Every year after the declaration of board exam results in Assam series of daylong celebrations begin for the rank holders with the media hogging the news flash and headlines, along with the singing of praise from various quarters of the society and rightfully so, for the hard work they have done to secure such good results. Amidst this cacophony goes unnoticed the long-lost voice of hard work and struggle that the mediocre and less than average students in academic results of board exams and the tales of the hurdles they overcome, the improvements they make. The stories of the battles they fought and the odds they overcame remain within themselves. We have missed to address the concerns of the students who could not succeed in securing the passing marks, which otherwise we are often indulging in passing advices to familiar and unfamiliar people that 'failure is the pillar of success' which we learnt from some great minds.
What appears to be in the present scenario is, while encouraging our students to succeed in academics and recognising their hard work, maybe sometimes we intentionally or unintentionally tend to pressurize the students in fetching "good scores" in exams. Maybe, we have narrowed down our definition of education to mere scoring of marks in a 3-hour-long examination. Maybe, we have failed to pass on the teachings into the young minds that life has many more such exams to be appeared with all the positivity, registering victory and accepting defeat and that school exams are one of the many exams we are about to face in the future. At the end of the day our contributions to the society and how good a person we can be towards others will matter more probably than the piece of paper which had assessed our capabilities and marked us out of 100.
While efforts need to be there in place by families and educational institutes to provide conducive ambience for every student to read, learn and write; government's efforts in emancipating the education sector through various policies, society too has a role in reforming the education system i.e., changing its mindset and broadening the definition of education.
Nupur Das,
Guwahati