BEYOND BOARD EXAMS:
SUCCESS IN LIFE DOESN’T HINGE ON YOUR MARKSHEET
That is how essence of the special report on page 8 of TOI of 1 March 09 appears on the front page. How can such an insensitive blurb appear on front page just before the start of the Class X & XII Board exams? Such an article is likely to act as a dampener to the students who have been conditioned since childhood to learn that ‘marks’ are the indices of success. This understanding is ubiquitous amongst all and sundry be it heads of institutions, teachers, parents, relatives, ever inquisitive neighbors, cousins including country cousins, shop keepers, Vikramwallas, maids, friends and anyone else within or outside the country.
Having been a part of the society and the system for decades, I was unable to understand the logic of putting such an objectionable headline on front page of a famous paper like TOI. In fact it is nothing short of an act of blasphemy with serious consequences as it would create a lot of confusion amongst students just before the exams. How to undo the damage so that students remain focused got me thinking.
Flipping through the pages I opened page 8 to pick holes on the Special Report to seek heavy compensation through legal action. While reading the report realization dawned that my perception, shaped over so many years of experience, needed correction as it was not based on facts. Points that impacted me to do a paradigm shift are reproduced as excerpts of that well researched article.
Excerpts. “You don’t need the calendar to flip from February into March to tell you it’s board exam time. Newspaper headlines are enough. CBSE help lines ring off the hook; parents report panic attacks. The worst stories are the suicides. In Junagadh district, two seventeen-year-olds decided to end it all rather than face Class XII exams. A Jharkhand girl set herself on fire after she failed to clear her Class X pre-board exams. These young people were so scared of exam failure they didn’t give life a chance. They were so worried about numbers on a mark sheet; they reduced themselves to a suicide statistic. It is an alarming statistic. More than 5,857 students killed themselves in 2006-2007, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which is yet to release figures for 2008. That boils down to a whopping 16 suicides a day, most of them caused by exam stress and inability to cope with disappointment.
“The sense of failure comes from the perception that success in exams is the key to success in life,” says Geetanjali Kumar, a CBSE counselor. “The burden of expectations — their own and their parents — makes them feel that only coming first is good enough.” Failure can even spur success. Thomas Edison famously told a reporter who asked him how it felt to have failed 700 times to invent the electric light. “I have not failed 700 times…I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work.”
Educationists say that most children struggle to cope with parental pressure. The phrase coined by psychologists is helicopter parents — hovering busily over every aspect of their kids’ lives, doing their homework and absorbing their every achievement as their own.
Pervin Sharma, whose career counseling sessions are very popular in Delhi, says it is the adults who need the most counseling. “Parents come and say that ‘mera bachcha to bada average hai’. This sort of statement can do a lot of damage since an adolescent’s sense of self worth is very fragile.”
Mahesh Murthy, who dropped out of engineering college in Hyderabad after three semesters because “it wasn’t remotely interesting.” Today, the 43-year-old says, “I was brought up to believe that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I now believe that the rainbow is the pot of gold. All that we have is the journey.” It’s been an interesting one for Murthy who went from selling vacuum cleaners door to door to the successful venture capitalist that he is today. His advice to students: “Forget about topping class. Toppers don’t end up anywhere important in life.” If Murthy dropped out of the education system, Rajat Banerji and his wife Dola decided they wanted schooling without its pressures for their daughter. “The school system treats all kids uniformly regardless of their inclinations,” says Banerji who, along with his wife, home schools their seven-year-old”.
Examples of Famous Personlities without any Academic Profile as Modified by me
1. Spiritual Leaders. Jesus Christ, Guru Nanak, 1st Guru of Sikhs; Kabir, famous sage; Ramkrishna Paramahans, Guru of Swami Vivekananda…..
2. Akbar the Great. Greatest of the great Moghuls couldn’t even write his name. And the empire was none the worse for it.
3. Abraham Lincoln. Born in Kentucky log cabin to impoverished parents, his formal schooling lasted 18 months. “When I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write and cipher….. but that was all,” he wrote of his early days. Largely self-taught, he joined politics before becoming a lawyer.
4. Gabriel ‘Coco’ Chanel. Brought up in an orphanage, she trained as a seamstress. The only fashion designer to be named Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
5. Thomas Edison. His official schooling ended when the teacher described him as addled; was home-schooled by his mother.
6. Walt Disney. Dropped out of high school at 16 to join army, but was rejected for being under-age. Began his artistic career after stint with Red Cross; won 26 Oscars and 7 Emmys.
7. The Geeks. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs….
8. The Writers. Charles Dickens, Jane Austin, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw…
9. AR Rehman. Studied till class XI; later took his Trinity School of Music exams and went on fellowship to Cambridge.
10. Sachin Tendulkar. He scraped through Class X but left Class XI halfway as the runs piled up. Do you really want to know his math score?
Liz Beattle, retired Primary School Teacher after serving for 37 years in UK, feels convinced that the word ‘Failure’ should be replaced with ‘deferred success’ as children’s aspirations to learn are crushed as soon as they are deemed failures (TOI 01 Mar 2009). Although this has generated controversy since 2005, the perception has merit as many world renowned personalities have made historical contribution despite repeated failures .
It is, therefore, for each one of us to think whether one needs to go by majority perception or facts regarding the relevance of marks as the index of success!
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