I have been a freelance tutor for nearly a decade now. I have taught English to a number of different kids who have responded in different ways to my teaching. Most came with what seemed to me to be an inherent understanding that learning English (and any of the social sciences) was a complete waste of time. Where did they learn that from? Who convinced them of it? Some so-called ‘professional science teachers’ may have to share some of the blame here, certainly. But is it really entirely their fault?
I cannot say that I ever had a Dead Poets Society type of reaction to my teaching but at least half of my students developed some form of critical thinking and, if not love, a nagging affection for literature. However, over the last nine years or so I have found concrete evidence of what I had always assumed – that children are never ‘bad students’. It is always a matter of parental influence and, in some cases, the lack of it.
Us teachers have very limited access to students whether in the classroom or in tutoring sessions. Contrary to popular myth, students no longer consider their teachers as parental equals. They are thoroughly made aware that their parents are paying for these other humans to break their backs and ensure their wards learn something. The parental refrain – which I must admit I have been guilty of using as well – of “What is the point of us spending so much money on your education if you won’t get good marks?” has only ended up producing the negative results it was always going to.
Schoolchildren have become acutely aware that it is the duty of those paid to teach them to ensure that they learn something. They have deduced that they are not required to learn – perhaps, quite correctly. They have to simply allow themselves to be taught.
Such a one-way movement of knowledge usually leads to a complete lack of conceptual understanding or, indeed, empathy. Students remember very little of what they had been taught and certainly not for very long, and whatever they do remember will be because of rote learning. This will further exacerbate their inability to retain knowledge.
Now, obviously, as is the norm, it is at about this point in the article you will start screaming: “Not all children!” This protestation has the same value as ‘not all men’ or ‘not all Brahmins’. Yes, certainly not all children, but most. The reason it is difficult to notice for parents and others around the children is it is not an overt thing. You see your children, siblings, nieces and nephews with their faces buried in books or attending tuition classes every day of the week and believe that they are studying.
However, this assumption is a fallacy. What they are doing is going through the motions. Doing what they are expected to do. They are simply performing the ritual act of studying. The problem nowadays is that most urban and semi-urban parents are looking for shortcuts. Their relative affluence means that they can afford tutors on top of their child’s schooling expenses. This causes many to believe that if they are throwing money at a problem it will automatically solve itself.
For many households where both parents are working, getting a tutor is perhaps a necessity. However, whatever the situation, a complete disconnect from the child’s process of learning is not only unacceptable from a teacher’s point of view but also extremely unhealthy for the parent-child relationship. The parents while pursuing their own career ambitions (frankly, something that we cannot grudge them) assess their child’s efforts only by the marks they get at the end of each session having been completely absent throughout. This will inevitably make the child find this situation unfair and she or he will begin to nurture deep resentment.
At the same time, and a lot has already been written about this, parents whose own lives perhaps fell short of expectations will transfer that burden on to their children. This inevitably creates a situation where the child’s achievements will always be less than satisfactory or, worse, merely satisfactory – mainly because ‘Sharmaji ka beta’ always does better. But what is the yardstick here? It is exclusively how many marks the kid got – or medals or certificates or, sometimes, even pats on the back. It has nothing to do with effort, improvement and certainly not with actual learning. These children will go into depression, have their mental states mocked and finally realise there is no point in any of this which will ultimately lead to cynicism and a complete lack of faith in the process of learning or working hard.
What these parents are doing is creating a society where people don’t actually know anything but boast very high-performance indices (yes, that’s the plural of 'index'). In such a society, problem-solving becomes impossible because that requires empathy which we are becoming more and more incapable of by the second. Parents are instilling an inherent selfishness into their children – by creating a world of unfair competition – that is not only breeding irresponsible behaviour but also creating citizens who are unwilling to sacrifice anything for anyone including, inevitably, their parents. This will of course lead to high GDPs and higher income brackets allowing the nation to hide its poverty behind glossy statistics.
Children are growing up learning and believing that anything that is even in the tiniest way detrimental or unprofitable for them, even if it is cosmetic, is bad and unacceptable. Parents are drilling into their children that it is not necessary for them to learn life skills as long as they can rattle off theories and do calculus in seconds – neither of which are bad skills in themselves. However, a lack of conceptual understanding and inability to think outside the box means the problems that exist in our society and hinder our nation’s progress will remain unaffected.
Most of these children who are growing up in comfortable homes with wide-ranging access to information do not even realise that a much larger percentage of their contemporaries may not even have the chance to begin an education never mind complete it. One student I had refused to believe that everyone did not have an LED TVs at their home. Many of these children have accepted the false doctrine that as long as you have the will to work hard good things will happen. They seem to forget that they are already starting miles ahead of a large section of the Indian population.
While the education system, teaching methods and various other factors definitely need improving overall, I find it easy to lay the blame on parents just as they find it easy and extremely convenient to put in zero effort and blame their children for ‘not studying’. Parents need to educate themselves. They also need to learn to empathise with rather than villainise the less privileged. The janitors or cobblers are not there because they did not work hard but because society dealt them an unfair hand. Parents are the architects of the future. It’s time they stopped playing Candy Crush and started Googling how to be better at parenting.
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