My tween, artsy daughter has a spunky friend who loves art too. These two young ladies are excellent at characterization. The friend was categorizing their mutual friends one evening while hanging out at our house, and called my daughter “the architect”, and another friend, “the scientist”, while proudly labeling herself “the hobo”. It’s hard to appreciate the idea without the context or personal interaction, but let it suffice to say that she’s quite the astute, clairvoyant sort who could pull some salient strings in the creative world if she ventured out there. She went on to stitch together a story with these friend-characters- a story spontaneously springing from her imagination of course, and suddenly realized how good it really was! She exclaimed that she should totally make that into a comic strip; to which I concurred with equal enthusiasm. My daughter jumped in and added, “…and my mom would totally publish it!”. “You’re a publisher??” gasped the spunky hobo. I wistfully responded, “I wish”. And my daughter quipped, “…but she will publish it!” The spunky hobo picked up on our delight, but simultaneously lamented, “If I showed it to my mom, she’d give it a half-hearted look and say, “Now go study!” O yes, this amazing creature is a straight-A Indian kid with all Pre-AP classes.
That last bit right there sums it up for our general Indian perspective on education.
STEM is up in there in reverence. Anyone who is not good at it, regardless of how good or inclined you are in the arts, is just a disillusioned kid and future starving artist in the unofficial Indian astrology book. Well, there maybe some truth to it, but who the heck has ever made a NASA astrophysicist out of a kid who thinks that a black hole is something in your own psyche? A place where you curl up when the real world has gotten raucous and insensitive? Or a place where Alice follows the rabbit? Well, you get the idea. But in this non-wonderland of pragmatic Indians, the kids who are good at everything (and that’s a great number of kids of Indian immigrants) they will never happily be allowed to study the arts when they could easily become the next CEO of Google or the second Indian woman in space or the greatest cardiac surgeon (even if he ends up jabbing uncharacteristically at his own melancholy heart every night)
There was another Indian lady I met at a party last weekend. She was absolutely adamant that the only way to produce happy, cultured kids was if they attended this Hindu organization where kids are indoctrinated into Hindu beliefs, tradition, and practices through stories, lectures, and social work. Nothing bad about learning about your heritage and developing a spiritual side, but their narrow philosophy sounded no different than churches brainwashing their flock that there was only one way to be good and cultured and it was their way. She said that in this day and age, when every teen is stressed to the limit about their future (with their parents pounding on them at every turn- she failed to mention that), this spiritual outlet was absolutely necessary. I was nodding, trying hard to focus on the bits that I did agree with, to be sagacious, when she threw another curve ball, “I don’t understand why schools waste their time teaching subjects like history, geography and foreign languages. Total trash!” Huh? I couldn’t hold back any longer and told her that if everyone got a degree in the arts and humanities, we would be a better-informed bunch and make for a more compassionate and accepting society. Although what I really wanted to do was ask her ” How is it that she was convinced of the importance of imparting the knowledge of Indian culture, history, and traditions to our kids, while believing that understanding the history and culture of the people she was surrounded with was trash?” But I held back. She was probably not even thinking on those lines. Her world was small- made up of all things and people Indian and a bank account that was replete with the steady earnings of a technology professional. She was a family friend of a friend who’s little one’s birthday party we were attending when this rat-a-tat broke out.
I guess I feel strongly about this subject because of my own experience growing up in India. While I didn’t have the excuse of overbearing parents, I did suffer from a lot of societal pressure. In the 90s, the only people who studied literature and history in college were supposedly losers who didn’t make it into engineering or medical schools. I ended up in an engineering school against my better instincts and the collective instincts of my teachers and family. They were the worst years of my life.
It’s more or less an irreversible decision once you enroll in a college in India. The fact that you cannot bounce around majors and “find yourself” while in college because, well, colleges are super specialized, makes it impossible to explore outside of your chosen field unless you switch schools completely. And this is not an easy process, as you can imagine, with all the red tape, complications, and not to mention the social stigma of being called a “quitter”. Infact, there is no concept of “dropping” anything, not even a course, leave alone a major. Every course is mandatory. “Dropping out of college” is your only elective.
Artists might have to start small to attain or even get close to the job/ financial security that the STEM fields promise right off the bat, but the US is a great country to be a non-techie dreamer. To have the flexibility to really explore your strengths and inclinations and set a meaningful personal goal. Perhaps it’s time we become aware of our archaic, imbibed mindset of scarcity and embrace one of abundance, and in the process, free our children to combine their talents, interests, and education for the best possible outcome.
