Education and competition
Most of us feel that we have to think about education of our children when they reach to senior secondary stage or thereabout. In fact, most students go through a tough competition right from day one ever since they joined a play school. Parents and students face a difficult task of having to stay in front of others, as the going is rough and the competition almost cutthroat. This is only part of a very complex situation where you have to keep your children ahead of others to make them effectively stay in the race. Moreover, the cruel most fact is that everyone is looking for the same opportunities unfortunately, which are too limited to fulfill purpose for all of them. Opportunities at every level are too few and number of applicants too many. That certainly is disappointing but they have to cope with this situation and while doing so, they have too many compromises to make.
There is no guarantee for even the best of them, that the race they are running, will reach them to their target. We have no authentic data available which could tell us how many children are trying to reach to their dream destinations and how many of them will reach there. After all there are 10,000 applicants for top 100 places in ‘Good Schools’ Now when we talk about good schools of top ranking we do not mean the schools which develop all-round qualities of students but what come out of such schools are mere bags full of ‘words’ who can speak big but lack good qualities in general. That is what they achieve in 10-12 years or even more.
A bright future for your child
You should not have much of a problem to reach to the conclusion about what good schools should provide instead of mere bookish knowledge. If you think seriously about it, the aim of schools should be to develop best possible talent, provide them technical expertise as per students’ own preferred topics available in schools so that they can develop skills for their future life. To develop a particular liking for a particular career is process that should begin in the beginning and not when they reach to senior secondary when their options become too limited and most of the time almost unreachable. That situation leads children to a stage where they become victims of frustration and can even take extreme steps when not getting desired results despite all the best possible efforts they made.
The prime object of the schools should be to provide systematic, target oriented and technical education to their students so that they can work in a planned manner when they come out in practical world. The schools should provide children an atmosphere where they learn to the art of wisdom, importance of inner beauty, worship virtues provided by Nature and learn to behave like good citizens. All these qualities will turn the children in real citizen with a love for nation, work and nature because until they learn to love life in true sense, they will never do anything successfully. Mere competitions will not help them become successful in life.
Competition kills spirit of competence – so why competition
If the children constantly live in an environment of competition, it certainly proves to be destructive for overall development of children, which may cause develop disparage, negative and unhelpful thoughts in children. Competition should be limited to develop a complete human in children and not a robot, a child should have all human qualities instead of someone who posses every trick to succeed in exams, knows everything about science, can teach a lesson to a wise but knows nothing about humanitarian side of life. This will only develop a mechanical personality, not a person with human qualities. Let us make it very clear that when we discuss about a complete human being, we have someone in our minds who can think about welfare of all, posses qualities of analyzing, can examine things on actual terms, who can set his targets and at the same time behave like a human.
A good education is what makes a child competent enough to tackle situations on humanitarian grounds as well practical when he comes out of school. A good education should teach children live in complete harmony with love for all including nature. Let us have a look at the qualities of good education-
A- A good school should teach students in a manner whereby they learn humanity in universal terms.
B- Children should have feeling for all living creatures and Nature on same ground with respect for all.
C- Students should have no fear to fight with evil and learn to create an atmosphere where freedom, love and discipline rule the world.
D- Children should learn to think above particular religious, political and social mindset despite having faith in all these as per their own background. Students should learn to respect all with an open mindset having a proper basic knowledge of every religion and political stream with a reason. It is kind of school and Parents’ combined responsibility
Schools and the target
There should be no doubt in any body’s mind that the sole aim of our schools cannot be to fill the minds of children with facts, words, plans, etc. despite the standing reality of those facts being unlimited valuable. The hard reality remains that these are too much to carry on. Schools should have clear aim of making their students motivate and think about their own development. Schools should treat children as human and act as schools where minds being trained in positive ways and not as manufacturing units where robots are coming constantly out of assembly line.
We can add another point in this fact that parents should cooperate with schools in making good and thinking citizen because they are as responsible in the process as the schools are. Most of us may laugh at the mere thought of not keeping their wards in the race of achieving the best by trying as hard as they can. Perhaps that is how most of the parents are making their children to prepare for facing challenges. Nevertheless, the schools working on a different level of work ethic or teaching style having emphasis on human values and lesser stress on exam oriented preparations are not doing any worse. The students coming out of such schools are doing well enough to give ‘hard working’ students class a very stiff challenge and still facing far lesser stresses.
Pressure or guidance
There is another point that needs our attention on an immediate level is as we all know that neither extra pressure of education system or from parents is doing any good for children but making children extra cautious. Parents at the most can keep a constant vigil on their children because in case of not persuading at all the children can become ‘lazy’. It could prove as harmful as that happens in case of children with extra bit of pressure of work could. None of these situations is ideal for children. There should be a perfectly chalked out program to train children for their future with no letups and no over pressure. Schools and parents both should be equally responsible in creating such a program. Parents should not over expect that their children would certainly be among the list of toppers.
Children selected in competitive exams, as I said earlier are lesser than 1%. In such cases the best strategy that would work is to motivate your children to do better, mind it I said motivate and not pressurize your child to obtain as good results as he can but never feel disappointed if he does not make the cut off list. After all an admission in a premier institute is nothing but a guarantee of a job. However, if you make your child strong enough to face the problems of life with courage, he would certainly do a lot better in his life. I for my personal experiment used reverse tactics, whenever my daughter wanted to be bit lazy, I would tell her jokingly that I am planning to take her to see a movie but she will have to fail her exams or come second in her class to qualify to go to a movie. Trust me I never had to take her to watch a movie. She never obliged me by doing either of these too.
Most parents who understand value of all-round development of their children do not ‘fix’ fixed goals for their children but keep their options open so that their children do not have to face disappointment if they are not able to achieve those ‘particular pre-fixed goals’. But in case parents succeed, in achieving, those fixed goals if the children concerned are intelligent and hard working that proves that they have reached to a minimum achievement in their lives. Now this is the right time to put the bar on next higher level to set the next set of targets. Setting next levels makes one winners in long run otherwise most people achieving initial success feel satisfied at this stage itself and never try for further targets.
The competition at a glance
What we think about completion and how we tackle it is an important aspect, which is different for every individual. How we look at things and how do we react for getting success however small or big. I do not say that competition is bad or we do not feel elevated or happy once our children achieve success in competitive exams. However, the happiness should be for the sake of self-success and not a comparison with others. We should not make our children believe that they are ahead of others because that may prove end of the road for them.
Okay, let us look at this with this angle- suppose you child got 95% in a particular exam and he obtained seventh place in overall list. That is a big achievement but imagine if he was to get only 88% but obtained first rank! Now, which of these two positions do you find is better for your child? It is a complicated question and the answer is not easy, some people find obtained percentage as mark of knowledge while the others think the position as more important. The situation is only comparable with an all-round average happy life for all or a top position in a poor society. Perhaps some people find it better to achieve better than others although it may not be enough while others think that all of them get good opportunities without thinking for self-achievement.
I think people with self-satisfaction feel happier for their average or above average success because they do not compare their success with others or do not work under the fear that someone else can overtake them. People, who are willing to see them on top in a particular class, always find them in a stressed position and never enjoy their life satisfactorily. Once they fail to achieve their desired results, find it very hard to come out of disappointment or give up their further struggle to achieve their set targets.
The other face of the coin – Why no competition
Now let us look at the other side of the coin to see if the competition is way to success or we should sit feeling satisfied with whatever came our way, never really trying hard for it. We can see that the societies, which have no competitive spirit, die a slow death because they did not survive the stiff competition coming from societies that are more competitive. The business houses not trying hard enough lose out to campaigners that are more aggressive because they did not get enough customers. The same is applicable for our children because if they have to face a very tough competition in this country with population almost touching to 1.4 billion mark, there is no alternative but to go for an all out effort.
Our children cannot survive without giving their best to survive where selection is going to eliminate almost 99% or more out of next category of elected candidates. After all there are 300, 000 people competing for less than 2,000 places available in our higher technical institutes and some of them are reserved for deprived classes. However, the need is not to become extra wise or overactive but to absorb available knowledge more actively. Students gathering knowledge as a whole and not merely remembering the available material will be better prepared. Competition should be limited to self-improvement and not for competition with others.
They should be prepared naturally to accept the challenges coming their way. The ultimate truth is that it is no more survival of strongest or fittest but the ones who are not adamant to learning or unwilling to adapt to changes. Competition is not completely out of the picture but the fact is that competition is not to show anyone down. Completion in modern time is with ourselves to improve ourselves as much as we can within ourselves, within our own limits, no lesser, no more. The people who did not learn to face problems in their childhood never became strong in their adult life.
We do not give it a proper thought that not all our students can reach to top notch institutes for a simple reason that there are not enough seats there for all of them. And think the other way, if there were enough seats for all of them and they had reached there to pass out as top class engineers and doctors where would they end up? Not all of them could manage to get a job because we do not have that many openings. They would be as frustrated or more in that situation. We should let them prepare on their merit where we are instrumental in motivating them and making them understand that life is not a racecourse where they are running like a horse to touch the finish bar to win a Darby.
I think this is high time for us to ask a few questions from our parents to help their children more in achieving what everyone is looking forward in their lives, the success-
A- Would you motivate your child to take up his studies seriously to higher his standard?
B- Would you curse him for not being there in top five or three and immediately arrange special tuition for him?
C- Would you be worried if your child never wins a prize in extra activities held in his school?
D- Do you really help him in his studies but keep pressurizing him to complete his homework?
E- Do you ever feel that outdoor games are not for him and he must spend more time in his studies or keep his activities limited to school sports only?
F- Do you still feel that you failed to have your child admitted in best school of your city?
G- Do you keep poking him that if he does not study hard enough, he will never get a chance in premier institutes and his life will be useless?
H- Do you never allow your child to read out of course books telling him he was wasting his time?
I- Do you keep an eye on topper of his class to tell your child to follow him and try to topple him to reach to number one spot?
I know we all would want to answer in affirmative because that perhaps is the best option for our children. Unfortunately, that is not and if we select all ‘yes’ perhaps we are not the best of parents. Maybe one or two points in yes, out of these are all right but not all of these. You perhaps are going too fast to make your child a good future citizen who shall always be over stressed and will never work anything in a proper way.
Healthy competition is part of life
Actually speaking, competition is in most cases taken very lightly in practical life. We limit it to mere ‘one up ship’ with each other. Life itself is a competition with own self and the one who knows the importance of long-term success never looks at others to overtake them. Competition should be only symbolic in case of children and not as cutthroat, as it goes in between business houses. Children should not compete to classify as good or bad but just to encourage them. Competition should not take over children with a sense of frustration in case they fail to achieve very highly set targets.
Children should learn to fulfill their bigger priorities of life in a phased manner instead going for them all out like a 100-meter sprinter. That can cause them a break down midway. By the way, all this discussion is not to discourage participation in any competitions or not to encourage children for doing better but the emphasis should be on overall progress and to use their full potential in total learning process.
We should understand that problem is not with our children. Whatever we see in the name of competition is not a real competition of talent but the shortage of opportunities. What is there to compete for children when you find 1000 parents fighting out for 50 seats available in a good play school? It is more of a challenge for parents more than those innocent children who come there ready with ABCD and 1234. It is all about demand and supply that is creating the falls sense of competition among the children and parents. It is all about ‘grabbing’ or ‘snatching’ the situations rather than calling them competitions. I think most of us go through such competitions every day in our life at every stage of life. Go to a railway station, bus stand, cinema hall, shopping center, school or college, you will find yourself crowded with people waiting for their turn or trying to jump lines.
People are willing to beg borrow or steal in order to get what they need. Same is the case with admissions process in schools, colleges and jobs, hence the need of these unnecessary so-called competitions. It should be a fair contest in between capable students in place of musical chair race, where all are capable, but there are too few chairs for all to sit and still reducing. A healthy competition is must for overall development for every child; it provides children recognition, acceptance to their talent and most of all an identity. Children feel more satisfied, confident and capability to safeguard their personality. Children learn to touch higher goals they set for themselves. They set the bar few inches higher up the poll, they wish to cross in their next jump. However, I repeat at this point once again that this should not be a competition to leave some one behind but to take oneself forward.
The unhealthy competition
Unfortunately enough, the competition in most places is not healthy and these lead to frustrations in the end. Let us put it this way, when we participate in a healthy contest with certain rules and ethics to follow we try to keep away from aggression out of it by keeping a self control to not to let situation slip out of control which could bring our reputation down. But this is not true about most of the competitions which children have to go through today to attain the next level of admission, this is the worst situation which harms a child’s mindset most. He falls a prey to complexes either superiority or inferiority as the case might be. In some cases, when children find themselves down and out, they either leave the field or even reach to a point where they think in terms of suicide. Some of the children never come out of the state of frustration in their lives and never reach to any target to end up losers. The irony is that this form of competition is name of the game and a child has to go through the ordeal of the same on every step in his career.
Need of practicality
A one sided expertise can never make a child a successful person in his life. A child who is very good at his studies but knows nothing about other practical fields of life including self-confidence, social behavior, discipline, and love for life can get a good job but will have to fight hard to keep it intact. Excellence in education is a very small chunk of bundle of qualities a person needs to stay ahead in all fields of life. Therefore, the need is to go for an overall personality development which will help a child in every field with equal inner satisfaction.
Who is responsible for our mentality
The current mentality of unhealthy competitions is probably the result of inheriting from our erstwhile rulers who wanted machines to work for them without thinking or almost inflicting human qualities in their workforce. They did not care for quality but they wanted mere workers who could work continually without asking too many questions from them. People did not mind, as they had no options but to work without questioning their decisions. However, the former rulers gave us a feeling of good jobs or bad jobs. We consider manual jobs for people coming from lower society and 9-5 white collared jobs for high society. Expertise in professions was never a consideration for them.
Our ancestors saw big jobs for rulers and small jobs for subjects, which made them to think in terms of classification of white collared jobs needing brain work and jobs that needed manual efforts. People thought in terms of going for big jobs and clerical jobs were considered better than that of a mechanic or plumber. In developed countries expert manual workers are earning as good as engineers or doctors but we have yet to learn the importance of manual work in our country. No parents in our country would like to think in terms of training their children as electrician, carpenter, painter or plumber who earns as much or even more than an engineer in a government job.
Market Mantra
But the situation more or less is changing for good now. Everyone including children has many options available at every level and some persons have shown that expertise in any given field can bring name and money without going into unnecessary competitions of exams and tests which may give or may not give positive results in the end. The opportunities to succeed in life will take a new turn as we can see people are taking up jobs which were supposed to be ‘sub-standard’ some time back. This will certainly reduce pressure on so-called high-end jobs to help bring sanity to people who did nothing if they failed in those competitions and went into depression.
People today have two options to choose from, to work or not to work. Either they have to be from ‘very intelligent, with working-mentality, committed, and ethical’ or from ’No work, not interested to work, no motivation’ type who will never succeed doing nothing. This is perhaps the original Mantra of the day which rules open capital market, either you have to be good with respect for your job or the market will see-off you. Our schools and colleges will have to teach our students that they must go for a win-win situation for them not involving themselves too far in competitions, not beyond a certain limit at least where they do not become a victim of ‘neither here nor there’ society.
Conclusion
We shall have to give a new dimension to our thinking to come out of the mentality of winning the race with top position for our children. E shall have to come out of mentality where we feel proudly only if our children figure in top 3 or five otherwise we feel as if we have no place in society to walk with our heads high. We shall have to stop thinking in terms that if our children did not find a place in IIT , IIM or AIMS, he missed everything in his life. There are many more horizons to reach, we only need to open our eyes and grab the opportunities.