It’s been decades now since we have been lying to the school kids about the importance of, for example, grades in life. For instance, beginning from the ninth standard we start telling them that they have board exams in 10th standard which are the most important exams of life and they need to excel in that because those marks stay with them for the rest of their life. Let’s be honest, that does not happen. The marks in 10th standard are important so that, first of all, they prove that the students have understood the basic concepts of what they are going to study till the 12th, and secondly because it makes it easier for them to be able to opt for any stream in the 11th standard. Sure the 10th mark sheet stays for our whole life just as a proof of identification, but nobody looks at those marks. Ever.

The next thing we lie about is excel in 12th board exams so that they can get enrolled in the college of their choice and that will sort their whole life for them. Yes, true that it helps in getting into the college that they want, but this is not at all true that getting into the right college will sort out their whole life. Nobody bothers about which college you studied from. People only ask the name of the college at the max, but nothing more. Even in post-graduation, students who had studied from different kind of colleges, good or bad, can get enrolled in the same classroom.

The whole issue is more about how you develop yourself as a person, what skills you have learnt, and what experiences you have got. Different people have different timelines in their lives to have a portfolio build with these. The same thing we do to our kids while they are entering the process of getting enrolled in a University for the post-grad and further qualifications such as MBA and all. We keep telling the kids and students that once you do this, your life will be set.

What are we doing with the kids by saying these kinds of lies even if it is for their betterment?

We keep them away from the real problems in life. We make them believe that they are already in this young age living the tough part of life, and once they get the stream of their choice, the good college, the best university, and the trending qualification, everything will be easy for them. The rest of their life will be set. They’ll get a good job easily if they have done things right and as told up to this point. And the only next thing that will be left in life to do will be to get married, and later to have kids. That means, according to our mental timelines we are making them believe that approximately by the age of 25 they’ll be leading the best life with all the material luxury that they can desire, a loving wife or husband, and cute little kids.

But the real problems stars from the loopholes we are leaving behind in this whole narrative.

Once kids start learning sooner or later in life that things are only getting worse and not better after they have done everything they needed to do to get the best of everything, they start understanding they have been lied to. Some kids become rebellious; some start defying the education, job, marriage system, and some start going for the exact things they are being told against. Some kids can even become distressed, tensed, anxious, or depressed. Some kids become much happier while their families become sad from their non-obedience and reckless ways. Some kids stop trusting what the adults in the family tell them about the world and start believing more on the stories they get to hear from the friends of the same age. Sometimes it turns out into something much better for the kids, but most of the times it turns into the kind of thing which the families are not prepared for. Sometimes kids are happily exploring the world from a newborn perception, while parents think they are getting into trouble.

Here is how it happens. Kids either are able to choose the stream of they desire or they don’t. From here they enter into a highly competitive world. They study at school and coaching different syllabus. They get over-burdened with studies. Some of them are highly ambitious for a particular career line and are ready to give their best shot. Some kids realize it is not their cup of tea — what they have chosen for themselves. They drag themselves for two years somehow. The parents of these kids feel bad that their kids are not performing well and they start pushing the kids to learn from the progress of other kids. These kids realize they are not much good, and start looking for distractions in life with no support from around, but of their like-minded friends.

The second phase comes when some kids get into the best of colleges and the other ones do not merely because of a little percentile. They feel stressed. They had given their best shot and have learnt that their best shot was less than the best shot of other kids. They do away with average colleges. Or they drop their year even if they have been told to aim for only a particular college which they might or might not get into even in the next year. Some kids get into less than an average college and they feel that getting graduated is a mere formality they need to do. These kids have started devaluing education. Their families have already given up on any expectations from them and they are aware of it. They feel that their family stays with them only if they are worth being staying with. They start indulging in petty distractions and nuances of the world around them. The only thing left for them is to be able to find any well-paying job once the college gets over and eventually marry. Hopes and aspirations, they all fade to black.

The third phase comes when kids realize that the college they have tried hard to get into is not serving them right. It can happen at the level of graduation or post-graduation. The cause is sometimes the syllabus, or the teachers, or the other students. One or more of these three are not being fair to the kids. They start feeling like a misfit here. They now have to drag through these 2 or 3 or 4 years of college life. A lot of different kinds of worldly things start impacting their lives which the parents deliberately ignore. There is hardly ever a parent who knows what is going on the lives and minds of their kids. Kids discover new windows and doors in the room of life where they had been living in since they are born. Moreover, they also realize that these windows and doors had always been there, except they were only purposefully kept hidden from their eyes. Many kids here find a reason to further blame their families. It is still better than the kids who start blaming life and the world instead. These door and windows lead one to unexpected good and bad experiences of life. Few parents remain ignorant of these new developments in their child’s life. They don’t try to listen to or understand their kids. They don’t want to. They want their kids to walk on the path of life which they have already set for their kids. Kids start defying it.

All these phases open into different branches and sub-plots respective of every single kid. These experiences of life start shaping their personality, attitudes, and belief system. The fourth phase comes when these kids enter into the professional world of jobs and different organizations and companies. This is when the roof and floor of the room they had been starts shifting. This is when nothing of what they had known so far matters. They get to deal with people of different backgrounds, cultures, strata, states, countries, languages, ages, aspirations, intentions, ambitions, biases, pre and post conditions, salaries, posts etc., all at once. They feel they are in the middle of the world surrounded by everybody. Standing in the centre of the room, some of these kids receive attention, some do not, some get stones thrown at them, some get used as carpets or tables or serving trays for the others. All the hard work they have done so far in their life gets shaken up. They see people at higher posts less deserving of their stature. They see lesser abled getting paid more. They see people lying and manipulating them to serve their purpose. They find themselves inside or outside of the lobbies created with no logic or base.

And then they start hearing voices from everywhere that judge them, suggest them, advise them, and criticize them. People tell your kids that the harder they work, the more they try to prove themselves and their worth, the more they outshine the others around them, the better revenue they can generate, the further they can stroll in their career. They are told by everyone that they ought to start sacrificing their health, sleep, relationships, and other little desires if they want to succeed in life. They get surrounded by the idea of ambition and how it ought to seem in its appearance. They are here to serve and only serve the others, the organization, the fat-heads, the ill-minded, the attention seekers, and the ego-centric people to get promotions. And once they’ll reach the top of the ladder, the control of everything in the world and life will be in their hands. Well, what happens at the top of the ladder is a different concern. Now there is no going back from the place where their experiences are going to lead them.

Henceforth the kids start shaping their ideas of life and what they want from it. They realize how they want to look like in the eyes of the others. They learn about the kind of image they want to build for themselves. They set certain rules about how to deal with people. They start using their strengths and weaknesses in different proportions in the manner of their actions and defences for and against the world. They become strong-headed, and sometimes for no reason.

The fifth phase comes when your child gets married. It is entirely another topic and much diverted from education, encompassing an altogether different and unnecessarily important aspect of life. This is also the aspect you can very well relate to and remembers quite vividly. Since we are having a discussion more centric to education and careers, we’ll leave this aspect out. However, if you want to be engaged in this topic, let us know.