Others will deconstruct the recent India exam scandals, the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) leaks and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) scoring debacle, by asking questions about what went wrong, who is to blame, and what should happen next. But there is a larger question here, at the intersection of how right-wing governments weaponize education, the firm belief of the middle class in the transformative power of education, and the sheer number of young people who are demanding opportunities that align with their intense willingness to work hard.

Those of us who study education understand that the neoliberal ideologies of our times have created a mind shift ― that educational institutions are in service of students and their families; that students are consumers; and that a course of study merits a financial payout that matches the investment of time and energy. While the notion that hard work should be rewarded, and the transactional approach to educational attainment, have existed in some form or the other over time, there is a palpable sense of desperation in our post-global world, where we know that a hardworking student in Brazil can take away our opportunity; a straight-A student in Belarus might have a leg up in the educational arms race; or an all-star student in rural Indonesia might just get a larger piece of the pie. This palpable desperation has led to a crisis among middle class students in both countries I have roots in, namely, the United States and India. Middle class students, particularly in these two countries, have determined that good enough is most definitely not good enough, failure is represented by not being extraordinary at everything, and that all of our time must be spent clinging to the life raft of exponential success ― better grades, better results, better skills, better… better… better. Educational success has taken the Olympic motto of “faster, higher, and stronger” to its dystopian ends.

In 2021, the International Olympic Committee added one word to the end of the motto, “together”, which we have conveniently forgotten as we think about the road to educational attainment. We expect students to achieve more to prepare for the next rung of the ladder, and we work actively to push down those who we think are not fit to be on that ladder with us. Authoritarian leaders thrive on division, and both the Trump and Modi governments have been quick to attack the curriculum in schools, demand that educational policies favor their supporters, and otherwise expect that schools become spaces to inculcate patriotic fervor. In the United States, which is driven to support big business, the focus is on vocational education, the destruction of the Department of Education, and the elimination of student loan programs to support a broad swathe of graduate programs. These policies work in concert to create an environment of approval, fear and acquiescence among people, depending on their vantage point. In India, similarly, the targeting of curricula, the shifts in the reservation system and attacks on academics work with the same chilling efficiency.

For the most part, middle class families have tried to ignore politics in the schoolhouse, primarily and probably because they know the reality they are setting their children up for. Competition is the name of the game, and there is no time to waste, no opportunity to lose, and no experience to settle for, because the piece of the pie shrinks every day. This narrative is buoyed by the numbers ― India’s youth population is immense. Nearly 40% of the population is under the age of 25. The median age in the country is 28. Demand for education continues to outpace supply. Families face frequent rejections when they seek to admit their children into ‘good’ schools and the deck seems to be stacked against those who have limited resources, live in less urbanized parts of the country, and have little social capital when it comes to educational experiences.

Preparing their children for entrance exams has become a central goal for middle class families, which see admission to elite institutions as the only way to guarantee that they at least stay latched on to their rung of the ladder, even if the idea of climbing right now might be a challenge. In both the United States and India, academic stress and perceived academic ‘disachievement’ have led to higher rates of mental health challenges, and increased rates of suicide and self-harm, particularly for those students, chiefly middle class, who have been led to believe that entrance to increasingly elite institutions, from elementary to high school, from college to graduate school, can be the difference-maker in their lives. These expectations are elevated in part due to the assumption that competition is rampant; that others are seeking to dislodge you from what you deserve; and that the only way you can be certain of success is to ensure that the leader who is protecting you is never doubted, questioned nor criticized.

So, this brings us back to the cheating scandals in India over the past few weeks. Nationalist leaders have convinced us that:

1) Education can be useful if you are able to use it to be a good worker, but definitely not if you use that education to think about anything outside what they want you to know about their vision of the world, 

2) Competition is killing us, and those whom we choose to hate should definitely not be given opportunities to take more from us than they already have, a crime we untiringly accuse them of, and  3) A good father controls what you can learn, so in this paternalistic empire, do not worry if my government is removing pesky items from the curriculum. Anyway, it was all woke, or what foreigners want you to think, so I am helping by getting rid of it. 

For the most part, the middle classes in both countries have not countered this narrative, nor have they pushed back against this reality. They are struggling to keep up in environments where there are other problems: rising inflation, expanding costs, increased strains on infrastructure, as well as dangerous environmental and security risks. Nationalist leaders need us to not focus on their other failures, so instead they create new enemies. In the meantime, we want our children to be happy, to make their way in the world, to have more security than we do, and so we put up with a lot. We remind our children to work hard, to grasp every opportunity to strengthen our applications to open the next door, to study, take tuitions, hire tutors, because we know that even a 0.5% improvement in scores can be the difference between access and opportunity, or failure and anonymity. We put this strain on our children, who carry our hopes and dreams on their narrow, underdeveloped shoulders in ways that we could never comprehend.

UNTIL…UNTIL…UNTIL…the system we blindly believed in fails us. The powers that be accept a fraudulent company as a contractor or lack the will to protect the integrity of the exam, and suddenly the Potemkin village we have propped up, just by looking the other way, collapses around us. And then the middle class gets angry. They have been told to “eat cake”, so if they are playing by the rules, they want those who say they are looking out for them to do their fair share. Too many parents have lost their children to the stress of academic demands, and when the leaders who are meant to support these families are caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar, to mix metaphors, the gloves come off.

Somewhere along the way, authoritarian leaders forget that accountability might still come calling. In the CBSE scandal, people have been reassigned. Yet, there might be a profound disconnect between how leaders perceive their ability to withstand this crisis and how high the stakes of the examination results are to families. This is not an isolated push against an individual who has a strong opinion about the government, nor is it about a fringe storyline about us versus them. This is about all of us and the expectations we place on ourselves, the pressures we put on our children, and the ways in which we have avoided looking at the politics of education, with the belief that we just need to get the credential to get one step higher. In this system, the pressure against the government in India today related to the cheating scandals is critically important in the ways we hold leaders accountable in a democracy. It might not have happened on other issues, but in this situation, there is such widespread outrage, there might be a clear tipping point. Education is at the fulcrum of how we see the development of families, communities and countries. We might be able to ignore a lot, but can we ignore this?

Faster, higher, stronger might not be the focus right now, but maybe ‘together’ finally is?