Peer Pressure on Indian Kids Part 2

Even my son is having SLD (Specific Learning Disorder). He is diagnosed as hyper-active kid with IQ level more than his age but he has the problems with phonetic (spelling mistakes) and vowels. Indian Government has schemes to identify such students and provide them training however seldom does all the school do this because there are not specialists! Here again, teaching is not a money-minting profession and none of us wants to pursue this career.

However, does the blame lie only with the parents? What is the contribution of the society to this problem? In all fairness, what drives the parents or even teachers to behave so?

Shall we say it is our education system? Whether we like it or not, one’s survival, more so in the middle-class people of India, is banking on the education credentials. During my school days, getting a bachelor degree is enough. However, with educational institutions mushrooming all around, we are getting graduates likes onions and potatoes in the market.

Result? One has to have a professional degree if you have to have an edge. Even that has become more common. We can find BEs, MBAs, CAs, ICWAs spread all over. As the supply-demand gap reduces, so is the price. An Art or a Science or a commerce graduate can only dream of a clerical career and nothing more than that.

Even these degrees do not reflect the Intelligence of the student. It is only the memory capacity of the student decides the numbers and these numbers decide the intelligence level. Are we measuring the right aptitude of the students? Many a times, students simply memorize the words without even understanding what they are reading. I used to interview candidates for my company and most of the times I found the knowledge levels have no relation to the marks one scores! Still, we go by the paper and not by the skills.

I have seen kids who do not know how to multiply numbers are manning automobile repair shops. Will the middle-class parents allow their kids to learn this technique? Unfortunately, in India, Vocational training has no meaning. Every one of us has a unique talent that is inherited. If we pursue that, we could have made our living irrespective of our educational credentials. However, in India, this is not encouraged stating caste reasons! It is another fact that now precisely this is happening around (like actors’ heir adapting this profession, so does politicians, doctors etc.,)

Let me not grope in to the issue of Reservation that throws one more spoke on the wheels of Indian education system. In the name of encouraging downtrodden people, meritocracy is thrown in the air. The system neither helped those who really deserved it nor those who has merit.

In nutshell, Indian education system is broad based but not core-competent based. Perhaps, the following story might explain you this better.

continued in 3rd part.....

Peer Pressure on Indian Kids Part 1

Generally, I do not watch movies, but I happened to watch the movie, “Taare Zameen Par” telecast on a local cable channel. My wife compelled me to do so as she felt that it is a must for every parent to watch this movie!

I am not about to write a review of the movie but some school of thoughts which I liked to share with those who read this blog. The story is simple. A kid with specific learning disorder is being repeatedly cursed by his parents and later dumped into a residential school. The kid is ill-treated there again and he loses his self-confidence. Then, an understanding teacher arrives on the scene, who nurtures the skills of the kid and transforms him to a normal one.

There are lessons in this movie. Even if we conducted a classroom session to all the parents on this subject, this would not have made an impact. Nowadays, what we call as “peer pressure” is too enormous on the kids. With severe competition from every corner of life, kids are pressurized to the extreme level and there is no second thought about it.

It is quite natural for every parent to expect their kin to excel in whatever they do and I am no exception to this! If we happened to find a talent, we hang onto that and make all efforts to extract that from our kin. This ends exerting the peer pressure on the kids. The fear of losing makes kids less self-confident. More than the fear of losing, at times, it is the fear of facing the parents’ wrath on failures makes them lose their confidence.

Such pressures on kids do not make any good but harm them badly. At times, it costs them their life also. The increase in number of suicides during exam and results time proves this point.

Kids, nowadays, are being pressurized by the parents with the sole aim of getting numbers (not less than 90%) in all subjects. The deserted look of the playgrounds and gardens (in India, most of the cities do not have play ground or garden for common public is another irony) stands proof of this. Evenings meant for play is now meant for tuitions.

Hiring a special tutor for kid has become a status-symbol. The mushrooming coaching class centers is a proof. In my school days, tuition meant focused teaching to the student who is below-average. Nowadays, invariably, all students enroll in these coaching centers. Such centers now have become another class room with 50 to 60 students cramped in a room and the same subjects are literally vomited or spoon-fed to the kids. The teacher to student ratio in the schools are whopping 1:80 that is another pity situation

Being a parent, I am no exception to all above mentioned facts. I also wish that my kid always stood first in the school. We (more than me, my wife) grind our heads during the tests and exams just for the sake that our son scores good marks.

continued......