India's summer heat comes with rash of student suicides (natural selection or intelligent design?)

NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- As the summer heat and monsoon rains set in each year, Indian newspapers run colorful front-page pictures of joyous high school seniors cheering over their final exam results.

But turn the page and the black-and-white reality hits home, from the lineup of brief stories on anguished students who have killed themselves.

This is a big deal in Japan and Hong Kong too. Lots of kids take one-way flights out of high rises in Hong Kong after exam time. Sometimes hitting people on the street in the process.

Sad, but there is a ruthless rationele to it.If your marks are too low, than you won't go to college (unless you're family has the bucks to ship you to the west) ever, and you're suddenly looking a hardscrabble life in Hong Kong or wherever. Perspective gets lost fast. Sounds like the Asian education system is working it's magic in India too.

Mind you, I'm sure the students who *do* make it actually know something. This is a departure from schools around here sometimes.

At least their schools recognize and reward hard work and mental excellence, has where many of ours let just about anybody in, vastly reducing the prestige attached to college educations around the country.

ON the other hand, except for a few elite institutions in their native countries (Indian Technical Institute being the best in the world for tech people; a 1% entrance rate of all applicants, a 99% job placement rate in the US for their graduates, most starting $80K a year plus) most US colleges and universities are now considered far superior to anything the most of the rest of the world, including Europe, especially England, have to offer.

True, US higher ed is the best around. We need to build up our schools which I feel are miserably behind, yes, behind, other parts of the world. And if we don't get smart students out of our high schools, our top rated Univs will be dominated by Asian students -- right now Asians are the largest non-white group around (and they didn't need Affirmative A to do it, hmmmm)

Wellll, I'm not sure. We *do* let a lot of people into our schools, but we tend to let them out pretty quick too. Some un-Godly percentage of kids get bumped out of my university yearly. Admin's attitude can be summed up thus:

"Thanks for the ten grand! Bye!'

It tends to keep the quality up. Outside of first and second year classes, there are almost nothing but sharp kids. Even if they aren't sharp and are just scooting by, they're still educated to a greater degree than they would have been otherwise. That pays subtle dividends for your culture later. If we can make this possible without driving people to kill themselves, so much the better.

As for those Asian schools, you are totally correct. They push out some excellent, excellent graduates. It's almost an engineering problem. Trade off X number of dead high school kids and people who form a caste with no access to post-secondary, against Y number of high quality graduates.

On the whole, I pefer the North American approach. I'll probably have nothing but Indian and Chinese bosses for the rest of my career, but that's just the way it is.

ONe of the reasons I have always admired Asian cultures-particularly Japan, China, and I include India after some personal study, is that they mirror the Western attitude of serious hard work will get great rewards later in life-a kind of "Protestant Work Ethic".

Where we differ is that our lower social classes have much greater access to higher ed. than theirs-any trip to the area (I have heard from friends and my studies in college) shows that rigid class systems still exist, even in utopia China.

While in college a Japanese student I knew stated that they of course study and work harder in high school than any average American, but then go totally wild in their university and just party-most of their universities are free to all who qualify, and the academic rigor is low. While we are known by Hollyleftwood as people who love to party in college, I noticed students who get into college are forced by the stricter curriculum to step up or fail, most successfull students find the mature balance between party and study that the Asian students do not learn in their colleges.

T-have faith, my wife works in the tech field with lots of Indians and Muslims from their premier schools-smart guys, but few ever make it to management-no racism, but it takes more than tech skills to be a leader, business person and innovator. They are kind of like warrant officers in the Army. They are best in the motor pool or tech field, just don't ever take them out of their feeding ground, your asking for disaster!

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