Putrid Education

Yesterday I heard a sad news. I teach math to an 8^th-class girl. Yesterday her father came to meet me and told me her brother committed suicide this April. He was in 9^th standard. He had performed badly in his yearly exams. When he came back with his result, there was nobody at home. He hanged himself.

This is so tragic. Why is so much pressure put on kids to perform well in studies? Is education to improve life, or stunt it? Everyday I see sullen kids toiling over their books. They don’t have time to play, they don’t have time to socialize. Our current education system has totally destroyed childhood. All the time everybody is busy completing the syllabus or preparing for the odd exams. The school-system is lousy and so are the teachers. They don’t give a damn about children. Ironically, the parents and the society pressurizes them to perform well. They are judged according to the marks they score or don’t score. They drive them up against the wall so much that sometimes they are driven to take the extreme step. What has been achieved by this?

As a parent I would never subject my child to such an inhuman practice. I’d be very careful about choosing the school and evaluating the teachers. Most teachers these days become teachers because either they are too lazy to do a regular job, or cannot get another job. As a result, they work less and put more burden on students. They take out their frustration on small children. At home the parents don’t take them seriously. They think students will always criticize their teachers. Or they are too busy to get their children’s school changed. But when it comes to flaunting the marks their children score, they don’t tire of backslapping themselves for providing them expensive education (it need not be quality education).

The death of that boy should have led to the closure of the school but nothing of that sort happened. The parents were too lenient (even the death of their son didn’t move them?) and their daughter is still in the same school, although they are planning to shift her to another.

Yesterday I wrote about Image and Impression. This is also a part of that. What matters is the marks, not the education. Because marks are displayable and education is intangible. It’s all about showing, not about doing; it’s all about becoming, and not about being.