Pareeksha Pe Charcha

Karanvir Gupta

31 lakhs of students are going to appear in Class X and XII CBSE board examination this year. Include senior secondary and primary classes in the ambit – that will make for an approximate 1.6cr students in total (approx) appearing for the examination over the period of February and March. And I have not yet included other boards, affiliations, graduate and higher professional/non-professional degrees. In this competitive world, where there are so many students stressing to appear in the examination – there is another set of folks who are under constant stress and pressure – the parents of these students.
Interestingly, every year as the month of Feb-Mar approaches, all we are talking about is how to keep children stress free at home, how to make education more practical rather than theoretical, how the syllabus can be simplified, how can the entire curriculum be split into modules rather than one gigantic piece to be consumed and vomited on the day of exam. We never talk about 3.2cr parents (going by the rough calculation above) who are under this constant anxiety and pressure of what will come out of the exams and how will it shape the future of their children.
Today, I write to all those parents. As you get ready for the PTM in the coming days, or wait to hear the results of competitive exams for your children – the first thing you would need to do is accept the result and not go frenzy. Most importantly not find faults between each other about who is more responsible for the poor result and who gets to take the credit for an extraordinary performance. Trust me – been 14 years out of this entire thing and seeing so many siblings and their parents going through this entire cycle of trauma, marks is the least of the reflection of your kids smartness and intelligence.
And you got to believe me when I say this, that each child is a wizard and a magic of its own. They are stars in their own unique ways and will shine and glitter at their own time. So, the very first step to calm yourself is to trust and believe in your children’ potential.
The first steps starts from the acceptance of your child as s/he is. Not all of them are meant to be doctors and engineers, and not all of them are meant to be stars on the silver screen. It is very important to accept your child’s individual journey of growth and evolution. Some of them pick up their interest at a very early stage and continue to remain committed throughout. Some of them observe, experiment and practice zillion things before they find their strength and identify their weakness. Some of them take a little longer – and identify their magic charm under the course of a graduate program. Yes, this is possible. Some of the children are fast learners and some of them are slow learners. In fact it would be wrong if I bucket them into fast and slow. Learning has no speed, everybody has their own journey.
The second step towards making peace with your child’s growth journey is not hurry it up. Let’s not try to create magic when your child is not prepared enough. Some of them turn out to be Little Champs and Shining Starts while they are 6 or just 7 and some of them wait till they are 30 or even more. They say, the star has to be prepared and nurtured enough for it to shine at its maximum intensity. Any attempt to fasten this process can be disastrous for your child and his/her entire career. You got to give your child due time to nurture, be prepared and ready to blossom and take upon its shoulders the weight of growing up.
Next is acceptance towards non-traditional ways of exploring one’s own self and making a career out of it. Some of the examples would be travel blogger, youtube junkie, vblogger (ones who uses videos as a medium to tell stories), painter, storyteller, environmentalist, historian, author, other than more accepted roles of that of a dancer, singer, sportsperson, teacher/professor and in set up like India – doctors and engineers. Our society needs all of these. So if your child picks up a medium that seems less lucrative to you, it is fine and you need to learn to make peace with it. Because maybe your child is meant to be there and do what one does for a living.
And there are cases where children are not picking up any of these either mundane or “hip” career choices. They plan to live another day going to the office and earn a living. That is the way they have chosen for themselves. There is no benchmarking we can do about what kind of lifestyle is better and which career is more bright.
The last thing we need to do is stop making comparisons. Guptaji ka beta aur sharma ji ki beti – both of them can be picking up the same career and performing differently or both of them can pick up different professions but excel likewise. Comparisons, more than any other thing, are instant killer of your child’s creativity, inbuilt genius and natural charisma.
And when you do adapt these small little changes in the way you see your child(ren), and measure their performance and level of excellence – you will see and observe that you will be more at peace with yourself. If you really want to be at peace and be satisfied with your child, what you really want to do is teach your children life skills, how to manage stress, how to handle failure and how to accept rejection and how to value relationships and how to be a good citizen and above all an awesome human being. Because that is something, we all can be, we all wish to be!
So, next time when you are headed for a PTM for Pareeksha Pe Charcha literally, don’t fret over less marks and be worried about what will your child make out of their career. Count on the positives as well. They will and they will outshine all of us because there are more avenues, opportunities than there ever were and the children today are more aware than we were at their age. However there are more distractions too today and your buck stops at ensuring that the energy of the children is channelised towards something constructive and not wasted. YOu need to ensure that there is a conducive atmosphere for them to grow, evolve and have the ability to learn and differentiate between the right and wrong from themselves. That will be an ongoing pareeksha and there are no marks for that!
(The writer is an IIM Shillong Alumnus and Mentor of Change with AIM, Niti Aayog)
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