Scores don’t tell me that you write poetry
DO NOT TRAIN CHILDREN TO LEARN BY FORCE AND HARSHNESS, BUT DIRECT THEM TO IT BY WHAT AMUSES THEIR MINDS
A television interview shot Bihar-school-board toppers into national limelight and tweeple had a field day at the expense of these teenagers. Everyone forgot to deal with the real rot that runs under.
My father carried only a wooden slate to school, yet he had strong basics and ethics. In his days, teachers commanded respect, even of the laggards and rogues of the class. Private coaching was unheard of, yet students made it to prestigious institutions. The slate has given in to iPad but personal touch is absent and the mind has lost its edge. The smart, digital classrooms have a missing element — smart teacher. Schools who make IIT toppers are dime a dozen but few build your character to shape you into a good human being.
Newspaper headlines will tell you how much the country is obsessed with high scores. In the result season, front pages are plastered with the faces of boys and girls who have made it to the medical and engineering institutes, besides business schools and civil services. Media blitz gives the owners of coaching centres demigod-and-cult status among wannabe toppers. A coaching institute grabbed eyeballs for gifting a luxury car to one its students who got into the elite Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).
Call it mass hysteria or frenzy, children even kill themselves over poor scores. Perfect-10 CGPA is becoming a national obsession with parents. Easy-scoring pattern, point-based evaluation, and multiple-choice questions have shifted the equilibrium towards high scoring. It’s no longer lonely at the top but so damn crowded that even a near-perfect score might not be enough to get you into the course of choice.
Don’t envy the Bihar toppers. The come though the same system of rote-learning and little application of concepts. If scoring 100 was any sign of brilliance, we’d be a gifted nation by now. Schools have turned into shops that sell books, stationery, and uniform. Good education? Well, they do make children slog after school hours, to prepare them for entrance examinations. Parents couldn’t be more encouraging. Who doesn’t want a successful son or daughter?
Education is cruel on students, but parents don’t have it easy either. They are on the same emotional roller-coaster, going though anxiety, nervousness, and euphoria. Extreme pressure on children calls for a psychological review. Don’t downplay merit and competition, but don’t romanticise rank either.
In the words of Greek philosopher Plato: “Do not train children to learn by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”