Budding Flowers

I have recently been deeply perturbed seeing the undue pressure being burdened upon innocent children to get admission in a desired school. It made me question that what we are creating out of our children who have just step in to the world and have begun their journey of experiences. Are we creating modeled children (trained as per trends), rote learners, aggressively competitive or children who are being made to run in the race of life at supersonic speed much before they even need to?

            It is very sad to see that play time has vanished into tuition time or class time. Current trend for a child (3years) to get admission is a mandatory training session specially modulated with an aim to get a non-guaranteed admission in high school. God bless the poor child, if the parents are targeting admission in four to five schools, this translates into a child attending minimum three tuition classes tailor made to give training to the child to hone him/her. Thankfully some schools have gotten rid of these screening procedures but not absolved from other loop holes like influence and donation.

            The syllabus content for gaining admission into a desired school is vast and many of the questions have perplexed and dumbfounded me viz- a 3 to 4 year old should know: flags of Austria, Czech, Sweden etc, time telling, what’s wrong and why questions, Before after and in-between numbers, make it less, more or equal to, prepositions, vegetables- underground, leafy, green, exotic, and the best of all what goes inside a soldiers bag?

HORRIFIED? Well don’t be this is considered normal and a 3 or 4 year old tiny tot ought to know such basics!

            I got extremely worried seeing children as small as 2, 3 and 4 rote learning, attending tuitions classes and also feeling anxious should they fail to live up to parental expectations and not perform up to required mark.

The fee structure as mentioned in one of my articles previously has sky rocketed and good quality admission has become a joke for many middle class parents. I am also amazed at the fact that there is limited application of the guidelines laid by the legal authorities to curb this pressure game.

            I pondered over why this scenario is on the increase and what can be done to stop this pressure game on our bundle of joy…

            On asking many parents I got a unanimous answer that we are in desperate need for good affordable schooling. They don’t want to and neither can they afford to send their children to exorbitant IB schools but they are forced to as the curriculum for SSC schools are very outdated and rudimentary. Good ICSE schools are very few and far between. Thanks to the new rage of converting schools into IB setup, the numbers of good schools are decreasing further due to greater Pressure on our tiny tots!

            I personally feel that no child should be labeled at that blooming age and should be allowed to discover and exhibit his/her best potential irrespective of what training he/she goes for, what is their parental qualification and income, and how popular the future school is.

            I feel that this scenario is increasing because we are giving into this pressure game and running blindly behind what is happening. If each of us resolves to not give into this pathetic existing scenario and be more rational and less influenced by trends then we can collectively raise a concern to the authorities to not sell education as money making business but to provide quality and affordable education to our children…

            I would end on the hope that more and more people speak up on this and some solution is brought about to prevent this onslaught…