*The Indian Education System and me.* #TAWAdminDiaries Late one afternoon, back in 2012, I was grounded in my room with thick books about Chemistry, Physics and Maths. It was not that I belonged to a strict family where my mother would have a stick on my head all day long, but then again, I belonged to an Education system where I was defined by the grades that I got. That fine day, I was only a month away from my ‘first set’ of pre-boards. Board examinations, in India, is a set of public examinations that happen to you in class 10th and 12th; and apparently, are considered very important for getting into a decent university, getting into professional courses, and even possibly in finding employment. My school organised two sets of pre-boards, to give students the ‘feel’ of board examinations, or maybe, just because, boards were not enough to torture them. I was stuck with thick books of material alien to me, and after spending two hours with them; I had just learnt an equation from Chemistry and sketched a portrait of the author, referring to his picture under “about the author” section. “Oh my God, Husna! How cool is that!” my brother exclaimed, looking at the sketch. That was the first time when somebody had appreciated my sketching. He immediately took the paper to my mother and within a few seconds, I could see my mother rushing towards me from the kitchen, the apron still tied around her waist. “How beautiful is that, Husna!” she looked bewildered. “You never showed me how well you sketched! I thought you were only good with pot-paintings and canvases! You should take up Fine Arts after 10th. Get done with this PCM and take up Fine Arts,” she repeated her sentence twice, planted a kiss on my forehead and left the room with pride in her eyes. That day, was also the first day when I started to think about my subjects after 12th. Perhaps, Fine Arts just looked like my thing. They told you how to stitch, paint, sketch, colour, embroider and weave; and that was all I ever wanted to do in life. But then again, who has ever received all what he desires for? It was not too late that I realised my school did not offer Fine Arts as a subject and that I had to leave my school behind to take up the stream. Belonging to a small city, the second reality check was that it was only in two schools that the stream was offered. And the most major, the third reality check, you were admitted to those two schools on the basis of your merit. Merit, for me, was a word that I had no relations with. I had always been an average student who always failed the Maths examination and barely got a rank in the class. But still, I never lost hopes, kept dreaming about a class where somebody would actually ‘teach’ me how to paint and perhaps, that would be all I’d be ever supposed to do! * Today, almost two years hence, I have a thick book of accounts on my table and a sum I have not been able to solve for the last one hour. I scored a mere 69% in my Board examinations and so, could never get into a school which offered Fine Arts. I mean obviously, why would they consider a student good at Art but bad at Maths to be a student of Art? Being out of choices, I had to opt for the Commerce stream which my school offered. Though, most of the subjects are bearable, history seems to repeat itself. Accountancy tortures me just as much as Maths. I do not get a rank because I fail Accounts. I aspire to take up a course about Designing, but then again, who knows, I may never get into a college because I may just not end up with a decent percentage because of Accounts? I mean obviously, why would a designing school consider a student good at Art but bad at accounts? Until ways are mended and system is formatted, here I am, stuck in an Education system where I’d never want anyone to be. ~© Simran, 2014.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 12:30:01 +0000
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