India schooling fosters close relationships

Seven thousand feet above sea level, at a school on a hill, senior Sanjana Shukla first experienced the freedom and independence of attending a boarding school.

She enrolled in Kodaikanal International School located in Kodaikanal, India, where she spent her entire sophomore year.

“I chose boarding school to study abroad, have fun and learn,” she said. “I wanted to insert myself into an area with much poverty to experience that new environment and empathize with the issues surrounding poverty.”

During her stay at Kodaikanal, she was confined to the cliff on which the school was located, with no access to Western stores nearby, just the nature surrounding the school. 

Shukla enjoyed Kodaikanal International School and the relationships she fostered there more so than Saratoga High.

“Boarding school gives you the opportunity to have a second family with friends,” she said. “You get healthy exposure to sisterly and brotherly relationships with friends from all different parts of the world like Korea, Ghana, Tanzania, Japan, all over India, Australia and the Netherlands.”

The relationship among students also differed, with students helping each other without competition in mind.

“Other students were comrades; we would share notes and take tutoring for free from each other,” she said. “If a classmate was struggling, people who didn’t know you would voluntarily assist you with all their heart. Competition wasn’t ever a problem; we were all learners together.”

The strong relationships Shukla made while in Kodaikanal have stayed with her and made a strong impression, despite the K-12 holding over 400 boarding students.

“The barrier problem between friends is not there. Friends come and live with you and borrow money without paying each other back,” Shukla said. “You go everywhere together and consider each other’s families as your own family.”

Shukla said learning in the school was based on different motives than ones she has seen of students here, with students at Kodaikanal spurred by interest and intellectual curiosity. The barriers between professors and students in the schools were nonexistent, with teachers inviting students over for dinner. In comparison, the relationship between students and teachers here does not seem as close, according to Shukla.

Despite the close relationship between students and teachers, the discipline within the classroom was unrelenting.

“Teacher-child abuse in certain rural areas is still common, but my father insists that it is vital to a student's discipline and education,” she said.

She also commented on the different nature of the education, especially in the class choices students make. While many students take advanced classes here in America, sometimes without learning the basics of a subject, Indian education focuses more on the foundation of each subject.

“In India, kids were drilled with the very basics of a subject, often working without calculators and computers,” she said.

The difficulty of acquiring resources, like testing material, also caused inconvenience.

“I would say the resources here are better because up there we were confined to the hill,” she said. “For example, for the SAT you’d have one chance in the year to take it, and the ACT wasn’t even offered in Kodaikanal,” she said. “The closest city was seven hours away by a long, windy drive down the hill that was quite treacherous.”

She has come to find that with the age of technology becoming more and more apparent, the schooling is starting to change, especially in India.

“Indian schools are advancing, education is becoming less and less of a privilege; students are eager to learn and embrace the technological era,” Shukla said.

Shukla said that she values the experience and the diverse lifestyles she has seen.

“Cheerful village folk [were] always saying hello, even when I didn’t know their language,” she said. “They were very warm and kind-hearted, admiring our Western ways while maintaining ancient practices.”