Recently I watched the film Chal Chalein. The film touches upon a very sensitive subject – parental pressure on kids to perform well in studies, to become doctors, engineers, administrative officers etc. The producer (Mahesh Padalkar) and the director (Ujjwal Singh) should be applauded for taking up this issue. It is indeed a very serious matter. Consciously or unconsciously parents are subjecting their children to inhuman hours of study. They are taking the fun out of their children’s lives.
It is not just grown up kids (9th to 12th standard) but very small children are going through this trauma of doing well, of excelling. In metropolitan cities, there is literally a mad rush. Parents want to admit their children in the best schools of the city. From the age of two and a half they start grooming them – sending them to special preparatory schools, making their tender hands write all kinds of scripts and numbers, making them cram alphabet, rhymes, and essays. They do not realize that by thus tutoring small children, they are killing creativity, curiosity, imagination and individuality. As it is life ahead is tough, competitive and it pains to see childhood thus wrangled.
Here we are starting a grading system for the 10th class but what about little children? Why should they be subjected to this kind of manipulation, just because their parents want good schools for their children? And why do schools have such stupid, stringent rules for admission? Instead of taking a written test of five or six years old (for which the child has been preparing for two years or more), can’t there be a simpler criterion for selection? I think this issue needs serious attention.