The onset
"At least 35 million children aged 6-14 years do not attend school in our country", and those of us who are lucky enough realize that we have simply jumped from one swamp to another, though its depth is relatively low and it's our education system which pulls us down this time, not the fear of sleeping with empty stomach.
It's a slow process, we don't realize it until we hit our high school. Until then, we get up, pack our backpacks with books making us realize the effect of our planet's gravity, and then somehow we sluggishly make our way to our not so beloved school, pondering how to coin the excuses for the homework which failed miserably to gather our interest. This cycle continues until we have exams at our doorstep. At this point in time, we encounter our past and start dreading about the impression we have made so far on our teacher because deep down we all are familiar with the handwriting that matters(at least in our school life, or maybe in college too?), and how the question we answered differently from what was taught to us will impact our final score(Come on, who are we kidding?). Well, there is a thing about humans, we evolve. With time, we learn how to survive in this system which appreciates the talent of cramming rather than creativity.
A vicious cycle
We hack into the system, going out through all of its loopholes we learn how to grapple with this education system by mending ourselves in the way it wants us to be. By this time, we already have survived a few years in the system, and now we are confident enough to come out alive, every time. Cramming up everything in the domain of tomorrow's exam, we give extra time to questions which our teacher highlighted as important(remember Kirchoff's laws?). Somehow, we make past those examinations and who can forget those dreadful results in which we are always compared to Sharmaji's son.
Most of us remain floating just near the above average criteria, below which we are given tags of naive swimmers who won't be able to fish anything in the real world, by our society. By now our vision is completely blurred to look beneath the surface and we simply swallow the words thrown at us, be it right or wrong. Dragging ourselves, somehow we manage to finish our Class 10. And fortunately(or ill-fatedly?) we receive calls from relatives who never existed before the results were out. The first question is not what we usually expect, either we are too entitled or they lack some communication skills, as the first question which pops up is, how much did you score?
The pre-decided career paths
With all the guilt we accumulated so far we try to look to past the barriers put up by our society and we end up seeing the canvas they want us to see. Most of us are forced into taking Science because everyone sees a successful doctor/engineer and they think there is no such thing as a struggling engineer/doctor? Here comes Kota, a factory in which students are used as raw materials to produce some top-notch doctors and engineers. Some make their way into IITs, NITs, AIIMs, etc. while those left behind are trying to cope up with what was happening since the last two years and thinking how impossible it was to kill any time during that 6 hours examination?
The millions who have lost this battle head towards the private colleges. We realize our hands are dirtier than ever and, someone hardly talks about it, let alone make a move to clean it. Finally, during the journey of our college, we realize the direction in which we want to pedal our boat.
What is wrong with the system?
The above excerpt highlights what happens during the life of almost every other Indian student, the situation is much worse in some cases. Our education system appreciates the ability to rephrase what was written in our notebook and no doubt it fails miserably to recognize an individual's talent. The results are heart-wrenching because our education system fails imperfectly every hour by leaving a student with no other choice than killing oneself. Our students are so stressed by peer pressure, poor academic results, parental pressure, living up to everyone's expectations that it feels relatively easy to kill him/herself than to cope up with it.
The case of student suicides
On February 1, a student of IIT Hyderabad killed himself by jumping off his hostel building. The suicide note extracted clearly highlighted the huge pressure that a normal student carries on his shoulders. The situation remains the same all over the nation, be it a prestigious institute or a tier-3 college. Parents fail to see the suicides because the news is veiled by a fresher earning in crores. They start expecting the same from their kid, because of which the kid is forced to follow the same 10-15 hours schedule which that guy used to follow.
Conclusion
Our education system founders to understand that everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. Our education system judges a student by the amount of information he can retain rather than checking if the concept is clear or not. Mathematics and science are all that our system and society care about. Skills, what are you talking about? No doubt why only 7% of our engineers are employable.
Our country is still developing and we understand that, but if we need to improve our education system to save innocent lives and to build a nation in which the system teaches us where to look, not what to see.
- Sachin Kumar
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