Education or Coaching?

There are advertisements persuading children as small as 5th standard, to start planning years ahead for admission to prestigious professional colleges like IITs – without even considering the options that the child may grow up to become anything other than an engineer or doctor.

I can imagine the pressure a child would go through if he starts coaching classes in middle-school, not to gain more knowledge, not even to score better in his academics, but only to prepare how to answer “wisely” in certain competitive exams, so that he can get admission in one of the top-brand colleges. The ratio of selection into IIT’s or IIM’s is less than 1% of all the candidates who aspire, hence the balance 99% only end up paying huge amounts to coaching centres, attending very tiring classes at odd hours, learning very little, and ending up thoroughly disappointed.

It is said that: “Parents worry about what career their child will take up, without realizing that probably the career he will eventually be in, has not even been invented yet.”

Education is meant to provide knowledge, life-skills, vocational skills, and build up self-esteem and confidence levels. Unwanted divergence into “coaching” can defeat the very purpose. Even if the coaching can result in the child getting admission into a prestigious institution, he will find it extremely difficult to cope with challenges of life in later years, and then end up a confused, frustrated and burnt-out person long before his retirement. – Ali