Why Indian school system is rote based?

First of all apologies for not posting a relevant post on the school system for such a long time. The first session of blockClasses was on and so were the butterflies in our stomach. Now since the operations have streamlined quite a bit and that project is on a 'auto pilot' mode let's look at something bigger and serious:

After spending countless hours discussing issues pertaining to education with some of the leading school principals of Delhi -- we have realized atleast one thing that the school principals are also equally aware of the issues plaguing today's schools. And honestly most of them are not able to tackle these issues despite the fact that they want to. I plan to write a series of posts on the problems that these schools highlighted and then may be discuss the possible solutions in this public domain so that more and more people can benefit from it.

Problem #1: Rote is rut
If there is any consensus amongst the different stakeholders of the Indian education system (parents, school principals, managment and teacher) it's the understanding that Indian schools are suffering from the parasite called rote learning or in layman's terms the system is geared towards rewarding those students who can mug up a lot of text and vomit it as it is on a sheet of paper. Since, the system rewards those students who can mug tera bytes of information, everyone wants to prepare for that. The principals kind of know this, however, are not able to do anything about it despite their best efforts and we analyzed the reason behind it.

Why is this rote learning pervasive?
Well the first and foremost reason for that is the examination system. This examination system was designed as a means of making children more focussed on learning as it can play a role of motivating them. Unfortunately, over the years it has evolved to become a end in itself instead of the means. So majority of parents send their children to school to ensure that they can crack a certain board examination or a JEE entrance.

To our dismay, these exams always test a student on the kilo bytes of information that they have mugged instead of testing them on application of concepts. So, this is the rootcause of the problem that our children end up becoming cramming machines instead of thinking, analytical individuals.

Some of the principals who talked with us did say that they promote experiential learning in their schools, however, are not able to convince the teachers to go that extra mile. I do not blame the teachers for the failure over here -- the flaws are more systemic than at the bottom level.

Since, the complete schooling is about excelling at examinations -- so are the performance metrics. A teacher is judged on how has class performed in the exam system and not on how much of the class has actually learnt something. So even if a teacher does a great job with understanding of concepts -- there are no performance metrics to really reward her for that achievement.

So, as I said to one of the principals I met -- till you have the current examination system, you need to build a parallel teacher's body that would only be judged on the concept understanding and that's the only way possible that we can come out of this rut. But that would mean the schools would have to shell out a lot of money from their kitty, which they are not ready to do -- so the problem persists and our nation as a whole suffers.