How are we measuring the worth of our youth?

Stereotypical stories about achieving success captivate and abound us. A fallen hero who rises against all odds, an underdog winning a race, a college dropout founding a multi-billion dollar IT company, the rise of a leader from among underprivileged masses, so on and so forth. We find ourselves rooting for the protagonist, empathizing with his/her inner fears that surface in their quest. Such stories hook us for two key reasons - 1. The hope that even the ordinary – regardless of social/economic standing, physical attributes, academic background, character flaws etc. eventually find ‘success’ as they dream it and 2. Perhaps, more importantly, the reinforcement that success is implicit and a necessity to be vindicated. Who likes to hear about failures? Success sells.  

The board-result mania that gripped us this month with tutorials displaying advertorials and colossal hoardings of ‘toppers’, more prominent than that of key personalities or causes in the country, is indicative of how importantly society views academic success. What is ironical is that though everyone seeks success for themselves or others (children, spouse, sibling), the overriding belief is that there is a uniform formula to achieve it. It begins young. A student is tutored, made to memorise facts regardless if it translates to relevant knowledge. Every student is assumed to be a replica of the next – trained, evaluated and classified uniformly. Our education system has yet to reinvent itself - develop challenging, diverse modules for engaging various aptitudes and invent accurate assessment structures to aid in forming and gauging true potential across fields.  

It isn’t as if ‘topping’ an exam is a fool-proof indicative of potential or genius.  At most, it has attributed to a rat race with students pressured to perfect scores right up to 100^th percentile. This year, in Delhi, the number of CBSE grade 12 students scoring above 95% marks over last year jumped by nearly 3,000 students or by 50 per cent! Reportedly, the Delhi University received over 3 lac admissions in just a couple of days and apparently lacs of students who have scored above 90% may not get admissions anywhere. The city was also home to the ‘all-India topper’ scoring the highest-ever percentage score of 99.6! Education institutions have become hubs of breeding ‘toppers’ with staggering ‘cut-offs’ hence only admitting the best. Some schools even hold back students that are weaker in academics for the fear of compromising an elite pass-out rate.

With such reinforcements is it a wonder that most of us perceive success as an outcome and rarely as a continuous process?  Success is about winning a competition, a race, scoring top marks, setting records - assessing our worth.  Failure is dreaded upon and any such risks eliminated by following a tested formula. Although the basic tenet is that success follows when pursuing doggedly what one believes in! All that has come of such a system are millions of failed or stifled aspirations. There are far too many stories of doctors and engineers becoming successful after pursuing their life-long dream – as writers or artists, sportsmen, politicians, businessmen etc. While stories of ‘toppers’ are celebrated annually, there is a casualty – parallel stories of suicides among students touching alarming proportions.

In my tenure as a Principal of one of the foremost and respectable international schools, I have had students confide how parents don’t understand them. Students are made to feel guilty of been given the ‘best opportunities’ and goaded to achieve the dreams that their parents see for them. I have also been privy to the guilt and helplessness that some parents feel when their bright or talented children are made to sacrifice their dreams and settle for ‘safer’, unchallenging, ‘prestigious’ vocations, since society believes that certain occupations are best left to a particular gender or the rich (who can afford to experiment). To develop a lifelong love for learning is a key outcome a purposeful education system must strive for. Yet, we are stuck with archaic systems - conforming skills of a majority into a stereotypical mould; dreams killed in the process. And we wonder why true success eludes us.  Most of us nurture our dreams only in our minds, fearing ‘failure’. It explains our fondness for stories celebrating ‘success’ – ironically, it can hardly afford to be elusive in ‘reel’ life!