Learn To Dream:

April 10/2013: The Orissa Government has decided to do away with the top 100 list in the matric results. This may be viewed by some as a regressive step which would discourage young girls and boys to strive to be enlisted amongst the best in the state. Apart from students burning the midnight oil to mug up for exams, there is also the huge angle of mothers, fathers and relatives who put tremendous pressure to ensure their ward excels.

Sometimes when failure looms large, there is of course, the railway track or rat poison for the child to resort to. Let us not for a moment consider that by using the word ‘child’ we are in any way trying to wash off involvement of the student in the whole process of reaching the top list.

Add to this the mayhem created by media in hankering for exclusive stories, quotes and oh-so-beloved pictorial projections of the toppers and their families. Funnily, on being questioned about their vision of personal future, most of these excellent students cough up rehearsed run of the mill replies of becoming a doctor, engineer or at best an IAS officer. Equally hilarious is the fact that if someone follows their careers, like we have done, it will be discovered that most of these girls and boys fade into oblivion by the time they complete their college education. If at all some of them do manage to reach any of their pre set targets, then they promptly become cannon fodder along with millions of other not-so-top job seekers. If their parents could afford to run around the state and chase their answer papers and manage to get higher marks, the similar exercise became more and more difficult not only when education got higher but also in the later stages of entering a career.

It is rumoured that while some decades ago this system of Toppers’ List did not exist, a group of warped bureaucrats set this up to give the children of choice a fillip in life that proved difficult for them to maintain. What the government policy of late declares was prevalent in the state and highly acceptable. Children did pass matric exams. If they did well, their teachers, principals and co-students acknowledged their ability. The local community, rightly so, expected bright things from those good students. However, the mere 5-second glitz and glamour brought about by media never existed. With changing times, tastes change also. The hype became so bright that the mundane aspect of keeping up the edge gradually slithered down the ladder.

Recently, a Madras High Court judgement has banned PSUs from adopting the process of campus recruitments. In the learned opinion of the HC, recruitments carried out before the students pass out or are exposed to any kind of serious work environment is wrong. It is possible the court felt that these recruitments result in creating a bunch of youngsters most of whom are so full of themselves because their parents could afford their education in highly expensive institutes that they forget longevity in career depends solely on adaptability, teamwork and achieving targets. It may be mildly mentioned that an Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Henry Ford or such rule breakers and not so bright students finally came along as leaders in their careers of choice. We are not fully aware as to how much running around their parents did if any at all to procure high marks for their kids. A complete human being is not necessarily made in the classroom. Education, apart from teaching alphabets and numerals, in reality helps in disciplining the mind that later on finds itself absorbent to new ideas.

In a setup where seniors collaborate in leakages of question papers and parents crowd around school buildings to pass on copy material to their children, it is important to change the mindset and endeavour to create a new generation of youngsters who would prefer to be enterprising and adventurous rather than being staid job seekers. Let us teach students not to seek jobs but follow through in realizing their dreams.