How to reduce stress on Indian Students
Friday, June 26, 2009
It seems Mr. Sibal, India's HRD minister, had an eureka moment while pondering over the stress the children. The solution that he comes out is to make the Xth Exam optional.
It would be an understatement if I say that I was stressed during my Xth year. I was stressed during XIIth as well but strangely enough I was never stressed to the same degree during the eight semesters I gave during my engineering. What is stranger is that Xth and XIIth syllabi is way easier than engineering syllabi. The preparation time is much more atleast 1 year in case of Xth and XIIth and only 15 days (all my engineer buddies would know what I mean) in case of engineering.
Why was it that I was stressed out much more during an examination which if I look in hindsight was way easier? Stress is associated not with a particular examination but with the consequences that examination can have on you. Parents, Teachers and indeed students themselves have managed to make board exams a big "hauaah". Attitudes change and anybody and everybody a kid meets never forgets them to remember them to work hard this year as this year "would count".
India's society is such that we want everyone to be either a doctor or an engineer. To make matter worse our infrastructure (Mr. Sibal pls note) is in shambles and it can hardly take care of the demand that it has to face. Consequently the demand pushes up the cutoff and thus the madrush for marks increases even more. Making a cosmetic change to a system is not bad and probably needed but what is really needed at this point of time is that we try to improve our education infrastructure to increase the number of people it supports and to improve the quality of graduates this system passes out.
Look at cat in 2002 you would have got a call at 97.XX percentile but in 2009 even 98.XX percentile would not fetch an IIM call. It is because the no of applicants have doubled in these years while IIMs have not been able to keep pace in the number of seats with this increase no of applicants. What is really needed is to create more infrastructure so that people dont end up becoming fanatics. Mr. Sibal read my lips
MORE IITs, MORE IIMs, MORE NITs, MORE IIITs, MORE COLLEGES!!!!
It would be an understatement if I say that I was stressed during my Xth year. I was stressed during XIIth as well but strangely enough I was never stressed to the same degree during the eight semesters I gave during my engineering. What is stranger is that Xth and XIIth syllabi is way easier than engineering syllabi. The preparation time is much more atleast 1 year in case of Xth and XIIth and only 15 days (all my engineer buddies would know what I mean) in case of engineering.
Why was it that I was stressed out much more during an examination which if I look in hindsight was way easier? Stress is associated not with a particular examination but with the consequences that examination can have on you. Parents, Teachers and indeed students themselves have managed to make board exams a big "hauaah". Attitudes change and anybody and everybody a kid meets never forgets them to remember them to work hard this year as this year "would count".
India's society is such that we want everyone to be either a doctor or an engineer. To make matter worse our infrastructure (Mr. Sibal pls note) is in shambles and it can hardly take care of the demand that it has to face. Consequently the demand pushes up the cutoff and thus the madrush for marks increases even more. Making a cosmetic change to a system is not bad and probably needed but what is really needed at this point of time is that we try to improve our education infrastructure to increase the number of people it supports and to improve the quality of graduates this system passes out.
Look at cat in 2002 you would have got a call at 97.XX percentile but in 2009 even 98.XX percentile would not fetch an IIM call. It is because the no of applicants have doubled in these years while IIMs have not been able to keep pace in the number of seats with this increase no of applicants. What is really needed is to create more infrastructure so that people dont end up becoming fanatics. Mr. Sibal read my lips
MORE IITs, MORE IIMs, MORE NITs, MORE IIITs, MORE COLLEGES!!!!
