Hi all...
One of my friends in the US is writing some report on the high schools and education. He was eager to know about the education in India so he sent me a mail and asked some questions. I feel it is good if I share with you all. Please write your comments also. If you can share your experience it is well and good ... you are welcome...
So let's start:
1. What high school did you attend?
In USA I guess you term High school as grades 9 - 12 or 10 - 12, but in India we have some different system. We call 5 - 7 middle school, 8 - 10 high school(Secondary) and 11-12 junior college(Higher Secondary). There are different Boards of Education which usually gives Certificates.
2)The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) board.
3)State boards of Education for different states.
Also There are different streams like Science, Commerce and Arts for classes 11 - 12. student can choose 1 of these as per his career goals. In short you have to decide about your major early.
2. How many students did you graduate with?
As per statistics from state education board number of HSC passing students in the state for the year 2008 were around 830,711 (http://mahresult.nic.in/hsc2008/HS-OVALL.htm) This figure is for complete state that is number of students which gave the same exam on the same day...
3. How many classes did you have a day?
Now we are talking about class 11-12 only. We had subjects like maths, physics, chemistry, biology, Language 1(English) and Language 2(I opted for Sanskrit - options present are: Marathi, Hindi, German, French and many other.)We had classes of every subject each day. So there were around 5 - 6 classes every day.
4. Were you able to leave the school for lunch?
In India, in my school the food was not provided by the school. We were allowed to bring lunch boxes to school, go to home if it is nearby or eat outside.
5. Did you have any free hours?(we had those at our high school, it was just a time slot for a class, but you dint have class, so you were able to do whatever within that time slot.)
I don't remember having any free slots ... as they were in hurry to complete there all subject matter for Final state exam schedule was pretty tight. In 11 we had some hours but nothing in 12th.
6. What did your high school emphasis on? I know ours was just general education, like basic math, English, history, science etc.
I was surprised after coming here to listen that even engineering major in undergrad has to take history and arts classes. I think it is good for the students who are not sure abut their liking and major.
But we did not have these things. If you are in science stream you will learn history geography till 10th only and after that only subjects that are related to science that is physics maths and chemistry. In some schools even it is allowed to drop maths if you are concentrating on medical or pharmacy major or to drop biology if you are concentrating on engineering major.
It is dependent on which institute you choose. But it is normally 50 - 100 if you choose junior college that is run by secondary school. But if you choose 11 - 12 to be done in school that is run by Senior college (undergrad in US) then it may be around 200 students also.
8. Any after school activities? such as sports, clubs, chior, band, those sorts of programs.
Not much for us [:(] we were concentrating on studies ... [:(] sometimes I feel bad that I opted for junior college run by my school. But in senior colleges there are many clubs, sport activities, teams. We had some chances like elocution competition, sports week, cricket tournament, but those are really less.
It was my habit to complete everything in that day... from first I was raised like that so I used to sleep early around 10 pm but sometimes get up early around 5 am. and study then. In 11th it was not so tough but as I remember I studied for 4 - 5 months getting up at 5 - 6 am and studying for 2 - 3 hours.
10. All and all, how was your high school experince?
I think it was good but with somewhat less leisure because everybody was concentrating on studies as it was the final and on these scores we were going to get admissions in the Undergrad sources and you need good score if you want to get admission in the good college... I guess competition in India is much intense than here in US [:)] I feel students are more intended towards higher studies in India than here .. thats why I came to US as it is very difficult to get the admission in good school for Graduate studies but it is somewhat easy here (I personally feel).
Please do share your thoughts...
Have a nice time and Stay Warm (you have to say it, when you are living in Fargo…)