After the exam fever wears off, its time for the results which take a toll on the tender minds of the students. As the results were out, we saw two extreme reactions—on one hand a few students who could not get through the exams committed suicide and on the other hand, the educational institutions started bombarding us and filling every available space with their advertisements, bragging about the toppers they produced.
Unfortunately, this trend of measuring a student’s calibre based on marks obtained in an exam has been on the rise in the last couple of years. Most of the parents consider their children’s academic intelligence as a status symbol. They give all the financial comforts and often forget to extend a warmth, that is required to provide a calm and confident aura to a child.
Students are often told that Class 10 and Intermediate exams are the first ‘turning points’ of their careers and that is how a ‘sense of stress’ is instilled into every student’s mind.
During this process, students with low academic performance are often given less importance and are belittled. Neither the parents nor the colleges teach the students about relaxation techniques and make them believe that it is ‘OK’ even if they don’t succeed in one attempt or if they pass with low grades. Students at one point go into a false belief that their academic performance is more important than their lives and many a times they can no longer face failure. With their first failure, they feel devastated, empty, miserable and prefer to do extreme acts like running away from their homes, or worse yet, committing suicide.
Education brings a transformation in one’s life by making a person more knowledgeable, and teaches them to become a good human being. When students are taught the importance of education and given a stress-free environment, with activity-based learning, the path to acquiring knowledge becomes evidently more fruitful.But in institutes which harbour thousands of students , the focus is on accommodating largest number of students but showing only fewer ranks achieved by their best pupils.
This way, the concept of ‘Sporting Spirit’ or ‘Let go’ is not inculcated into their minds and they feel extremely miserable to the extent that they prefer to end their lives. They are never told that ‘Failures are the stepping stones to success’ and ‘Life is more important than anything’.
This type of psychological behaviour of taking drastic steps to end lives is not just any individual’s failure but it ultimately reflects the failure of the teachers, parents and the society which have made the students believe innately that ‘Academic brilliance is directly proportional to a student’s calibre and ‘Once a failure,is forever a loser’.
In fact, starting from their childhood, students should be groomed with strong minds and will power to cope with any kind of challenge. At the institutional level they should be given necessary classes for proper motivation and for mental fitness.
A student needs to be provided an atmosphere where they can freely approach their teachers and clear their doubts. Where they can focus on their weaknesses and inculcate a self-motivating mechanism to improve by stopping all comparisons with others and start believing that there life is beautiful and colourful. They need to enjoy success and failure as part and parcel of life.
Dr Kadiyam Kavya
The writer is a social activist, philanthropist and a medical doctor based in Warangal