Today our country is suffering from an individualistic mindset. Families are splitting to be smaller and modular. More and more older parents are forced to live a lonely life. As human beings, we are not able to see the impact of our actions beyond our own selfish benefits. We all seem to be in some kind of race - more money, more wealth, higher positions. 

There is nothing wrong with more money or higher positions BUT can we afford to ignore ourselves as a collective society? 

People in India have lived as collective beings in our societies for ages however now we are seeing our villages and cities go through huge changes. The dysfunctions of this individualistic mindset are visible all across. One can see people cleaning their houses but throwing the same trash on roads or pumping groundwater without care for others or draining their wastes and polluting rivers. There are many such examples all around us.

Where are we nurturing this individualistic mindset?

One such place is our schools. Students are rewarded for their individual scores, they are forced to compete against each other and in almost all classrooms, only few are appreciated for their hard work. We seem to care about the top few and ignore many, who are not in the top but make significant improvements.

Imagine 16 years of practising to care for your own score only and then practising competing with your own fellow classmates. We become what we practice.

Yes, this system has prepared us well to face the competitions but we have also got boxed in individualistic mindset. It has become a collective disease unless we take long term action.

If yes, please sign this petition to the Ministry of Education, Govt of India and the Boards to appeal all the schools across country to do these 3 practices at least once every month (for students above grade 6)

1. Publish the collective average score of each classroom in whatever subjects students are tested.
2. Celebrate improvements (collective and individual) and kindness when they help each other
3. Give some time (min 30 mins) for students to retrospect on how they can improve collectively

I am an agile facilitator and coach for corporations and I have seen human behaviours change with these minor changes. BUT for our society to change in the long term, we need these changes to happen in schools. 

These three practices do not require any changes to existing practices and they are easy to implement. 

There is a need to create new value in our children - “Collective Improvement”