Indian Education from the Movie “Starting Line” and “3 Idiots”

1.Introduction

Originally, education was meant to teach students and develop their literacy, but under the pressure of education nowadays, education has become a competition. Parents are not only satisfied with what their children learn in school, but they also pay more attention to their children’s educational environment, and what the school can bring to their children which results in a shortage of scarce educational resources, parents from themselves to their children are beginning to fight for good school places. The Indian film is an adaptation of this phenomenon based on social reality. The research context of this paper is based on the education system and the issue of higher education, and the theme of this paper is based on the educational issues presented in Indian films. The significance is to help the masses to become aware of the causes of educational anxiety so that they can reduce their psychological anxiety and not be affected by the anxious educational environment around them.

2.Movie Introduction

Table 1: Movie summarize.

2.2.Starting Line

The movie Starting Line mainly tells the story of a middle-class Indian couple who spend a great deal of effort to send their daughter to study in a private aristocratic school, which maps out many of the realities of Indian society.

The main character, Raj, is a garment store owner who is not well-born but is competent and has a relatively successful career with his sincere attitude and flexible business acumen. Unlike Raj, Raj’s wife Meeta, who attended a public school but received a college education, is very concerned about her daughter’s education. In order to give their daughter Pia a better future and hopefully cross their class, Meeta and Raj plan to send their daughter to the best private aristocratic schools in India, which have European-style cafeterias, large lawns, and resemble a five-star hotel, and are more like social occasions for the aristocratic elite than schools that teach and educate people. However, Raj and Meeta, although already among the rich in India but still not part of the social circle of the rich, and the real traditional rich class has a big gap, the school requires a background check of the parents, even if the Raj couple moved into the rich district is difficult to integrate into the community culture. Later, Raj and Meeta re-consulted a college counselor, who advised them to use the underprivileged spots through bribery. So the Raj family moved into the slum, and at first, they were completely unable to get used to the local life until the poor Shyam appeared and kept helping them to adapt to the local habits, and also sacrificed himself to help Raj until the Raj family finally adapted to the local life and felt very much humanized in the slum. But the final result was that Pia enrolled as a poor student, but Shyam’s children were not selected. When the matter was revealed, Shyam gave up reporting in order not to ruin Pia’s future. Eventually, Raj realized the wrongness of what he had done, criticized this egregious monopoly on education in the private school show, transferred the child back to the public school where the Shyam children were, and sponsored the school.

2.3.3 idiots

The Imperial College of Technology is the most outstanding institution in India. Rancho at the beginning of the school is different from other students to comply with the so-called rules of the school. He is a maverick to do as he pleases, and often contradicts the professor and the principal, however, he also helps part-time boys who do not pay tuition fees to study. It was this rebellious character that Rancho helped the senior who committed suicide because of the school’s unreasonable education system. Rancho persuades the headmaster’s daughter Pia to find their own happiness, helps his friend to save his father, and tells them to be brave enough to pursue their dreams, and eventually, he has become an engineering scientist with hundreds of patents and teachers.

3.Educational Issues Reflected in the Film

3.1.Education Anxiety

3.1.1.The Anxiety of Middle-class Parents

Middle-class parents are in an awkward position. They are not poor people who need to work hard for a living, and they are not aristocratic elites in the traditional sense either. Middle-class people have worked and worked hard for the first half of their lives to achieve their current status and life, and the wealth they have now is not enough to support them to slack off for the second half of their lives [1]. The middle class may be able to reach the next class through hard work, but they may also fall into the next class if they are not careful. The key to deciding whether they can move up to the next class or down is their children, but the future of their children is out of their control, and investment in their children, especially education, is the only thing parents can control. Many middle-class parents also cross the class by virtue of their excellent performance, so they believe that the importance of their children’s education will definitely be rewarded [2][3]. In the movie Starting Line, Mita as a mother once said, ‘We can’t let Pia go to the public school we used to attend... In public school, nothing can be learned, our daughter will be afraid to communicate with others, she will be afraid if others speak English, she will not adapt to society, she will end up isolated, she will be depressed, and what if she starts taking drugs? ‘Although the language is exaggerated, it depicts the heart of being a parent, not getting a good elite education means people won’t have a good future because your daughter has already lost at the starting line.

3.1.2.Anxiety Caused by Social Pressure

The first is the anxiety brought about by the pressure of life. Grades are related to a person’s career, which also determines the quality of life of people. Without knowing the premise of job seekers, education will become a good credential as well as a synonym for people. The level of education is a reflection of ability. High education and grades can help job seekers stand out in the competition. Nowadays, the major companies recruiting required the academic level of candidates to be very high, which is why in 3 Idiots the Indian Imperial College of Technology trains students to do whatever it takes to get good grades. The existence of this school is a springboard for students to enter society and find good jobs. For the main characters, Farhan and Raju, good grades are very important because they have family responsibilities, such as a sick father and a sister who cannot get married because of the high dowry, and their failure will affect the whole family. In the film, the school is seated according to grades in the graduation photo, which speaks to the supremacy of grades in this education system, where good grades are a source of dignity [4][5][6].

Educational institutions are also transmitting anxiety to parents in order to make a profit, and this anxiety will spread again before the parents. For example, the mother in “The Starting Line” is reading the information to know what the best school is, and the college counselor also mentioned that many parents are already doing college planning when they are pregnant. It is this atmosphere of in-volume that leads to more and more anxiety among parents, and because of the families around them joining the educational competition [7][8].

3.2.Class Solidification and Educational Injustice

The starting line is also known as elite education as well as aristocratic private schools. Its existence itself is no longer purely for education. It actually represents the social status of the parents and the value they can offer. The school in the movie believes that if the parents are not well educated then they will not value their children’s education [1]. This monopoly of the upper class starts with the background of the child’s parents. As everyone thinks, education is the way to break through the class, but in order to ensure the rights of the rich, the rich will try to organize the success of people who do not belong to this class. As Hiram says in the movie if the poor cross the class there will be no one to serve the rich. They discriminate against these people who want to move up a class. The Raj family tries to integrate into the rich community by all means, but because of the difference in origin and upbringing, all they got in return was ridicule and contempt. The way to stop the circulation of the rich is the monopoly of power, because they have more resources in their hands, they will try to deny the right to equitable development [1][9][10]. In order to ensure each other’s benefits, the rich also existed before collusion. For example, the principal of the aristocratic private school in the movie will acquiesce to the rich people to use the poor students’ quota to enter the school, because in this collusion she can gain benefits. The school has long since become a place of fame and fortune for the rich, rather than a place for students to learn. The inequality of education has blocked the path of class circulation, once again deepening the gap between the poor and the rich, leading to a greater solidification of class.

4.Conclusions

To sum up, the root of middle-class parents’ education anxiety is that their current stage of achievement does not guarantee their children a carefree future, or even the possibility of falling to the next class. So in order to ensure their children’s quality of life, they can only guarantee that they will have good results at this stage and that good grades can result in a better future. The pressure of education brought by society is mainly reflected in the atmosphere that the whole society is seriously education involution. Only students who graduate from prestigious schools with high grades are likely to have good jobs, and all parents have a high demand for their children’s school and education training from childhood.

The reason why parents have to pay so much effort for their children to go to the so-called good schools is that class entrenchment causes people of higher classes to monopolize the resources they have by all means, thus preventing people of lower classes from achieving class crossing through education and from competing with them. It is because this class solidification leads to uneven education resources, the inequality of education also results in social class being difficult to circulate, and thus a vicious circle.