Kamal Baruah
(kamal.baruah@yahoo.com)
There is tension with every parent when it comes to coaching-centric education that spreads its tentacles into the digital world as well. The gruelling school-plus-tuition epidemic in the in the education system caused the prolonged period of lost childhood and stress induced by this rush for a ceaseless tuition race. With a shrinking job market, parents faced the dilemma where to send their children for better school or coaching to build a career, and parents’ unreasonable ambitions also forced students to go beyond their interest in study. Most parents want their children to begin as early as possible in the hope that it will give them an edge.
In higher education, private tuition or coaching centres have evolved into a lucrative business. From IAS coaching to NEET, IIT-JEE, CUET, CLAT, CAT, etc., they’re all in the race for a limited number of seats as students saw lakhs of aspirants competing in competitive examinations across the country. Students even go for coaching to get admission to a reputed coaching institute. In the TV series ‘Kota Factory’, the show follows students’ struggles, dreams, and relationships for an uphill task that is very daunting from the outset and continues to be challenging. Over a million students are studying overseas to pursue higher education. Shockingly, many students chose to study medicine abroad at a low cost.
There was a time when tuition classes in groups or private tutoring were temporary solutions, but now coaching centres dominated by giant brands like Byju’s, Allen, and Resonance come into the picture. No doubt, coaching centres are a great place for some to relax in cosy environments while learning. For students, tuition is their life, as time is actually spent studying until they complete class 12. This year’s NEET-UG exam has sparked national outrage recently. NTA’s inability to conduct examinations was exposed after repeated postponements of CUET, UGC-Net, and NEET-PG. However, it affects students in a number of ways.
The joys of raising a child in big metros are now challenging, when it was unheard of for a parent to even book a seat at pre-school for admission of their new-born babies, along with the time of issuing Aadhaar. Recalling a past time, this writer also had some fond memories of when his daughter went to kindergarten at a reputed convent school. There was a long queue in the midnight hours for admission forms as they are limited to a few numbers, so parents stood there in the night. I was visibly shocked by the activities of sending children for tuition to prepare for admission in their very first year of formal education. After such an appalling situation, I had no option but to send our daughter for a short refresher course as there was no time left for an interview. Hopefully, she will be able to understand basic English after a month of tuition.
It was all about identifying colours, numbers, and shapes to evaluate those parameters for understanding a child’s developmental milestones for the school or if there are any cases of special needs education. That was followed by nursery questions and activities. I once felt despair as the interviewer cautioned me severely, saying, “Oh, she speaks only Hindi.” Our daughter had no early childhood education like playgroups, nurseries, etc. and was brought up in the Hindi-belt areas. The principal probably realised that a language has no barrier to overcome in learning. As the years pass by so quickly, transitions are the key to academic learning. Students learn more through active learning in classrooms than through traditional lectures. Students often highlight thoughts about schools and their teachers with their parents every day.
The other day, when I asked our daughter to pen down her thoughts about the classroom experience of school days, she could only remember the time she enjoyed with friends and the class teacher while in kindergarten. There were many situations; however, one of the most memorable was participating in rhymes and poems while dancing together. Barny ma’am was the only teacher at St. Mary’s convent, where she taught girls in their early years to build a foundation for lifelong learning. Past pupils still loved going to school during Christmas, despite all the highly materialistic coaching in later study. Rhymes and poems are calling them while all the girls from kindergarten dance to the beat, shaking their legs and stamping feet, waving arms, and nodding heads, but now it’s time to go to school for another dance during the holidays.