Two days before my Harvard graduation, 19 children were shot dead in their own classroom, in the United States.
That’s the day I realized American schools aren’t as great as they seem – and Indian schools, whatever their real flaws, might actually be doing something right for our kids.
This isn’t a comparison of Harvard to anything. Harvard is a university; this is about school education – the K-12 years that shape a childhood. What follows are three specific, documented reasons I’ve come to believe the Indian school system, for all its problems, protects children from things the American system currently doesn’t.
One: physical safety
Gun violence is one of the biggest challenges facing schools in America today.
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, which has tracked gunfire on school grounds since 2013, there were at least 144 incidents of gunfire on K-12 school grounds during the 2023–2024 school year — a 31% increase from the prior school year, and the second-highest total since Everytown began tracking in 2013 (Everytown for Gun Safety, 2024).
Growing up in an Indian school, that specific fear simply never existed for me and fortunately it also does not exist for young kids today as well. What hurts more, honestly, is how normal this has become in America – lockdown drills are now a routine part of childhood for millions of American kids, the way fire drills are everywhere else.
The tragedy that I am referring to in this piece – the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022 – killed 19 students and 2 teachers, making it one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history (Britannica, 2025).
Two: racism
Indian-American and Asian-American kids in U.S. schools report facing racial hate speech and harassment at rates that should alarm anyone paying attention. A 2024 peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence found that even in the years before the pandemic (2015–2019) – a period often assumed to be calmer than what followed – roughly 1 in 15 Asian American adolescents reported being targeted by hate speech at school (Gee, Cooc, & Yu, 2024).
Some of this starts as early as middle school. In an Indian school, a child doesn’t have to carry that heavy of a weight just for being who they are.
Three: the lunchbox moment
There’s a quieter but deeply specific cost too – one many Indian-origin kids growing up in the U.S. know by heart. It’s called the “lunchbox moment”: opening your tiffin at school, and hearing something like “ew, what IS that?” I can attest to this considering that my nephew is in middle school in Phoenix, Arizona and we have discussed this issue with each other.
One Indian-American, describing this exact experience to NPR, recalled it plainly: his mother would pack him “a deliciously cooked Indian dish,” and when he opened it at school, classmates would react with open disgust (NPR, 2024).
Enough of that, enough times, and kids stop packing dal. Stop packing achar. Some stop wanting to be who they are, at least at school. In an Indian school, I don’t remember me or my friends having to hide what’s on our plates. In fact, eating together, with different kinds of food cooked by our mothers, was something we looked forward to.
Some Indian-Americans report never feeling this shame at all, and a few writers have pushed back on the “lunchbox moment” becoming an overused, flattening trope for the entire immigrant experience (The Counter, 2020). I’m not claiming every Indian-American child goes through this – only that it’s real, common, and documented enough that dismissing it would be its own kind of dishonesty.
So why does this matter?
None of this means Indian schools are without their own real challenges – there’s still meaningful work to do to strengthen the system for every child. This isn’t a claim that one system is flawless and the other isn’t.
It’s a claim against those who believe that everything that is happening in Indian Education today is terrible and everything foreign is wonderful. It is also a claim that made me and my wife give up on the American school education because we got worried for our (future) kids being brought up in America.
It is because of these three specific things – physical safety, freedom from racial targeting, and not having to hide your own culture to belong. An Indian school childhood offered something an American one, for many kids, currently doesn’t.
Safety. Belonging. Not having to constantly prove you’re allowed to be in the room. That’s what I mean when I say Indian schools might be getting something right.
References
Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. (2024, August 16). As back-to-school season kicks off, new Everytown report finds 31 percent increase in gunfire on school grounds during 2023–2024 academic year. https://everytownsupportfund.org/press/as-back-to-school-season-kicks-off-new-everytown-report-finds-31-percent-increase-in-gunfire-on-school-grounds-during-2023-2024-academic-year/
Gee, K. A., Cooc, N., & Yu, P. (2024). Hate speech against Asian American youth: Pre-pandemic trends and the role of school factors. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 53(9), 1941–1952. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-024-01987-8
Robb Elementary School shooting. (2025). Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Uvalde-school-shooting
Some Indian American Democrats see themselves in Harris. Others see the limits. (2024, October 8). NPR. https://www.npr.org/2024/10/08/nx-s1-5131223/some-indian-american-democrats-see-themselves-in-harris-others-see-the-limits
Not all immigrants have a “lunchbox moment.” (2020). The Counter. https://thecounter.org/immigrants-lunchbox-moment-ethnic-food/
