Cultural Diversity, Stereotypes and Discrimination in Indian Education

For many of us, there is a natural and strong tendency to make assumptions about people different than ourselves. In what ways will your future assumptions be affected by what you have learned from reading this material on Workforce Diversity Management issues thus far?

I learnt that one should acknowledge the difference. I should accept the fact that when an individual works in the diverse environment, one must realize that all the people are not same. Same goes with the saying that all the fingers of hand are not the same. I believe that one should not judge anyone by race, color, gender or personality. As discussed in the class instead of changing one person who has actually a potential to make a change one should encourage others to take inspiration and work towards their goal.

One must always look at the good things in a person rather than judging and make a generalization of that person. I also learnt that one should offer bias free training. Even if one try to be bias free, but still we make a partial judgment of an individual because of human tendency. Implicit training allows individual too help change behaviors and creates consciousness of unconscious attitudes.

I come from a country which has a diverse culture. India is a multilingual country. The diversity in India can be distinguished as racial diversity, Religious diversity, Linguist diversity and cast diversity. As there are different religions and cast in India, the education system in India is based on Reservation system. For example if an individual has to take admission in IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) which is one of the prestigious institution in India, some of the seats are reserved for students who are not even worth of getting to the institution, on the other hand the one who has good grades and have done excellent in academics and just because of reservation, sometimes such students fail to get the admission to the institution. I believe that the reservation system in India should be abolished and everyone should be given an equal opportunity and especially on the basis of merit and not on caste or any other specific religion.

“ A stereotype gives an overview of an individual or a group of people”. Stereotype is something in which an individual comes to a conclusion about how a person is, denying the fact that in actuality that might not be right with that person. In my country, every parent wants their child to be either a doctor or an engineer. The parents always give examples of their relatives or someone who have succeed in their life because they are either engineer or doctor and have this stereotype that there is career only in medical or engineering and one will earn good.

Thus there is no option left with the child but to go with the parents’ decision and eventually no one know what the child actually likes or dislikes. In my country the education is focused more on theoretical concepts rather than focusing on practical knowledge. When I came here for higher studies, I realized that the money that my parents have spent on my education would not be enough to survive here. As seen, to overcome the shortage of money, students do on-campus jobs in different departments like library, dinning or as teaching assistance.

In my country one would rarely find someone working on campus. The society feels that the job that they are doing is against their dignity. There is a stereotype in my country that only a specific group of people will doing such kind of work. From personal experience when I was working on campus in dinning I learnt multitasking, being patient and avoid wasting food. I believe that such kind of stereotypes in India should change and parents should go with children’s likes.

Due to diverse culture in India, discrimination does exist. When there is a reservation caste system, issues like being unfair to a group of people or an individual exist. Partiality may be on the basis of race, age or sex. When we talk about education in India, women and minorities are targeted the most. In the Indian society parents refrain their daughter from taking education due to various reasons.

The main reason is that when a girl gets married she has to leave her parents’ house and move in to husband’s house. So the parents believe that after she gets married she will not bring any returns to the family. They believe that a woman should only give birth and do household work and because of this they feel that there is no need for her to take higher education. But they don’t understand that if a woman is educated she will educate the future generation.

Offer a personal hypothesis answering, why does discrimination still exist today? Share a personal incident you have experienced or witnessed. I feel that discrimination still exist because of nepotism, being partial or hostile surrounding. If talking about personal experience, as I mentioned there exists a reservation system in my country. I had decided to go to engineering in computer science, but as specific seats are reserved for the specific group of people, irrespective of excellence in academics, I failed to get the major in computer science just because of the reservation system which was not merit based but caste based.