In India, high-pressure exams are creating a student suicide crisis

You claimed a contradiction but didn't present it. And you go on to assert exactly the things that I said. I am saying that the system failed the students by forcing them to prepare relentlessly for these exams, which the students come to realize is really the only path to success, robbing them of some of the aspects of a normal childhood.

If the system / economy were capable of providing a more varied set of jobs like acting opportunities, regular gigs for bands, apprenticeships in various blue collar jobs, etc. then people will be able to choose professions that better match their interests and skill sets. Why force someone who likes to work with wood into a degree in engineering or science. This is largely what is happening in India.

I am not saying that there are no actors or bands or bike mechanics in India. Rather, it is assumed that everyone needs a degree from college and even if this is an entirely ridiculous proposition for many people (based on their interests) and they endure four years in college doing something they don't enjoy in some of the formative years of their life.

So the people who might have benefited from an apprenticeship or taking a year or two off from this career sprint suffer the most, and the final allocation of people to jobs is dismal (the fact that hundreds of thousands of Indians work at call centers is a symptom). The system fails by not providing such kinds of alternate opportunities at the scale that is necessary for a country so huge.

Finally, all middle income Indian parents will continue to pick some career in a STEM discipline for their kids very early on, preventing any investment of time in discovering their interests, keeping this carousel spinning.

The order of the letters.

The situation is nothing new. I am from Bangalore and often hear a well known anecdote about Mysore, a large historically rich city about 100 km from Bangalore. I hear it from people of my parents' generation, so it must be the 60s. Its invariably said in a humorous tone.

The 10th year of school is a very important stage, transitioning to university, and the exam has always been stress inducing. On the day of the result, there were policemen guarding a lake called kukkarahalli kere in order to stop students who failed from committing suicide.

Actually, the list is quite extensive. I called out Sun mainly because it is a class above Google and Facebook. Also, Sun contributed significantly more than just Java: Solaris (one of the first widely used kernels that had containers), SPARC, VirtualBox, OpenOffice, ZFS. I think it's really sad that people have forgotten the contributions of the first-generation of large computer companies. I rank Sun Microsystems with the likes of Microsoft and Apple.

Also, other than Google or Facebook, I can't mention any company of that size founded by Harvard or Stanford Alums (in the computation industry at least). Can you?

Other examples BTW are Cirrus Logic, Zoho, Infosys, etc.

Yes... It's also worth being able to see this "other" in the mirror.

Chemistry education research describes US pre-college chemistry education content as "incoherent". A challenge when teaching high-school stoichiometry, is students not viewing atoms as real physical objects.

... I've had repeated conversations of the form "What do you think of this alternate way to teach X, which seems to yield a deeper understanding?" "Nifty! But... my students take the MCAS [high-stakes exam for medical school] soon, and all they need to know there is [rote-memorized superficiality]. Instruction time is short, and I'd be doing my students a disservice to spend time doing better."

... Plug-and-chug is a thing. Among teaching staff too. A widely-used text, repeated revised, for years had a problem 'apply the idea gas law to solid> Argon'.

... Innumeracy is pervasive in society. There's more than a half century of journal letters from professors complaining that their physics/geology/other PhD candidates lack a quantitative feel for the field. http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/ started with one graduate student realizing their own lack, and trying to do something about it.

... A five-year old wishing to know what color finger paint to use for the Sun, had best not ask first-tier astronomy graduate students, who pervasively get this wrong. Of the few local outliers, as many learned it in a seminar on misconceptions in astronomy education, as in their "successful" astronomy education. Asking a follow-up question of "what color is sunlight?" often elicits as double take, as two rote-memorized inconsistent factoids collide, apparently for the first time.

You can do good astronomy research, without an informed five-year old's knowledge of Sun color. Years ago, a front-page NYTimes article went by, accurately reporting(!) a claim... that the Universe is green. Some folks working with spectra, had for outreach pushed them through some buggy open-source color code, and lacked the basic understanding to recognize the result as nonsense.

The then Brazilian education system was capable of training for rote regurgitation. But not for research. The US system is capable of training for research. But not for numerate multidisciplinary understanding. As is perhaps needed, for example, to create non-wretched science education content.

So as we look at the dysfunctional memorize-and-regurgitate of the Indian education system, it's worth remembering that we're facing similar challenges^W opportunities for transformational improvement.