I respond to comments on college admissions procedures, family economic background, contexts of "hard work," concern for "happiness," and concern for kids' futures, as they affect parenting style.
You misrepresented what I said and you don't seem to have a grip on what the education system in India is like, so I don't feel like people ought to take that part of your argument seriously.
There are many kinds of higher education in India also, including vocational training. Most of them just focus on your grades at 12th grade for admissions, if that. Schools operate under a board that has a standardized curriculum, and the boards are often specific to each state, or there are two central boards. This means all students across the board (i.e. in each state/across the country) get to study the same syllabus and are evaluated along the same rubric. The grading is not relative, it is absolute, so there isn't a competitive element to it. Even with higher education, colleges are affiliated to a university, so they would have the same requirements for the degree as every other college affiliated to the university, and the university is what grants you your degree. This means there are plenty of colleges, both private and public that guarantee the same degree you can obtain by studying the same standardized syllabus at the undergrad level. Plus, there's also the Open University which has no entry requirements if any.
There are competitive exams of course, but those are for professional courses like Engineering, Medicine and Architecture. The reason for these exams are because the government limits how many seats there can be. Of these, the most competitive is medicine, simply because the government determines how many doctors there ought to be and the number is far smaller than the number of students interested in becoming doctors. For other branches, there are still limitations on how many seats there are, but they keep up with the demand.
The most competitive exams are for the IITs which have their own exams. This is the one where you see all the news articles about how competitive things are. Most kids don't write this exam. I did, though, and it's not that stressful. It's about as stressful as a math olympiad and the same type of kids passionate about that sort of thing get through this anyway.
There are also sports quotas for if you have been at the top of your game in sports.
To summarize - college admissions in india are based on just grades in your 12th grade, they are not highly competitive other than for certain universities in certain branches of study. You are not expected to do much more than know your subjects well at high school. You can indulge in sports, dance, music, all that stuff without worrying about what it's leading to.
These also dont guarantee you jobs in the bureaucracy, i dont know where you got that idea.
In the US, even in the "best case" that you mention, where kids follow "self directed education" (which sounds like a privilege or a fringe thing), you basically have to live your whole life passionate about one thing and be at the top of that game. And whether the admissions officers consider that top enough is subjective, so you could just live that kind of life and not have it go anywhere at all. Most suburban children aren't aiming for that. They are focusing on grades and sports, doing volunteering work. And their "entire resume" counts. I attend "how to get into college" seminars quite a bit out of curiosity (also I'm an Indian mom) and the resumes they review tend to show you basically need to have lived your whole damn life focusing on a specific goal, and excelling at it. This leaves no room for failure. For instance if you like sports, you better be great at it at age 5 so you make the team and then you work your ass off to stay on it so you're in the high school team and a good prospect for college. You need concerted cultivation from a very young age to get into college on the strength of your sporting skill. It is similar with every other passion. And most kids try to come off as "well-rounded" and "charity-minded" so they are playing sports and instruments they dont care for, and volunteering at places where they dont want to be and are more of a hindrance than help.
The stuff you point to as measures of the system working, i.e. college scouts looking for people with unconventional backgrounds, looks like survivor bias. How replicable is that path? Does it work every time? If so, why isnt that what the wealthiest or most successful Americans doing? You're essentially suggesting people buy a lottery ticket.
Your anecdotal experience in india is great but is at odds with my lived experience. Plus, i have a toddler in America who I stayed home withand there are literally no 3 year olds playing outside either. , and there are no three year olds outside playing either, much less older kids.
Indian society struggles with few opportunities for higher education as compared to the population. That is changing as the economy improves. My own younger cousins and nephews and nieces in India have vastly different childhoods than I did, where they have a much more diverse set of activities and much more chilled out adolescence where they can focus on their passions. The college admission system has issues, but it is ameliorated by increasing the number of colleges and universities.
I reiterate here that students only have to be stressed out at ages 16-17 if at all, they have nothing competitive prior to that, and your grades or activities prior to that don't matter. I went to one of the top universities and while my peers studied very hard as I did and were at the top of their game in competitive math and physics as I was, our lives prior to that was quite relaxed, and our life in college was also quite relaxed. Most of my peers came from humble and rural backgrounds, and yes, we are happy we can take care of our parents in their old age.
The American system however INCREASES inequality. All you need is a measure of how well someone does over time, i.e. school grades, and some measure of raw intelligence that you can make time for even if the rest of your life doesn't allow for doing well consistently over time because of instability, i.e. the SATs or the entrance tests administered by the US Army. But instead, you complicate it with a whole bunch of other things that benefit only the most privileged. Why do recommendation letters matter? And even if college essays are there so you can address your struggles, the most privileged are able to write a better struggle narrative just by virtue of being from the same socioeconomic class as admissions officers. You could quite literally just admit students on the basis of grades and SATs but instead, there are a thousand different aspects taken into account just so the children of the white and wealthy can have an excuse to be admitted. And for what good? College grades correlate with SAT scores anyway.
While I agree with your overall point that inequality probably increases stress among children, America does much worse than it can, due to the child's entire life being under the microscope for college admisssions. This is quite literally the root cause of other things you have brought up - extracurriculars are not fun anymore because they've gotten competitive. Sports are not fun because they are competitive and organized. Parents work long hours leaving kids in daycare all day because they are trying to afford a good school or a house in a good school district so it increases their chance of getting to college. And kids go to competitive prep schools and boarding schools where they are at higher risk of stress because... they want to get into college.
When I compare the adolescence of my nieces and nephews in India vs those in the US, same socioeconomic class, same culture, the ones in India do much less and have more autonomy, are more comfortable being social, and are adults-in-training, whereas those in the US look very very good on paper and have so many more skills, but have huge conflict in the home because they are just so stressed out about school and snap much more, claim to be "drained" on meeting people face to face, and they feel much more stunted in terms of adult skills.
I appreciate your work, my kids went through a high performing district in America and I encountered many of the problems you mentioned. However, as an immigrant I believe that most Americans do not understand how much more stressful the contemporary American system is relative to many of these international systems they like to criticize.
Traditionally most kids around the world have earned most/all their transcript grades from standardized end of high school exams (more like AP exams than American style standardized tests). Europe is still very exam heavy (though not quite as much as it used to be).This includes famously kid friendly systems like Finland.
Are we supposed to feel sorry for these Finnish kids because they are not being judged on everything they do, whether it is homework or what they choose to do in their free time? At some point judgements have to be made on whether a student is ready or capable of handling a particular course of study, standardized exams play that role. But what is wrong with limiting assessment to only what is needed at a particular point in time?
For many of us going through these systems standardized exams were liberating, even if we did not appreciate it at the time. The idea that everything we did while in high school "counted" was never a concept that crossed our minds. Schools provided opportunities for and encouraged other activities, but we were free to pursue a range of activities without it having to count in any way.
Teacher based assessment for transcript grades is horrible, it makes the student teacher relationship way more adversarial. Students continuously have to jump through arbitrary hoops instead of them both working towards a common goal. Every time teacher based assessment gets pushed in England, the teachers want nothing to do with it.
China is not a good comparison, if large numbers of kids are competing for a few good opportunities, changing the type of assessment does not necessarily make the stress go away.
You misrepresented what I said and you don't seem to have a grip on what the education system in India is like, so I don't feel like people ought to take that part of your argument seriously.
There are many kinds of higher education in India also, including vocational training. Most of them just focus on your grades at 12th grade for admissions, if that. Schools operate under a board that has a standardized curriculum, and the boards are often specific to each state, or there are two central boards. This means all students across the board (i.e. in each state/across the country) get to study the same syllabus and are evaluated along the same rubric. The grading is not relative, it is absolute, so there isn't a competitive element to it. Even with higher education, colleges are affiliated to a university, so they would have the same requirements for the degree as every other college affiliated to the university, and the university is what grants you your degree. This means there are plenty of colleges, both private and public that guarantee the same degree you can obtain by studying the same standardized syllabus at the undergrad level. Plus, there's also the Open University which has no entry requirements if any.
There are competitive exams of course, but those are for professional courses like Engineering, Medicine and Architecture. The reason for these exams are because the government limits how many seats there can be. Of these, the most competitive is medicine, simply because the government determines how many doctors there ought to be and the number is far smaller than the number of students interested in becoming doctors. For other branches, there are still limitations on how many seats there are, but they keep up with the demand.
The most competitive exams are for the IITs which have their own exams. This is the one where you see all the news articles about how competitive things are. Most kids don't write this exam. I did, though, and it's not that stressful. It's about as stressful as a math olympiad and the same type of kids passionate about that sort of thing get through this anyway.
There are also sports quotas for if you have been at the top of your game in sports.
To summarize - college admissions in india are based on just grades in your 12th grade, they are not highly competitive other than for certain universities in certain branches of study. You are not expected to do much more than know your subjects well at high school. You can indulge in sports, dance, music, all that stuff without worrying about what it's leading to.
These also dont guarantee you jobs in the bureaucracy, i dont know where you got that idea.
In the US, even in the "best case" that you mention, where kids follow "self directed education" (which sounds like a privilege or a fringe thing), you basically have to live your whole life passionate about one thing and be at the top of that game. And whether the admissions officers consider that top enough is subjective, so you could just live that kind of life and not have it go anywhere at all. Most suburban children aren't aiming for that. They are focusing on grades and sports, doing volunteering work. And their "entire resume" counts. I attend "how to get into college" seminars quite a bit out of curiosity (also I'm an Indian mom) and the resumes they review tend to show you basically need to have lived your whole damn life focusing on a specific goal, and excelling at it. This leaves no room for failure. For instance if you like sports, you better be great at it at age 5 so you make the team and then you work your ass off to stay on it so you're in the high school team and a good prospect for college. You need concerted cultivation from a very young age to get into college on the strength of your sporting skill. It is similar with every other passion. And most kids try to come off as "well-rounded" and "charity-minded" so they are playing sports and instruments they dont care for, and volunteering at places where they dont want to be and are more of a hindrance than help.
The stuff you point to as measures of the system working, i.e. college scouts looking for people with unconventional backgrounds, looks like survivor bias. How replicable is that path? Does it work every time? If so, why isnt that what the wealthiest or most successful Americans doing? You're essentially suggesting people buy a lottery ticket.
Your anecdotal experience in india is great but is at odds with my lived experience. Plus, i have a toddler in America who I stayed home withand there are literally no 3 year olds playing outside either. , and there are no three year olds outside playing either, much less older kids.
Indian society struggles with few opportunities for higher education as compared to the population. That is changing as the economy improves. My own younger cousins and nephews and nieces in India have vastly different childhoods than I did, where they have a much more diverse set of activities and much more chilled out adolescence where they can focus on their passions. The college admission system has issues, but it is ameliorated by increasing the number of colleges and universities.
I reiterate here that students only have to be stressed out at ages 16-17 if at all, they have nothing competitive prior to that, and your grades or activities prior to that don't matter. I went to one of the top universities and while my peers studied very hard as I did and were at the top of their game in competitive math and physics as I was, our lives prior to that was quite relaxed, and our life in college was also quite relaxed. Most of my peers came from humble and rural backgrounds, and yes, we are happy we can take care of our parents in their old age.
The American system however INCREASES inequality. All you need is a measure of how well someone does over time, i.e. school grades, and some measure of raw intelligence that you can make time for even if the rest of your life doesn't allow for doing well consistently over time because of instability, i.e. the SATs or the entrance tests administered by the US Army. But instead, you complicate it with a whole bunch of other things that benefit only the most privileged. Why do recommendation letters matter? And even if college essays are there so you can address your struggles, the most privileged are able to write a better struggle narrative just by virtue of being from the same socioeconomic class as admissions officers. You could quite literally just admit students on the basis of grades and SATs but instead, there are a thousand different aspects taken into account just so the children of the white and wealthy can have an excuse to be admitted. And for what good? College grades correlate with SAT scores anyway.
While I agree with your overall point that inequality probably increases stress among children, America does much worse than it can, due to the child's entire life being under the microscope for college admisssions. This is quite literally the root cause of other things you have brought up - extracurriculars are not fun anymore because they've gotten competitive. Sports are not fun because they are competitive and organized. Parents work long hours leaving kids in daycare all day because they are trying to afford a good school or a house in a good school district so it increases their chance of getting to college. And kids go to competitive prep schools and boarding schools where they are at higher risk of stress because... they want to get into college.
When I compare the adolescence of my nieces and nephews in India vs those in the US, same socioeconomic class, same culture, the ones in India do much less and have more autonomy, are more comfortable being social, and are adults-in-training, whereas those in the US look very very good on paper and have so many more skills, but have huge conflict in the home because they are just so stressed out about school and snap much more, claim to be "drained" on meeting people face to face, and they feel much more stunted in terms of adult skills.
I appreciate your work, my kids went through a high performing district in America and I encountered many of the problems you mentioned. However, as an immigrant I believe that most Americans do not understand how much more stressful the contemporary American system is relative to many of these international systems they like to criticize.
Traditionally most kids around the world have earned most/all their transcript grades from standardized end of high school exams (more like AP exams than American style standardized tests). Europe is still very exam heavy (though not quite as much as it used to be).This includes famously kid friendly systems like Finland.
Are we supposed to feel sorry for these Finnish kids because they are not being judged on everything they do, whether it is homework or what they choose to do in their free time? At some point judgements have to be made on whether a student is ready or capable of handling a particular course of study, standardized exams play that role. But what is wrong with limiting assessment to only what is needed at a particular point in time?
For many of us going through these systems standardized exams were liberating, even if we did not appreciate it at the time. The idea that everything we did while in high school "counted" was never a concept that crossed our minds. Schools provided opportunities for and encouraged other activities, but we were free to pursue a range of activities without it having to count in any way.
Teacher based assessment for transcript grades is horrible, it makes the student teacher relationship way more adversarial. Students continuously have to jump through arbitrary hoops instead of them both working towards a common goal. Every time teacher based assessment gets pushed in England, the teachers want nothing to do with it.
China is not a good comparison, if large numbers of kids are competing for a few good opportunities, changing the type of assessment does not necessarily make the stress go away.