Do children need beware of their distressed parents for education?

In the lines below while I am writing some amazing facts I witness in my town of Dehradun which is growing graver with each passing day, the situation is quite similar in most parts of our country.

Schooling, education and its perspectives in various contexts are often discussed in Doon simply because this place has record number of educational institutes, a rare phenomenon. With the increasing number of educational institutes and some education imparting factories, our youngsters are at a cross roads on whether they should listen to the advice of teachers, focus on studies, self analyze the growing competition and choose a path of their interest to excel, or handle their distressed parents many of whom are a confused lot trying to draw a line between their days and way of studying with the present one and eventually lands themselves and the children in a big muddle and frustration leading to an overall decline in the child’s progress. These parents little realize every child has God gifted talents and needs encouragement in the field in which he or she may actually have interest in.

What I am trying to co-relate here is the simple fact that more than anything, the pressure the children face at the hands of the parents in the context of studies is reckless. A large majority of the children of today are an oppressed lot at the hands of their depressed and distressed parents each of whom want their pony’s leading the race in the field of education, surprisingly at any cost!

The aggressive behavior of parents towards their children to excel in anything and everything related to studies is a quite but impactful damage they cause not understanding the consequences of this in the overall character and behavior of a child. Parents often complain their children being rowdy, with swings in behavior, eating habits, often taken ill and sometimes even disrespectful and disobedient towards them and the society. Well, these in most of the cases is a result of the enormous silent pressures the child has to bear at the hands of the parents and even at schools without appeal, who all spur them up for their satisfaction and motives or in the name of better school results shielding themselves on the pretext of education. A school is “shikshalaya” that strives to bring out the full potential of a child, but is this happening is a big question.

The schools and parents may succeed in their mission but miserably fail in child grooming process.  

There are some much known schools of the town whose credibility is to produce parrots like students who mug up any thing and everything. There are children who may understand what they are mugging up but most of them don’t. For these lots, their parents want them as mugging machines to reproduce in examinations word by word what the text books say. Happy are these school to project exceptional educational results at the end of the term with equally happy parents of children who study in such schools and atmosphere. What are you up to and happy for parents? Don’t let your children end their childhood pleasures and their dreams at the altar of your personal aspirations. Countless cases we read and see where such efforts and aspirations collapse which land children as utter failure in life.

What we learn with pleasure we never forget, mugging up things never benefit. Such education is like a paper flower, however beautiful but without any fragrance. The parents of today fail to realize that their children have their genes, so you now need to understand whose going wrong!

On my morning walk everyday which starts between 5.30 and 6.30 am, I notice a very strange sight, some parents leading their children in school uniform. Of these some children are as small as that of kinder garden school and even the bigger ones. Being inquisitive to know which schools start that early in the morning, I interrupted some parents to know the fact. I came to know they were leading their children to early morning tuition classes. On my asking if this early morning studies were due to the approaching examinations to my utter surprise, I learnt from them that examination or otherwise this is always on. Hearing this, I thanked my parents a thousand times for not flogging us this way when we were children. Nor, now as parents ourselves we press our children this hard. My children also study early mornings or sometimes throughout the day, but these are occasions when the need is their and not on a daily routine. We are respectably placed in life and our children also doing well even after not having undergone this kind of pressure.

I realize and do not deny that times have changed over the years but not to the present day affairs, this is ridiculous!

Today even many tiny-toddlers are wearing thick glass specks, coping with heavy school bags and even lining up for early morning and after school tuition classes. I am sure a large majority of parents, if not all, are capable to explaining lessons to their small children at home. But the greed for making the child out-beat others, they try to inject over dose of extra coaching and tuitions whether or not the child needs it. This phenomenon has not only stressed the children, it has made many teachers not teach well in schools for the sake of roping children of literate illiterate parents to coaching and tuition classes. This has also disturbed the education system, which I will not deal here being a totally different and another mind-boggling issue.

This situation gets graver and more complex with every increasing class a child climbs.

Recently visiting a close friend of mine, a senior educationist in a leading public school here over dinner, I noticed him coming to and forth to the dining room. On my enquiry, he said he was teaching some students. You are well off, I said, why are you stretching yourself? Is approaching examinations the reason for your harvesting that long at night I asked jokingly. To my joke he lamented, some influential parents who have recommendations from the school management where he is serving or who are otherwise highly placed in the government whom none may like to displease for obvious reasons; are making their children take tuition with him, much against his wishes. These tuitions go as late at 10.30 pm at night he said. Eager to see such species of parents and children I tried to peep into the study room to find some children in school uniform at 10 pm at night. Perplexed, I asked my friend again the reason for this and he told me these children have extra after school classes with different teachers and have not been able to even go home for even changing the dress. Mothers of few of them were already waiting in cars outside his house. Hearing my friend’s plight and that of children there, I wanted to know the names of those parents to expose them, but he promised me not to do so. Here again, I feel such parents are mentally sick who in the course of time will make their children also go crazy or make them indifferent to life.

Education makes one move from darkness to light, but unfortunately the reverse of this is happening. The Prime Minister has also in his recent televised address on the Teachers Day 2014 to the nation wide students and teachers has stressed on our understanding the real meaning of education and the need for value-based moral education to excel in life. The parents need to take this lesson taught by the Prime Minister more than the children. They need learn the basics of how to deal with their children and their education. Those who still cannot learn made to go to reformatories. This will possibly show them the mirror of actuality.