Their juniors, however, who have just moved to standard 9th or 11th are now experiencing the same. The moment kids move into these dreaded classes, the board exams start looming over their heads. A strange kind of fear psychosis grips most of them as they are subjected to a hyper academic stress created by various stakeholders.
I call this a 4 walled pressure chamber, squeezing these poor kids, as these walls keep moving inside leaving little room for fresh air. The four walls are -
Wall One - Parents
Wall Two - School
Wall Three - Teachers
Wall Four - Society
One of my ex-student now working successfully as a marketing manager in a prominent real estate firm told me the other day - ' Sir my parents moved me to the hostel right from my class 6th so that I could score more marks. The hostel and school environment was very strict. We used to study for long hours but everything was for getting more marks. We never understood anything and hence I had little interest in what I studied. I had to just get good grades in my 10th and 12th class board exams. I was told that my grades pretty much determined my chances of getting into a good university in India, After my school was over, I wanted to study business but my father wanted me to join an engineering course. I had to give in to my father's demands and I joined engineering. Again the same story... I studied with no interest and just for marks. Finally when my father saw my performance in my engineering course, he let me join business studies during my master's program. This is when for the first time I started really learning and marketing attracted me the most. I am now enjoying my career. I do not know why and what I studied, before my MBA. I feel it was such a waste. I wish I had studied my courses in school for developing an understanding and exploring new areas and not just for grades!"
Sadly this is the state of most of the kids in India.
Let us briefly examine these '4 walls' -
Wall One: Parents
The moment their child gets closer to board exams, the parents get into hyperactive mode. They somehow take it on themselves the responsibility of ensuring that their child secure the top grade. Anything less than 95% is unacceptable. The child is deluged with several tutions from private tutors, arranged and sponsored by the parents. Even if the child feels that he/she can cope on their own, parents are restless and are not wanting to leave anything to chance. A regular day of a child suddenly changes and becomes ultra busy - school, private tutions, homework, self-study... no time to play, or relax.
Study, study and more study! No wonder startups have been created out of this frenzy of parents to get tutor's help for their kids. Byju's the online tutoring site for school students has seen a dizzy rise in the last couple of years. Investors are bullish on the prospects of Byju's and today it is a Harvard Business School Case Study!
Most parents are very happy if the school where their child is studying has less activities, events, festivals and more and more of academics. Extra classes, extra assignments make parents feel happy and secure. The kids on the other hand keep getting crushed under this growing academic stress.
Recently I heard a mother opining at a school open house - "Mam, thanks to your extra classes and assignments, my child is very serious now. She wakes up at 4 a.m. and studies till late."
A child turning from happy to serious concerns me, rather than filling me with delight,
Wall Two: School
The branding and prestige of a school is by the result that it can produce with its 10th and 12th standard students, the number of toppers, the number of All-India rankers, the number of first class with distinction, the number of first divisions etc. Everything is loaded on results.
The school instead should be recognised by the kind of teachers that it has, the process of teaching-learning, the kind of fun that it can inculcate in learning, the amount of creativity it can fuel in the kids. But these are all traded in favour of marks percentage.
Schools cannot be blamed alone, as parents too build this pressure. But then school in the era of competition have commoditized education and the one that can get best results demands the best price! No wonder these days parents have to apply for loan to pay for the school fees of their children.
Most schools are run by businessmen and not by educationists. Agreed good tution fees is needed to get good teachers. But then ask the teachers, they really do not get paid too well in India. Where is the money going then? While schools keep getting richer, the students keep getting poorer and poorer,
Wall Three: Teachers
Teaching is the art of making the less obvious, obvious and the obvious look magical! Unfortunately most teachers today approach teaching from a mechanistic perspective and the outcome of teaching is knowledge and not necessarily learning.
Knowing something is not necessarily understanding the same. but understanding something really well is the basis for application, creation and innovation. The rote-based teaching practised by most teachers is focused on narrow outcomes of marks and grades; not on the broad principles of lifelong learning. Making students memorise things is not necessarily making them intelligent and wise. Wisdom and intelligence stems from how one see learning in action.
Take for instance mathematics. Most students fear and detest maths not because something is inherently wrong with the subject, but because maths is taught in the most mundane method-problem format. In other words, tell the students the method, and then make them do a couple of sums. That's it!
Recently during an admission interview I asked a student what is the practical application of Pythagoras Theorem. Although he knew the formula of the theorem, he could not tell me the application of the theorem. It had never been taught in his school.
That is where the problem really lies.
Hence quantum overtakes, quality. Outcomes are desirable in forms of marks. The pressure naturally is more on the students. The added pressure is because of the systemic disinterest for most subjects that is built in them through some really average teaching,.
Wall Four: Society
Society has two personifications with respect to education - one the education boards that exist in our nation. These boards have generally followed a curriculum and propagated a pedagogy that is heavily loaded in favour of rote-based learning. Look at the CBSE reforms this year. All schools must follow NCERT books, all chapters must be covered in the year, students must be put through multiple weekly tests, periodic tests, pre-midterm test and post mid term test, test, test and more tests. Most schools under pressure to comply are throwing out activity based learning out of the window as such a huge syllabus and so many tests would leave very little time for activities. This will only intensify rote-based learning.
We are bent on producing kids who look alike, do alike, behave alike but cannot think. Reminds me of Chaplin's Modern Times.
The second personification is the society at large. A society that perceives a child good in mathematics as intelligent, and the one good in humanities as useless; one that perceives a child good in English as smart, suave and the one who can speak good regional language or Hindi as illiterate; one that looks down, almost condemns children who fail to score too well. There is no place for ability, only one's grades can be a testimony to one's worth and nothing else.
I look at the poor child bent forward by the weight of his school bag, parent's expectations, school's and teacher's dictum and society's 'high' (mark up) benchmarks and only worry how the education and the societal system is killing creativity, stunting growth and dulling a curious mind.
Have we asked ourselves -
Why children stop asking questions as they grow up?
Why kids do not enjoy classes?
Why they rejoice when a teacher does not turn up on a day in the school?
Why the number of mental health cases like anxiety and depression is on the rise amongst kids?
Why the number of kids killing themselves after failing to secure good grades is on the rise?
Why most kids tell in admission interviews that they never got a chance to chose the desired field of study?
Why as a nation that has 1.6 billion people, we do not have more patents and innovations in our name?
Why despite having such high-brow schools and institutes of higher learning, we produce more workers than thinkers?
Why we have won so less Nobels till date?
Why we do not have an Intel, Google or Amazon from our nation yet?
Why we are thinking that the next medical miracle will come from the west?
Why despite so much competition, our kids end up with same repetitive jobs?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Many such questions find no takers. And often defence is offered in various forms.
Interestingly, one of Britain’s biggest graduate recruiters EY, the global accountancy firm, recently announced that it was scrapping the requirement for applicants to have a minimum 2:1 degree pass or Ucas point score of 300 (the equivalent of three B grades at A-level). This is part of the company's effort to attract millennial talent and hence open up opportunities for talented individuals regardless of their educational background and provide greater access to the profession.
I hope as my child climbs up the ladder of school classes, I as a parent can spare him at least one wall and hence leave him some room to wriggle out of this trap where walls keep closing-in. Will I be able to do that? Or will I succumb to this pressure of grades and degrades? Time will tell.
The 1954 classic Jagriti, long forgotten, needs to re-kindled and watched by everyone. May be then kids have some chance...
Sketch credit: http://kickofjoy.com/role-stress-pressure/
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