Suicide and exams

There has been a spate of student suicides recently, coinciding with the onset of the exam season. This isn't a new phenomenon, and various people discussing it isn't new either.

What seems to be new is the fact that all and sundry are suddenly saying that excellence in formal education is not an indicator of success in the real world. I read an article in the newspaper about this, and they had rounded up all the celebrities who had done badly in their school days to speak up about this. They used to do this earlier too, but the tone suddenly seems to have changed from "it's not the end of the world, you can do something else and be successful" to "bah, education is for wimps, those who are good at studies are tunnel-visioned, those who are bad at studies have all these other good qualities that we find attractive"... And I didn't come up with the 'tunnel-visioned' word, it was actually used by one of the "celebrities" in the newspaper article. If I understood him correctly, he said that he doesn't hire first-class graduates since they are 'tunnel-visioned'.

These people then go on to say that success in the real world depends on courage and self belief and perseverance and other such nice words. If someone doesn't have enough courage and belief and perseverance, not to mention brains, to get through something as silly as a board exam; how do these experts expect him to be successful in the real world using these same qualities?

The first thing that children in schools should be taught is that they are not the center of the universe, regardless of what their parents seem to think. They should also be told that there are certain roles in society that can only be fulfilled by someone with excellent academic knowledge in addition to all those other fine qualities, and there are other roles where just the other fine qualities are enough to get by. If they can't do maths, it means they are deficient in that area, just as those who can't play football or do pushups are deficient in that area.

Spare students the shock of entering the real world after having being coddled all their lives. Tell them how it is as soon as possible.