Olympians or mere mortals, a podium finish has always been a source of infallible validation, belittling other achievements that fetch neither a medal nor a grade. Driven into an unending pressure of emerging victorious all the time, we are keen to push the envelope despite radical retributions for self and others. The most active battlefield where every soldier is forcefully propelled towards excellence is Academia.
Tracing its naissance is an impossible feat, hence let’s arrive at a time when private tuitions gained popularity. An Engineer and a Doctor have always been venerated compared to their Commerce and Arts counterparts; the bias having emerged due to the former’s visible monetary gains and contributions to the society as opposed to the latter’s intellectual offerings and meagre rewards. Thus parents, to fine tune every offspring into an engineer or a doctor, opted for ‘home tutors’.
What started as private tuitions by school teachers grew into a phenomenal industry, creating an ocean of coaching centres to chisel students into future ‘Tech Wizards’ or ‘High-Risk Surgeons’. But why the wild goose chase?
Socio-Economic Pressure
Societal validation doubled by financial aspirations to help the socio-economic conditions of the family make parents’ force a high standard of achievements on their children, pushing them into engineering and medicine. Paucity of knowledge about other vocations can be considered here as well.
Marketing Dreams
Full page ads and OOH hoardings with pictures of toppers, their scores and dramatic stats visually translate dreams of parents, promising a bright future for students by not-so-subtly positioning themselves as the only stairway to excellence. One in four students in India is enrolled into a coaching centre. The average fee charged by these centres for NEET and JEE is between Rs.100000 and Rs.300000
Straitjacket Approach to Careers
A disconnect with the evolving landscape of career development in industries leads to creating conventional pedagogy in schools, focussing more on mathematics and science, and less on art, language or other necessary skills. Lack of career counselling in formative years results in a blinkered career approach, rendering children helpless and asphyxiating their aspirations.
Consequences of raising this White Elephant are staggering:
Student suicide rates have surged by 4% every year.
About 7 undergraduate students in every branch of engineering drop out annually.
Out of the 1.5 million engineering graduating annually, only 45% meet industry standards making the rest unemployable.
13,86,136 registered allopathic doctors but India has only 70,000 gynaecologists.
Despite firm Government guidelines to regulate coaching centres, the gap between current reality and a practical approach to solve this crisis needs to be bridged. Parental counselling at the beginning of every academic year after talent assessment by schools can help broaden their vision to an extent. Modifying school pedagogy to include skill based activities will help children explore new career paths.
Anticipating a metamorphosis overnight is impractical yet constant impactful changes, even small ones, will make a difference in the long run.
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