Come school examination season, and the phrase, “the lull before the storm,” acquires a whole new meaning. Residential areas appear transformed. Sound levels are low, lights are on late into the night and TV sets are muted.
I am unaffected by all the fuss. The school my daughter attends, like many others today, doesn’t believe in relative grading or sharing the results with parents or other children. The report cards are sent home during the vacations. I like the stress-free life we lead now, gloating in “Absolutes”. You got A in English and A in Maths too. Wonderful!
Routine questions such as, did she know all the answers in the test, elicit responses like “I don’t remember”, and “I think I knew them!” I used to be amused initially, then surprised and now get worried. Just when will “playing to win” have any meaning for her? While I am prepared to wait for it, I am just anxious will it ever be so?
I had felt elated at recent attempts to change our education system, the Bollywood movies showing the flip side of it and the mushrooming of “personality enhancing” schools. But how this would impact the new generation is only now coming together for me. I am not so sure now. I just hope we are not building lazy citizens of tomorrow.
In the new middle-class India where life is considerably easier and better for the one or two children of the household, is this new reality also killing the instinct to achieve? Everything seems to be geared to making “growing-up” fun.
While the resources are almost finite and the number of aspirants disproportionately high, I surely can’t assume that this dog-eat-dog world would change for my child. So then, how will the young lady, oblivious to the world of metrics, make her transition into the world of CAT scores, Olympic medal tallies, MIS dashboards, GDP Trends and so on? I can only hope it would happen smoothly.
divyakrishnan@gmail.com
