Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe.’ —H.G. Wells

This is an unsparing dissection of the current education system by someone who has managed to wade through it, comparatively unscathed.

Unbroken and unshaken by a system that believes largely in the status-quo, writer Sid Sanghvi lays bare the truths about learning and the paradoxes in the ‘system’ of education. He challenges age-old notions about how information is imparted, and argues that learning without any understanding of how to learn, is the root of the problem.

The book takes a dispassionate look at the rights and wrongs perpetuated by the education system, both knowingly and unknowingly. There was a time when teachers kept a record of all the educating they had done: ‘911,527 blows with a rod, 124,010 blows with a cane, 20,989 taps with a ruler, 136,715 blows with the hand, 10,235 blows to the mouth, 7,905 boxes on the ear, and 1,118,800 blows on the head,’ wrote one teacher in his personal diary.

Cut to the present, with the inefficiencies of the current education system exposed by the emergence of Covid-19, there could not be a better time for the incumbents to get a much needed reality check. But fear not, in tandem with attempting to lay bare the flaws of primary and secondary education, this book offers a roadmap for how one may successfully navigate the current system to maximize their probability of success.

This is a simple guide to our education system: its past, its present and a roadmap for its future.