Posted in Uncategorized

What Your Kids are Paying to Score High

As education system is changing rapidly and becoming more competitive and complex everyday, lot of parents expect their child to be on the first position despite of their caliber and interest. Irony is only one student can attain first position and what about others ?? Aren’t they good students or good human being. Our expectations of our children’s psychological abilities, even more than of their physical abilities, are typically much too high.

We should have positive and open environment at home where children can discuss with parents on any topic. In a current scenario we are just focused  on academics rather than grooming overall personality of child, although trend is changing and we can identify few parents who are helping their kids to pursue career of their choice. Overall personality need to be groomed rather than just scoring 90%, If some one scored 90% and does not carry cultural and family values its like tree with lot of fruits and weak roots. After few season tree will fall down so we need to have strong roots for betterment of society and that is the most important things. Strong roots will always come from family values, as we conduct lot of Interviews for internal job opening but we never consider high marks as a sole criteria. We look at overall personality of candidate while considering them for job opening.

Being into education domain from long time I have seen so many students carrying burden of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Maths, Commerce etc despite of their interest, they pursue these subjects because parents wants them to be Engineer, Doctor or CA. Its the need of an hour that we should be flexible and give freedom to our kids to pursue career of their dream and of-course in a guided manner.  

When you ask a question while your child is studying, wait for your child to respond. If you rush to give answer, you’re sending the message that you don’t think your child can answer. A longer “wait time” may communicate higher expectations and, therefore, increase student achievement.

  • Avoid comparing siblings and child of your colleagues.
  • Treat all of your children equally rather than considering their report card. 
  • You can help your child develop that “they can do” attitude. Here’s how:
  • Teach your child how to set small goals, be precise when you giving him/her goal. 
  • Teach your child how to handle a challenge and is required be a role model for them. 
  • Talk about schoolwork and their life every day, and give time to them.
  • Praise effort not achievement, as effort is journey and journey should be praised rather than milestone.
  • Display your children’s achievements on the fridge or in the bedroom. 
  • Make a book/diary of work he/she is particularly proud of.

Those who score good marks I congratulate them and those who could not I congratulate them too because this is not the end of the world, so stay positive work hard and carry cultural values with strong roots.

Source: Linkedin

Posted in Education in India

Are we doing justice to our children? The biggest flaw of the education system lies in its hunger for nothing but the best

When Parents, Teachers and Schools together are making the life of low performing students miserable by exerting lots of pressure on them.

The performance of students in the recently published results of class 10th and 12th shows that parents and teachers are expecting students to score no less than 100%. All of us are talking about only those students who have scored over 80% in the CBSE/ICSE and other board results of class 10th and 12th. Newspapers and TV channels are showcasing several celebrity kids with above 90%. Since the beginning, I have always heard that life is going to be tough in the corporate sector but nowadays it seems even young kids are struggling with the same tougher side of life. For every single mark, they are expected to fight like warriors and in this fierce rat race, they are losing their “Bachpan” i.e. Childhood.

We have lots of teachers job vacancy and we conduct hundreds of interviews every month for our internal hiring besides what we do for our clients, trust me, neither we nor most of our client organisations judge the talent of a potential candidate on the basis of marks only. We look for the overall personality of the candidate. A candidate who is street smart and can handle the difficult situation easily is preferred over the candidate who has better marks but lacks these qualities. Most of the time we let toppers go as they fail to perform during the interview. Parents, Teachers and Schools need to understand that every child is different and their potential and abilities must not be judged by their scorecards only. It’s a well-known fact that the potential of kids does not depend on their academic performance, and hence we should be able to identify, hone and utilize their skills for the future of theirs as well as of the nation.  hashtag capabilities of young kids is not linked with academic performance.

I attend lots of conferences globally and meet educators, they all talk a lot about “scores hardly makes any difference” but as soon as the results are out, you can see their walls on Facebook and LinkedIn are flooded with posts boasting about their students’ results or school’s result e.g. “90% students of our school scored above 80% marks” etc. I have a question here, as a teacher you talk about 90% of your student only but what about the rest 10%, they are also your students. While you are only praising 90% actually you are ignoring 10% and subjecting them to indirect pressure.

These kinds of narratives by parents and teachers exert a lot of pressure on young students and they always have a fear of failure in their mind.

Ideally, the education system should be a contributor in making students a better human being, and in this regard, they should also impart the value of failures.

It’s alarming to go through news feeds on an almost daily basis regarding students committing suicides due to certain exams, whereas in the long run of life, these exams and their results hardly even matter. This year also, I have heard so many cases of students committing suicide after their result, some committed suicide as they either scored fewer marks or failed in their exam. We are failing to understand that they are young kids and can’t take such pressure. I am sorry to say but parents, schools and teachers should be held responsible for the same as they are the one who created this vicious environment. We must appreciate the journey and hard work of our kids when they are preparing for the exam and support them by appreciating their efforts rather than eagerly waiting for exam result with certain expectations.

Student Suicides in India

Report published by DNA India. We lost 26,000 students between 2014 to 2016 only.

If schools can create an environment where everyone values failure, there won’t be any suicide in the coming years.

Even parents want to shoulder their own dreams on young kids, due to which their kids feel stressed and bear the burden of the emotional baggage. When they are not able to reach pre-defined goals by parents then they feel shattered and their inability to handle this pressure leads to disaster.

I was talking to one of my friend, his son scored above 90% marks but he was not happy as he was expecting 95%. I was completely astounded to hear the same. Just let the child remain an innocent child and appreciate his efforts, accept whatever he scores. If possible, please ensure he plays every day and enjoys what he love to do.  Ideally, we should start celebrating their journey, not the outcome, parents must avoid comparing kids and accept the way they are. Just encourage them to give their best.

Source: Linkedin