Nearly 50 percent of the global population is under the age of 28. India and China, with a combined population of 2.5 billion people, are poised to become the leading providers of global workforce talent. How will education affect this pool of talent.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
[Diplomatic Courier:] How do India and China compare to OECD countries in their approach to education?
[Stephan Lancrin-Vincent:] There are so many graduates now, and they are going to outnumber the number of graduates you will find in the OECD area in the next decades. One of the peculiarities of the system is that they are really focused on science and engineering fields. In my opinion, I would even say slightly too much. Perhaps they should start considering having a bit more social scientists, people working in the humanities.
I would say that mainly for India that they also need to develop much more this new type of pedagogy that I’ve just been mentioning, because they have these very high-stake personal assessment systems where, in fact, rendering the content knowledge is much more important than being able to get the enjoyment of learning. So one of the things that we find in our project is that getting high scores in science, for example, does not imply that you’re interested in what you’re studying. So one of the big challenges for many countries, and I would say including India and China, is: how do we manage to not only get high scores—China gets high scores, India doesn’t—but also getting the interest in the field, the curiosity which is very important, the enjoyment. In fact it’s very important, especially in active societies, that people need to continue to learn, and if you’re not interested in the topic and learning, there is no way you are going to continue to learn.
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Stephan Lancrin-Vincent of OECD: Education Policy in India vs. China
January 30, 2014
Nearly 50 percent of the global population is under the age of 28. India and China, with a combined population of 2.5 billion people, are poised to become the leading providers of global workforce talent. How will education affect this pool of talent.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
[Diplomatic Courier:] How do India and China compare to OECD countries in their approach to education?
[Stephan Lancrin-Vincent:] There are so many graduates now, and they are going to outnumber the number of graduates you will find in the OECD area in the next decades. One of the peculiarities of the system is that they are really focused on science and engineering fields. In my opinion, I would even say slightly too much. Perhaps they should start considering having a bit more social scientists, people working in the humanities.
I would say that mainly for India that they also need to develop much more this new type of pedagogy that I’ve just been mentioning, because they have these very high-stake personal assessment systems where, in fact, rendering the content knowledge is much more important than being able to get the enjoyment of learning. So one of the things that we find in our project is that getting high scores in science, for example, does not imply that you’re interested in what you’re studying. So one of the big challenges for many countries, and I would say including India and China, is: how do we manage to not only get high scores—China gets high scores, India doesn’t—but also getting the interest in the field, the curiosity which is very important, the enjoyment. In fact it’s very important, especially in active societies, that people need to continue to learn, and if you’re not interested in the topic and learning, there is no way you are going to continue to learn.
