Learning three Rs, the U.S. and desi way

Across the universe, it is customary for parents to expend vast quantities of blood, sweat and tears to give their children the best in life and nowhere is this yearning more evident than in the realm of education. It starts off with kindergarten, continues with high school, intensifies with college and reaches a peak with post-graduation for the fortunate few who scale those heights. We all love badges, especially elitist ones and even the most hard-core socialite's ears prick up when the topic of conversation shifts from handbags to Ivy League.  Name dropping is all very well but those who casually slip Harvard or Cambridge into an Instagram chat carry far more heft than the crass Gurgaon matron whonatters on about her "Louise Wutton" getting stolen on her last trip to the French Riviera.

As much as we may complain about American culinary or Presidential choices, when it comes to education, very few countries on the planet can hold a candle to the USA. Not only do they attract the finest crop of eager young minds to their universities, they also manage to hire the best talent to nurture and inspire their wards. Rather than rote learning, the emphasis is on learning how to think and that is a vastly underestimated quality. For example, the comedian Anuvab Pal's finest material on the Ivy League circuit deals with his first day in class at MIT. His professor asks him to summarise Hamlet's dilemma and Pal fluently rattles off relevant stanzas from the Oxford guide whereupon he holds up his hands and says, "No, I asked you what you think?" Bang on cue he responds, "You're the professor, white guy, big beard with two PhD's, you know how much my parents are paying to send me here…who cares what I think? You just tell me and I'll take notes."

In India, our over-weening respect for authority manifests itself in a fundamental inability to question, analyse or criticize and our feeble attempts to do so result in the dreaded "indisciplined" label, far less desirable than Lousie Wutton. In America not only do they encourage grad students to think for themselves, they go all the way by selecting individuals who embody the values of the institution to deliver the commencement address to the graduating class. Even though the university cannot dictate precisely the final class its graduates will hear on campus, great care and diligence is taken to ensure that the message is on point and consistent with the education and values it has instilled.

I attended my daughter's graduation at Georgetown, Washington DC last week and beyond the glittering military tattoo, the gowns and trimmings and the clockwork precision of the ceremony, what truly stood out was the powerful eloquence of the keynote speaker, the celebrity chef, Jose Andres.

If Andres sounded like an unusual pick after Joseph Baratta, global head of private equity at Blackstone, Madeleine Albright or Tina Tchen, former Chief of Staff to Michelle Obama, he was an inspired choice. For his work in Puerto Rico and Haiti following natural disasters, Chef José Andrés, a naturalized U.S. citizen, has been  recognized by the James Beard Foundation as Humanitarian of the Year. Andrés and his non-profit, the World Central Kitchen, served over 3.3 million meals in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria through the Chefs for Puerto Rico campaign. As the first person to properly welcome young graduates into the "real world", he was truly brilliant. He began by urging the Public Policy graduates to cultivate a sense of empathy as opposed to the regimentation of an Excel spreadsheet, for boots on the ground and practical experience as opposed to interminable committee meetings and for his efforts he was rewarded with a standing ovation. From the folds of his voluminous gown, he plucked a humble tomato saying, "Years ago they classified the tomato as a fruit so as to benefit from the favourable taxation policy applicable to fruits. Now I think this is a sensible decision, from an economic standpoint, but I am not stupid enough to put this tomato in a fruit salad." As the university spokesperson, Sue Lorensen said, "It's not enough to be a great public speaker or an accomplished scholar; the speaker should possess a combination of professional achievements and admirable personal qualities," and by this yardstick, Jose Andres received a richly deserved doctorate from Georgetown for outstanding humanitarian achievement. If one were to attempt to sum up his eloquent speech in a single sentence it would probably read, "You can be intelligent, gifted and brilliant but ultimately what will help you achieve the most in life is if you have a heart.