What the Indian education system never taught me (and how I learned it anyway)
I am sixteen years old. I study in the tenth grade. And for the last two years, I have been learning things that no textbook in my syllabus has ever mentioned.
Not because my teachers are bad. Not because my school is worse than others. But because the system itself was never designed to teach these things.
This article is not a rant. It is not a complaint about the education system. It is an honest reflection on the gap I have noticed between what I am taught and what I actually need.
The memorization problem
In my school, success is measured by how accurately I can reproduce what is written in a textbook.
The chapter on electricity has twelve formulas. I memorize them. The chapter on carbon compounds has forty reactions. I memorize them. The chapter on history has dates and names and events. I memorize those too.
I am not learning physics. I am learning to recall sentences.
This is not a unique experience. Every student in India knows this pattern. We spend years perfecting the art of memorization, and somewhere along the way, we forget how to think.
The problem is not that facts are unimportant. The problem is that facts alone do not build understanding.
We study the greats. We are never taught to become them.
There is a strange contradiction at the heart of how history is taught in Indian schools.
We read about Gandhi, who led a nation to freedom. We read about Bhagat Singh, who gave his life for a cause he believed in. We read about Einstein, who rewrote physics from the ground up. We read about Abdul Kalam, who rose from a small town in Tamil Nadu to become the President of India and a scientist who shaped the country's missile program.
But we are never taught to become like them.
We are taught their dates. We are taught their achievements. We are taught to write essays about their lives. But we are not taught the one thing that actually matters — the mindset that made them who they were.
We are not taught that Gandhi failed many times before he led a movement. We are not taught that Kalam sold newspapers as a child. We are not taught that Einstein was considered a slow learner. We are not taught that every single one of these people started out exactly where we are — with nothing but an idea and the stubbornness to keep going.
The system teaches us to admire them. It never teaches us to emulate them.
Because if it did, we might start asking uncomfortable questions. Like why are we being prepared to work for someone else, when these people built their own path?
The lesson of history is not that great people existed. The lesson is that ordinary people became great by refusing to stay ordinary.
That lesson is never taught.
What is missing
When I look at the skills that actually matter in the modern world, I notice that almost none of them are part of my curriculum.
Coding is not taught.
I learned Python from YouTube. I learned React from a free course. I learned MongoDB by breaking things and rebuilding them. None of this came from school. And yet, these are the skills that will define the next twenty years of my career.
Negotiation is not taught.
I learned how to negotiate from a book written by an FBI hostage negotiator. I learned how to communicate, how to ask for what I want, and how to recognize when I am being manipulated. My school never mentioned these things. But every interaction I have as an adult will require them.
Building is not taught.
I learned to build projects by starting them and finishing them. Small tools. Websites. Scripts. Things that nobody asked me to build, but that I wanted to exist. The process of building taught me more than any exam has ever taught me.
Thinking is not taught.
I learned to think by reading books outside my syllabus, by questioning what I was told, and by sitting with confusion until it became clarity. School taught me to answer questions. It never taught me to ask them.
The cost of this gap
When I look at my classmates, I see students who are incredibly good at exams but terrified of real problems.
They can solve a quadratic equation in thirty seconds. But ask them to build something — anything — and they freeze. They can recite the periodic table from memory. But ask them to solve a problem that is not in the textbook, and they don't know where to begin.
This is not their fault. It is the system's fault. The system was built to produce good exam-takers, not good thinkers.
And the cost of this is enormous. It shows up in the workforce, where companies complain that fresh graduates cannot do real work. It shows up in the startup ecosystem, where very few people know how to build anything from scratch. It shows up in the lives of millions of students who graduate with degrees but without confidence.
The job trap
There is one more thing the system never taught me, and it is perhaps the most important.
It never taught me that I do not have to spend my life competing for a seat at someone else's table. I can build my own.
Let me be clear about what I mean.
I have deep respect for people who work jobs. My mother works. My teachers work. Millions of people in India work jobs to feed their families, and that is not something to look down upon. A job is a legitimate path. It provides stability, income, and structure. For many people, it is the right choice.
But somewhere along the way, the system started treating jobs as the only choice.
We are told to study hard so we can get a good job. We are told to build our resumes so we can get hired. We are told that our success is measured by which company we work for, how much they pay us, and how quickly we get promoted.
Nobody tells us that we can create jobs instead of applying for them.
Nobody tells us that we can build products instead of building someone else's dream.
Nobody tells us that the people who shape the world are almost never the ones waiting for permission.
Think about the names we admire. Elon Musk did not get famous by working a job — he built companies. Every empire in history started with a person who refused to wait for someone else to hand them a seat.
This is not a call to quit your job. This is a call to think bigger than a job.
If you are a student, do not spend all your energy preparing to be hired. Spend some of it preparing to build. Learn how businesses work. Learn how to sell. Learn how to ship a product. Learn how to talk to customers.
A job gives you a salary. A business gives you freedom. Neither is wrong. But only one of them is presented as a possibility to most students.
The system never taught me this. So I am teaching myself.
And I want to say one thing to everyone who has chosen a job: I respect your choice completely. There is no shame in providing for your family, in working hard, in earning an honest living. But I hope that the next generation — my generation — will be taught that both paths exist. And that both are worth considering.
Build your own table. You do not have to wait for a seat at someone else's.
Not just code. Not just marks.
There is a trap that many self-taught developers fall into, and I almost fell into it too.
The trap is believing that if you just learn to code well enough, everything else will fall into place.
It will not.
Coding is a skill. But it is not the only skill. And the developers who go the furthest are not the ones who only know how to write code. They are the ones who also know how to talk to people, how to negotiate, how to build habits that compound over time, and how to sell what they have built.
Two books changed how I think about this.
The first is Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. It is written by a former FBI hostage negotiator, and it teaches you how to communicate when the stakes are high. It taught me that most conversations are not won by arguing harder. They are won by listening better, by labeling emotions, and by asking questions that make the other person feel heard.
The second is Atomic Habits by James Clear. It taught me that the person I become is not determined by a few big decisions, but by thousands of small ones. One percent better every day does not feel like much. Over a year, it changes everything.
There are others too. 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Deep Work by Cal Newport. The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. Each one fills a gap that school left behind.
If you are a student like me, do not make the mistake of thinking that coding alone will save you. It will not. You need to read. You need to learn how people think, how they make decisions, and how to work with them.
The best engineers are not just engineers. They are students of human behavior.
The two paths
Here is the uncomfortable truth I have arrived at.
There are only two ways to live, and most people drift into one without ever choosing it.
The first path: enjoy the small pleasures of being poor, and stay there forever. Chai, comfort, familiar streets, and a life that never quite changes. There is nothing wrong with this. Millions of people live it and find peace in it. It is a legitimate choice.
The second path: reach the top 0.0001%, and then reach back down to pull others up.
I am not interested in the first path. Not because I look down on it — but because I know what it costs. I have seen what happens to families when the money runs out. I have seen what happens when a medical bill arrives and there is nothing in the bank. I have seen what it does to a person's dignity.
I do not want that for myself. And I do not want it for anyone else.
So I am choosing the second path. Not because I want a Lamborghini. Not because I want to show off. But because money, at a certain level, stops being about pleasure and starts being about protection — protection for my family, for my future, and eventually, for people who were born into the same situation I was.
I want to reach the top. And then I want to turn around and open the door behind me.
That is the only version of success that means anything to me.
What I did about it
I did not wait for the system to change. I started learning on my own.
I learned to code from YouTube and from documentation. I learned to write by writing. I learned to negotiate by reading books and by practicing in small conversations. I learned to build by building.
None of this was easy. There was no teacher to guide me, no syllabus to follow, no exam to prepare for. I had to figure out my own path, and I had to stay consistent even when nobody was watching.
But I learned something that no classroom could have taught me: how to teach myself.
That is the most important skill I have ever developed. And it is the one skill that the education system has consistently failed to provide.
What I would change
If I could redesign the Indian education system, I would make three changes.
First, I would replace memorization with application.
Instead of asking students to recall what a formula says, I would ask them to use the formula to solve a real problem. Instead of testing memory, I would test understanding.
Second, I would introduce coding and building from an early age.
Not as an optional subject, but as a core skill. Just like reading and writing, building should be something every student learns to do.
Third, I would teach communication and negotiation.
Because these are the skills that will determine whether a student succeeds in life, regardless of how good their grades are.
A note to students like me
If you are reading this and you feel the same way I do, here is what I want to say.
Do not wait for the system to change. Start learning what matters, on your own.
You can learn coding from free resources. You can learn negotiation from books. You can learn to build by building. You do not need permission from anyone.
The system will keep doing what it was designed to do. But you can choose to learn differently.
You can choose to be more than your marks.
A note to teachers and parents
If you are reading this, I want you to know that I do not blame you.
You are doing the best you can within a system that is hard to change. But I want to invite you to consider one thing: what would it look like if students were allowed to learn differently?
What if students were encouraged to build things instead of memorizing them?
What if marks were less important than understanding?
What if the goal of education was not to produce good exam-takers, but good thinkers?
These are not easy questions. But they are important ones.
Final thoughts
I am sixteen years old. I have been learning on my own for two years. And I have realized something important.
The gap between what I am taught and what I need is not a gap that can be closed by the system.
It is a gap that has to be closed by me.
I am not waiting for the system to change. I am changing myself.
And if you are a student like me, I hope you do the same.
*I write about code, physics, math, and the things I build. If you are also learning on your own.
let's connect:-``
- GitHub: github.com/yashmatrani-cpu/My-Projects
- Gumroad: yashmatrani.gumroad.com
- X: @Developervxku
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