What after the 10th Standard? What I learned in discussions with my daughter

A little over two years back, we as parents were presented with this question — what will our daughter do after passing her 10th standard examination? What subjects should she study? And we had extensive discussions with our daughter, as the choice is principally hers — we were just the enablers.

It was very enriching for me. Especially given that I never really had any thoughts about what I should study most of my academic life. When we were young, we as a family had very little awareness, and as a society, there were very few choices. We just went with the flow.

But now it is different, at least for a small section of the society who are lucky to have achieved a level of economic prosperity. They are in a position to give some flexibility of choices to their wards, as both the outlook and the purse are there to handle some downsides. And of course, the children too are much more connected and aware and articulate what they want to do, at least for the time being.

Traditionally students have chosen their subjects based on factors like whether they are weak in some area (more often Mathematics), scoring subjects, what is chic or parents want, or what all are doing. Overlap this with what is available, what positives or negatives of an institution of choice, and in the case of private education the cost.

So it had always been any of the following — Science, Arts, or Commerce. It was a common assumption that the ones who are doing well in academics and have good quantitative skills will be taking up science to study engineering or medicine or (in a small number of cases) economics. The ones who are part of business families, want to do business, or plan to do Chartered Accountancy (CA) will be doing Commerce. And the rest will be Arts.

However, the National Education Policy (NEP 2020) takes a different view. Its core principle is that the students are too young when they pass 10th standard (or secondary education) to decide what is their life goal. So it is not a good idea to box them into narrow areas like Arts, Commerce, and Science when they have not even understood what it means.

Add this to some of the changes I have observed in the workplace, especially in the corporate world. Three big changes are happening at least from the demand perspective:

1. There is possibly no fixed career on which one focuses for their entire lifetime. Gone are the days when one will be a steel person or an oil person for decades. The industries are changing, knowledge has become key to success, and learnability is the key trait — not knowledge per se (which is available for free in most cases).

The next generation will have a life where they will change their careers multiple times, and each time they will need to look at options, scale up quickly, decide, and be productive very fast.

2. Everything is today becoming interdisciplinary. For example, history is not anymore just reading some books. It is about looking at sources (which may be available in digital or physical form), using inductive and deductive knowledge, coming to new conclusions, and then evangelizing the same. We can just look at the DNA studies on various civilizations that have gained steam in the recent past for reference.

So again, students of tomorrow will need skills in multiple areas — more often than not. Modern-day drug discovery straddles biology, biotechnology, bioinformatics, mathematical modeling, analytics, simulation, lab experiments, working with government and other stakeholders, raising funds, managing regulatory authorities, managing expectations, and many many more.

The world where people may work with the left brain or right brain is over. Well, I am talking about the logical and emotional parts of the mind.

3. For a long, it was thought that people who work with machines (like coders, operators, etc.) have to be good in the left brain — logical, good with numbers, and low on emotions. And the ones who deal with people will have to be good with emotions. We defined the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ) for that too. And felt we may pick up folks based on their strength on the respective Quotients for respective jobs.

No more. It is now well proven that all who want to make a mark have to have both a logical and emotional mind developed. And it is seen no more than in the area of coding, where increasingly as we hard code into areas like Artificial Intelligence (AI), we are also coding our biases into the same. So there is now a need for an integration of the two brains, more than ever before.

So what do we need? We need “liberal education”.

Now liberal education is not the opposite of conservative education, but rather an education that liberates our mind. In other words allows one to analyze everything from multiple perspectives and help make a decision — on anything, at any stage of life.

The good news is NEP 2020 is looking at a path like that. And giving an option to the students to try various subjects of choice rather than being in the buckets, and taking a considered view on what enthuses them at a later point in time.

I have attempted to look at the subjects from the above perspectives (Please refer to the attached table). A note, the discussion was in the context of ISCE/ISC but I suppose it will be broadly relevant across the boards.

There are the criteria I have used:

1. Whether the subject is liberal or not in the context as discussed above (Yes or No).

2. Whether it is something where a lot can be learned using common sense or needs rigor.

3. Whether the subject is narrow (like formulas or structures or laws) or broad (as in open to multiple interpretations.

4. Whether the subject gives opportunities to study only a handful or many subjects/ areas in the future.

I have made assessments based on my understanding of being in corporate and academics. I have not put a judgment. However, I feel the construct can be used as relevant.