Last month the board results were declared. All social networking sites were flooded with photos of kids who scored excellent marks in their board exams and teachers ostensibly taking the credits. It was good to see young students excel in board exams. Howeve, painful part was teachers sharing their student’s photos, gladly boasting about the results because they studied in their coaching. But dearest teachers, wait for a minute and think what you just did. When you are a teacher at school or private tution, you are administering a large number of students. For you, every student should stand equal. By highlighting and praising only a handful of students who scored good on their own merit, we do understand that you are using them as a propaganda to increase your tuition business. But, as a teacher you should understand the fact that you have a larger responsibility towards the nation. You are the harbingers of prosperity because it is your students only who will run the country when the day comes. So you have to be cautious with your acts. By sharing pics, complimenting few students, you are making them feel that it is only the marks that matters the most, which is actually not the case. The whole aim of education is failing because the lead purpose of education is that the student should be able to develop the bent of mind so that their own conscience is developed and they are able to look beyond what sermons have been teaching for ages. Every student is unique in himself. Not everyone is good at science and maths, so don’t make them believe that marks are everything in life. Instead, the pedagogy is to highlight their strengths and make them believe in it.

“Let them dream, let them enjoy, let them live. Ignite in them the quest to search for their own strengths”.

This is how are education system should be. With acts like this, you are making our system fail miserably. Mr Dinesh Singh, former vice-chancellor, DU in his editorial “Ideas and Ivory towers” (IE 20 June) quotes “so the learning that stares us in the face is the need to develop and nurture educational institutions in a manner that ensures their linkages to the needs and challenges of the nation including its economic needs. This requires inducing young minds to grapple with the challenges of the nation and society.” He writes that policy, if at all, must simply be more in the realm of enlightened inducement that engenders good practices. It must encourage initiative and out of box thinking and should be, to an extent, ready to accommodate risk taking and have room for failure. Institutions have to move out of traditional modes of thinking and must recognise that knowledge can exist in all realms and not just in formal systems associated with academia.

For the, students, i would say don’t fall prey to this propaganda of people ostensibly projecting themselves as teacher. Its good if you scored well, but even if you didn’t, don’t feel bad. You are unique and marks doesn’t define you. Believe in yourself, search for your strengths, question anything to everything and don’t let even one person touch your self-respect just because you didn’t score well. It’s absolutely fine. No one will even ask you about your marks, once you are out of school.

For parents, please don’t pressurize your kids for marks. If they are not good at studies, they would be good at something else. Search for it. Don’t burden them with marks, instead let them seacrh for their own ways and definition of success. If they didn’t score well, no need to make them have existential crisis because this can have serious repercussions. Psychologist Victor E Frankl in his book “Meaning of Life” highlights that psychologically if the person starts having existensial crisis, which has max chances of happening if you make your kid feel inferior by comparing them to others, then the person looses their meaning of life which leads to depression and suicides. And their is no point in loosing your child in lieu of useless marks.

So do remember!

Your kid is special, make him feel the same way.