Earlier this week, our maid at home wanted to leave early. She was to go to her children’s school to pick up their mark sheets. The teacher had said that mark sheets would not be given out until the parents came with their kids to collect them.
Bahut saara baccha loge ghar se bhaag jaata hai ya aatma hatya kar leta hai na. Is liye, she threw in casually. So many kids run away or commit suicide the school had decided on this. I gaped at her and tried to ignore the strange word system that kept popping into my head.
Baccha loge paas ho gaya madam. Aise hi faaltu me gaya mein, she grumbled the next day. Her kids had passed. What a waste of time was loud and clear in her eyes…
Talk of pressure.
***
Update : Today’s (May 08) Bombay Times has a story on wunderkind (poor little four-year old) Budia Singh of the 65 km run fame. Mamma, please let me be!
And an interesting SMS survey (the 8888 types where ten ardent readers respond and we are given percentage figures of responses) – Who puts maximum pressure on kids? A) Parents B) Schools C) Peers D) Exposure
Duh? Exposure is a Who now? And aren’t all these inter-related anyways?
Unbelievable. I don’t remember anyone committing suicide for failing during my childhood. I guess times have changed.
i had a friend in class whose father used to belt him if he didn’t come first. the next day he used to come into class bearing marks.
somehow our schools have always been extremely competitve. I can remember class mates crying over ranks.
atleast in my school, parents were called in after every unit test to collect their kids marks – and the ‘system’ terrified parents’ as much as the kids.
It’s funny, as things change – nothing seems to change:)
Hmmm…..we can bring back an erring kid on the right track. But what about grown-ups? When parents – grown-ups to be more general – get link their children’s performance in studies with their social status, the pressure does become too intense for the poor kid !
I guess the pressure on kids – and parents – is much much more than it was earlier… I keep reading newspaper reports of kids running away and hanging themselves and so on… but it was scary to hear her say this in a very matter-of-fact tone…
parents living their unfulfilled dreams thru’ their kids….sometimes get scary….regarding Budia…there lot of hue and cry in the media…I think NHRC is probing it now…frankly speaking that kid was put on too much of risk…knowing Indian systems i am sure proper risk evaluation and medical advice would have been lacking.
“exposure is who now”…that was funny
sherriff, yeah true… some parents do put unreasinable pressure on their kids – living out their unfulfilled dreams thru the kids and so on… but Budhia’s case is really sad. no excuse for putting that little kid through all that…