“Preparing your kid right from the 8th standard for IIT-JEE”, the satanic words inscribed on a huge hoarding, actually an advertisement by a coaching institute, at one of the premiere squares of Indore. Also, there was a picture of a proudly smiling faculty member placing a yellow-colored hard hat (the ones used by construction workers) on a puerile child’s head. Whatever the message they wanted to convey through this pictorial action, but to me, it felt as if a man with a wicked smile was about to shut the psychological independence and creativity of that kid by putting some yellow instrument on his head and simultaneously inducing the thought which says, “Your fate has been decided here and now!”.
Trust me! It was a sight that would have brought much pain to all the adversaries of the typical “bhed-chaal” pattern of Indian education system. On one hand, debates on metamorphosing the country’s education system, laying more emphasis on creativity and endorsing every child’s unique dreams are flourishing in the country, and on the other hand, we see such messages overtly inscribed on mega-size hoardings at public places.
I solemnly want to ask the director of that coaching that where was your shame while deciding upon such a tagline. Who has entitled you to decide a child’s course of life as early as 8th standard. Even the parents getting lured by these institutes and enrolling their ward in such courses are equally at the fault.
Imagine the injustice that this course will do to a docile child. There are so many that I better properly list them here.
First, even if the child is bound to appear IIT-JEE by his own will or really aspires to be in the IITs since a very small age, then also do you really need to train him for 5 complete years? I’m sure that if anyone deserves to be in an IIT, then a coaching of 2 years and that too along with proper schooling would suffice.
Second, we are incarcerating the future of a kid by programming his mind towards a career at an age when he’s unable to raise an objection or think of something which he really wanted to do in his life, something which he could have easily made a mention of maybe in 10th class. This is simply euphemistic killing of a kid’s creativity and aspirations.
Third, such courses have become just another tactic of catching a higher number of students and ensuring a lump sum of nothing less than 3 lacs for each student who joins the cursed 8th to 12th class training course. These institutes have devised a way of transcending the stiff competition which they face from other institutes while admitting students in the 10+2 course by catching their baits indisputably right from the 8th standard.
Fourth, apart from the putting a cosmic sum of money on stake, what else, something even more valuable, are the parents putting on stake by opting for such courses? It’s their child’s school life! Yes! This is one aspect which is never being considered as a serious overhead of coaching classes. If not in 8th, 9th or 10th, students enrolled in coaching institutes for IIT-JEE do forgo their precious schooling years of 11th and 12th standard. The loss which these students suffer due to passing over the crunch years of their school life haunts them now and then all throughout their graduation and post-graduation years.
Above mentioned is merely the preface of a book of perils that droops over a child’s career if he/she is admitted to any such forced, retrospective and pre-timed courses. As for now, there’s no law or moral bondage for these institutes to abandon such courses, but, every parent must be sensible and sensitive enough to let their child grow of age and then decide for himself the course and coaching he desires to take. It’s high time we snub all such courses, lest be prepared to see kids learning the full form of IIT’s in maybe 2nd standard!
