{"id":53376,"date":"2026-07-31T17:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T11:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/2026\/07\/31\/education-for-the-future-building-creative-thinkers-not-just-exam-toppers\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T17:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T11:50:16","slug":"education-for-the-future-building-creative-thinkers-not-just-exam-toppers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/2026\/07\/31\/education-for-the-future-building-creative-thinkers-not-just-exam-toppers\/","title":{"rendered":"Education for the Future: Building Creative Thinkers, Not Just Exam Toppers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], July 31: <\/strong>Every year, as March rolls in, you see the same scene play out in cities across India. Kids bent over their notes, cramming late into the night. Parents pace nervously outside exam halls, trading worried glances. News channels run stories about \u201cexam stress,\u201d like it\u2019s just another season. Then, come May, newspapers plaster photos of toppers everywhere\u2014their high scores hailed like cricket match victories.<\/p>\n

But talk to anyone who actually hires young people\u2014ask managers, start-up founders, folks building teams. They rarely mention marks. Instead, they want people who can solve problems, think on their feet, and adapt to whatever\u2019s thrown at them. Toppers don\u2019t always tick those boxes.<\/p>\n

That gap\u2014between what schools reward and what life out there really needs\u2014is tough to ignore now.<\/p>\n

The Problem With Focusing Only on Marks<\/h2>\n

For decades, Indian schools hammered on one message: memorise, regurgitate, get marks. Back when jobs meant following orders and doing what you were told, maybe that was enough. Not anymore.<\/p>\n

Look at Nithin Kamath, who started Zerodha, the country\u2019s biggest trading platform. He\u2019s said over and over that his best hires were never class toppers\u2014they\u2019re the ones who get how people and markets work in ways that textbooks just can\u2019t teach. Or take Zepto. Two college dropouts\u2014Aadit and Kaivalya\u2014built a business by challenging old ways of thinking, not by sticking to a syllabus.<\/p>\n

Marks aren\u2019t useless. But they\u2019re just one way to measure a person, not the only way.<\/p>\n

What Creative Thinking Is Actually About<\/h2>\n

Creative thinking isn\u2019t just painting or doodling. It\u2019s about asking the right questions, keeping your cool when things are confusing, and linking ideas from all over the place instead of sealing them off into neat little boxes.<\/p>\n

Finland gets a lot of praise for its schools. Instead of tons of exams, kids there do projects. One project might combine geography, economics, and design. Finnish students do great in global rankings\u2014not because they take fewer tests, but partly because they do. They have more time to really understand, not just cram.<\/p>\n

India\u2019s got its own bright spots. Riverside School in Ahmedabad, started by Kiran Bir Sethi, is built on one rule: \u201cI Can.\u201d Kids there look for real problems\u2014unsafe roads, trash on the pavement, water getting wasted\u2014and they go fix them. Her project, Design for Change, now stretches to 60 countries. It proves what happens when kids are trusted to think.<\/p>\n

The Cost of Ignoring This<\/h2>\n

We pay, big time, for ignoring all this. More than 1.5 million engineering grads come out of Indian colleges every year. But companies say most of them aren\u2019t quite ready for work\u2014they need more training before they can handle real jobs. It\u2019s not always a lack of facts; it\u2019s missing the ability to think things through, communicate, and adapt.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the twist: Work is changing at rocket speed. AI tools already do a ton of routine stuff\u2014reading files, answering simple questions\u2014that once needed a person. Just knowing facts isn\u2019t enough. Judgement, curiosity, knowing when an AI has made a mistake\u2014those matter more. You can\u2019t rote-learn that.<\/p>\n

Some Good News<\/h2>\n

Honestly, things are shifting, if slowly. The National Education Policy 2020 pushes for less cramming, more hands-on projects, and mixing subjects. Now, a science student can learn music. A commerce student can pick up coding. You don\u2019t have to live in just one box anymore.<\/p>\n

Some states are trying new things, too. Delhi\u2019s \u201cHappiness Curriculum\u201d and \u201cEntrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum\u201d aim to spark reflection, confidence, and real-world thinking\u2014not just memorising textbooks.<\/p>\n

Colleges are waking up as well. Ashoka University brought in a liberal arts model, letting students study economics, philosophy, and computer science together\u2014something rare in India. Edtech companies like Byju\u2019s (for all their flaws) showed that learning could be visual, interactive, and not just a teacher talking at you for hours.<\/p>\n

What Parents and Teachers Can Actually Do<\/h2>\n

Changing the system is slow work. But smaller steps\u2014those can start now. Parents can stop treating one scorecard as a summary of their child. Ask your kid what they tried, built, questioned, or figured out this week.<\/p>\n

Teachers\u2014yes, even with tight syllabuses\u2014can let kids debate, build things, discuss. It doesn\u2019t have to be non-stop lectures.<\/p>\n

Schools shape what matters. Instead of only reading out topper lists in assembly, some schools now highlight \u201cbest solution of the month\u201d\u2014whether it\u2019s a clever fix for a class problem, building a small tool, or making a solid argument in a debate. What you praise publicly shapes what students chase.<\/p>\n

What Success Really Means<\/h2>\n

None of this means grades don\u2019t matter. You need strong basics\u2014math, reading, science. No country that\u2019s gone far threw out rigour and only chased \u201ccreativity.\u201d But we need balance. Exams are a part of growth, not the whole story.<\/p>\n

India\u2019s greatest strength\u2014its massive young population\u2014will really pay off if this generation learns to adapt, build, and think for themselves. The next big names\u2014the ones who will change companies, invent stuff, reshape ideas\u2014won\u2019t always be the toppers in the paper. More often, they\u2019ll be the ones who learned early to ask the question no one else thought to ask.<\/p>\n

PNN Education<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], July 31: Every year, as March rolls in, you see the same scene play out in cities across India. Kids bent over their notes, cramming late into the night. Parents pace nervously outside exam halls, trading worried glances. News channels run stories about \u201cexam stress,\u201d like it\u2019s just another season. Then, come…<\/p>\n

Read More “Education for the Future: Building Creative Thinkers, Not Just Exam Toppers”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53377,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-53376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsindia.co.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}