Part 5 of 17 in Rethinking Childhood: An Indian Parent’s Guide
I’ve often found myself in classrooms, not as a student nor as a teacher, but as an observer. It’s a peculiar position, one that allows you to see the duality of education unfold right before your eyes. Walk into a Class 4 classroom in any Indian city, and you’ll witness two distinct games being played simultaneously. The official game unfolds on the blackboard: a chapter to cover, definitions to memorize, and “question answers” to recite by Friday. But the unofficial game is far more intriguing. It’s the child drawing a cricket field in the margins, folding a paper plane, or whispering a joke to a friend. We punish this unofficial game, but perhaps we should study it instead. That’s where true attention tells its story.
The duality of education is something I’ve grappled with for years. On one hand, there is the structured, formal education system that demands conformity and rote learning. On the other, there’s the organic, often chaotic process of true learning that thrives on curiosity and exploration. The former is easy to measure, while the latter is difficult to quantify, making it undervalued in our current system.
In my experience, both as a doctor and an angel investor, I’ve learned that what we choose to measure often dictates what we value. In medicine, we measure outcomes—pregnancy rates, live births, patient satisfaction. In investing, we measure returns, growth, and market share. But in education, what are we truly measuring? Marks, ranks, and certificates? These are indicators of compliance, not comprehension.
Fábrega describes the game of school with uncomfortable accuracy: you win by pleasing adults. You collect marks, ranks, certificates, and the look on a parent’s face when the result arrives on the phone. You learn the local rules: which teacher wants underlining, which one wants “value points,” which one will give grace marks if your handwriting is neat. You learn to look busy. You learn that confusion is dangerous because it looks like incompetence.
In India, the scoring system has extra levels. There is the school exam, then the board, then JEE or NEET or CLAT or CUET, followed by the coaching test series that pretends to be more real than school. By Class 8, many children have two timetables and two loyalties. School becomes the place you attend; coaching becomes the place you “actually study.” Dummy schools exist because families have decided that the school game is a formality and the entrance-exam game is life. That decision should frighten us.
The duality of education becomes more pronounced when we consider how the game of learning is scored. Did you get interested? Did you stay with a hard thing long enough for it to become less hard? Did you make something that was not assigned? Did you change your mind when the evidence changed? Did you teach someone else? Can you use the idea on Tuesday in the kitchen, not only on Monday in the answer booklet?
A child playing the learning game may look like a bad student. She may refuse to finish a worksheet because she already understands the idea and is bored. He may disappear into a rabbit hole about trains or lizards or rangoli patterns and neglect the “portion.” These children are not rebels for sport. They are protecting an older, better instinct: learn what is alive.
I recall meeting a promising startup founder who reminded me of these children. His academic record was unimpressive, but his ability to learn, pivot, and adapt was unparalleled. He had mastered the unofficial game. His curiosity was infectious, and his capacity to learn from failure was a trait I saw in many successful founders. This is what the game of learning looks like outside the classroom.
But the system quietly teaches seven habits that hinder this kind of learning. Confusion without context. History is a list of dates, science a list of definitions. The child never meets the problem that made the knowledge necessary. Rank as identity: your place in the list becomes your place in the family story. Indifference as wisdom: caring too much about a “useless” topic is discouraged. Emotional dependence: a teacher’s mood becomes the weather of the day. Intellectual dependence: wait for the notes, wait for the marking scheme, do not start until someone tells you the right method. Provisional self-worth: you are as good as your last percentage. No private inner life: every hour is scheduled, watched, tested, or improved.
Take Arjun from Bengaluru as a case in point. At nine, he was “good at studies,” which meant he could reproduce the science lesson before a test. It did not mean he could tell you why a pressure cooker whistles. One Sunday, his grandmother asked him to help soak chana. He asked why we soak it. She said, “So it cooks faster.” He asked why. She did not know. They looked it up together, then cooked two batches, one soaked, one not, and timed them. Arjun wrote the experiment in a cheap notebook he began to call his “real book.”
His school notebook remained full of perfect diagrams of plant cells. His real book filled with questions about dal, cricket swing, and why the lift in their building smells different in the monsoon. Guess which notebook he still has at sixteen. Guess which one prepared him to learn anything.
The irony is that while we continue to endorse and reward the official game, the unofficial game is where innovation, creativity, and true understanding thrive. In my practice, patients who ask questions, who are genuinely curious about their treatment, often fare better. They are participants in their healthcare, not passive recipients. The same holds true for founders. Those who challenge norms, who seek to understand rather than just comply, are the ones who innovate.
Education reform needs a dose of honesty akin to what we offer in fertility clinics. We must confront the uncomfortable truths about what we value and measure in education. The myth of outsourcing education to schools and coaching centers needs debunking. Real education happens when curiosity is the catalyst for learning, not when marks dictate self-worth.
The duality of education presents a challenge but also an opportunity. By recognizing and nurturing the unofficial game, we can cultivate a generation that values learning over compliance, curiosity over rote memorization. This shift will not be easy, but it is essential. If we can achieve it, we might just find that the unofficial game holds the key to unlocking India’s true potential.