There are other schools that have come up recently to combat the supposed evils of the Indian education system — and it is politically and socially (if not always economically) far more correct to have your children attend one of these and benefit by their "alternative" and "progressive" methods of learning which purport to ignite in the child such precious virtues as creativity, team spirit, a love for learning, the ability to analyse situations and view them from a global perspective, and so on. I frequently find myself called upon to defend the school to which my children go.

"I hear they put too much pressure on the kids," people say to me, in pitying or withering tones. One of the mosteffective ways to humiliate a woman is to imply that she isn't doing the very best there is to do by her children. Wary of falling into the trap, I have taught myself to restrain my response. If the aggressor persists, I launch into a small speech on the value of hard work and discipline. Surely, if nothing else, the wretched Indian education system encourages hard work and discipline!

One woman I know had found her transition from college in India (where she had excelled), to a US university traumatic. The latter part of her education consisted in first wiping out all the previously learnt methods and systems, and then imbibing a new set.

Of her two children, she complains that the one who has no exposure to the American system tackles her maths problems with pen and paper, straightaway applying the method her teacher demonstrates on the board. The one who had the benefit of a few years in a US school will first analyse and understand the problem, take an overview and only then launch into it -doubtless a more laudable approach.

I myself (not to be outdone) have three children. One approaches maths problems with formulas, one with concepts, and one with intuition. To date, their only interface with the US has been the Cartoon Network. Surely, individual differences contribute at least as much towards learning attitudes, behaviour and ability as the teaching methods adopted at school?

The old methods might include burdening the kids physically with heavy schoolbags and mentally with repeated tests, requiring them to memorise large and boring tracts of pointless information, and gauging their merit on the basis of marks produced in the examinations, and we may disapprove. But shouldn't we just acknowledge them as undesirable byproducts of a system that has its good points?

How can one explain that India today turns out more computer programmers (with its rickety, redundant old education system) than any other country in the world? And what of the national panic in the US brought on by theinadequate "math" abilities of their school children?

We may not want our children to be stunted by pressure - but how can we escape the fact that pressure is a given of the lives we have chosen to live, and that we all had better find methods of coping with it?

Most educated people in this country today are products of this very hated and feared system. I went through it and you reading this probably did, too. As for those virtues (creativity, team spirit, love for learning, ability to analyse and view situations from a global perspective), it is quite likely that many of us acquired them anyway. By virtue of the old system, or despite it - who can tell?