repositories of all the facts and data they should necessarily consign to memory.

The interest taken globally in India’s education system obviously stems from its success in maximising its people’s stake in the knowledge sector. Mathematics and language skills especially have helped Indians catch opportunities in the software and BPO industries. The Japanese, with their country-wise ranking in mathematics skills slipping, may see a clue in an Indian three-year-old’s ability to recite multiplication tables. The secret may be a little more complex than that.