The outdated syllabus adapted by Indian education system is one of the major flaws of our educations system. Though we got independence 60 years ago, our education system is still functioning in colonial mode. In the early days of independent India, there were only handful of people who went on to pursue the university education. And only a small number of these people completed their university education. During the fifties majority of the population dropped out post- SSLC(Secondary School Leaving Certificate ).This forced the educators  to design policies which would enable them to teach as much as they can in 10 years. This Crammed syllabus left scope only for rote mode of learning (learning characterized by use of memory with little intelligence). The education policies which were adapted later on for several decades have been built on the policies of 1950s with hardly any relevance to the growing needs of the developing country. In other words it’s no longer contemporary. Though the Indian education system does a good job in laying strong foundations in basic math and science, it loses its focus and gets exam oriented. The only plus I can think of Indian education is the strong foundation in basic math and science.

Contrary to the Indian education system, western education System has gone through several amendments to suit the growing needs of the industrialized and developed economies. The western education is more relaxed during the early years and gradually catches up. One major set back of the western education is lack of proper foundation in basic math and science.

Indian education is far from being application- oriented. The exam oriented learning promoted by this system hardly has any emphasis on application-orientation. The examination system itself is flawed. It tests the student’s ability to memorize and regurgitate (reproduce the memorized stuff) given set of formulae, theories etc and not the student's ability to apply the same in problem solving. In this mode of education, the students fail to understand the underlying principles and concepts. Moreover the students are tested few times a year which promotes last minute memorization and regurgitation, instead of studying through out the year. It’s highly unlikely that they will remember anything after the exams. This trend is seen at every level, even the entrance exams like the Common Entrance Tests (CETs) are not an exception to this. In other words these tests are selecting their future doctors and engineers based on their capability to memorize concepts and reproduce them. Indian Education is more of class room based curriculum and not practical based. There is only so much one can learn based on theoretical curriculum.

The western education has a greater emphasis on application- oriented education and their exams are designed to test student’s ability to apply the concepts in problem solving. In fact they allow cheat sheets in the exams which contain formulae. They do not care about a student's ability to memorize concepts/theories.  They test the student year round by means of assignments, projects and so on. Their curriculum equally emphasizes theoretical and practical learning

Indian Education does not promote independent thinking. It hardly encourages a student to explore or question the existing concepts. The education system is so designed that it presents a propounder’s (one who proposed a theory/concept) perspective of a theory or concept and does not encourage a student to critically examine the theory/concept. In other words Indian system is training its students to follow blindly any concept presented to them without questioning. It hardly has any emphasis on basic scientific research

The Western Education is several steps ahead in this one aspect. It has well developed scientific research and encourages independent thinking with a goal of producing top notch research scientists, economists and mathematicians.