Parents, Schools, and the Punishment of Being Average
The youth of the nation have to be molded in the same way and have to learn all the characteristics that are essential to become a better version of themselves than merely becoming a high-achieving student.
Being an average student is always punished, either by parents or by schools. Average is a statistical reality for most kids, and being average does not indicate incapability but portrays a lack of discipline, consistency, resilience, and interest. Pursuing education should not be seen as competition without interest, but as knowledge filled with curiosities followed up by interests.
India is filled with first-generation learners, and coming as a first-generation learner, a student finds it hard to stay disciplined, resilient, and consistent. That's not a character gap but an infrastructure gap; discipline and consistency are easier to build when someone at home shapes them or checks them. Resilience is a skill taught by example. First-gen learners are frequently building all of this for the first time in their family line, with no one to show them how, and the system still grades them against kids who inherited those habits. Even as the school enrollment numbers in India have reached close to universal levels, ASER data shows that basic reading proficiency among class 5 students has stayed below 55% over a decade; this indicates that showing up to school and actually learning are not the same thing.
How school punishes average:
Schools, which are meant to be building caliber inside students, are the ones pushing the students to chase numbers without knowing what a noble pursuit it is to learn literature. Instead of developing immense interest among the students related to subjects like physics, science, and mathematics, they often end up building aversion or pressure of chasing marks by focusing more on "formulas" than questions like "how to" or "why to".
Teachers often end up paying all the attention to either toppers or the bottom(s) of the batch, but the average ones remain average unless they themselves act upon with internal force - which is yet to be discovered. Schools should also recognize improvement and effort as much as they recognize the ranks and marks publicly. This will help students to learn that growth is also noticed and valued. A wrong answer should be a part of learning, not something to be penalized for, because a mistake analyzed properly helps more than a right answer which is memorized in a hurry.
How parents punish average:
Parents are the ones who shape their children, but often end up shaping their children's dreams too. Dreams and ambitions that were meant to be of someone's own can be difficult to pursue if they are shaped by someone else. It's the child's responsibility to look among them and find their pursuits, but often it becomes a quiet battle between duty and identity. Parents have the experience and have seen the struggles or suffering, and this has built a belief system inside them which says that scoring marks is the best possible way to be successful.
Which might be true, but the way of aggressively pushing students or children into scoring marks might not work - an average student requires a push of confidence, discipline and encouragement rather than force of criticism, fear of low scoring and comparison among friends and neighbors. What parents keep forgetting is that a child reads their behavior, not the intentions behind it. A parent may genuinely think that their love is unconditional, but silence after an average result, a change in tone, or a comparison among other peers tells the child something very different.
The cost:
The cost of pressure kills creativity and builds fear among students; they tend to focus only on the outcome, i.e., "failure," but no one teaches them that fear regarding failure itself is natural, and that handling that immense pressure and fear is what they are required to be taught. Average kids often stop trying, and they come to believe they are not meant for education or are not good enough to score marks, but generally they're not lacking capability.
This could happen for multiple reasons, but I believe the strongest reason is the foundational gap - they are taught to learn and memorize things instead of understand, identify real-life scenarios, and evaluate on their own. Conceptual knowledge can be memorized, but curiosity is what helps them to understand the use of it. Stats from an ASER show that when the majority of students were able to answer a basic measurement question correctly, only fewer than half could solve it with the same logic if the question was written differently; this could be proof that memorized answers do not equate to real understanding. The habit does not end at school, and many students tend to continue the same approach of memorizing over understanding into college and later into their jobs or work.
At those levels, there is rarely any problem that comes with a fixed syllabus or a marking scheme but requires a core understanding and deep knowledge, which can only be achieved if the foundation itself is built on understanding rather than memorizing and recall.
What should change?
The changes should be made from the foundation, filling the gap that is required - curiosity has to be encouraged than the marks, communication skills of speaking up or coming in front rather than holding things should be added. Schools should emphasize improvement and growth more than marks: an increase in marks can be a sign of improvement but not the sole indicator, as marks can be scored via cheating or rote learning, which might not give benefit in the long run. Competition should be healthy, keeping in mind that not everyone gets the same opportunities or background.
Parents should consider asking their children to find out their interests, and should not compare them with others, as comparison can reduce confidence and make anyone doubt themselves.
The making of excellence
To build the nation, it is highly dependent on the future of youth, and to shape the youth, the heavy uplift that teachers and parents both have to make is by filling their fundamental gap and adding four core elements that are given by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam: "a grand aim, the constant pursuit of knowledge, relentless hard work, and the perseverance to defeat all odds". Kalam was not a traditional topper in school; he had a turning point in his life too, according to a famous and inspiring incident: one day, he accidentally walked into the wrong mathematics classroom, and his teacher, Ramakrishna Iyer, scolded and punished him in front of the class for this mistake, and instead of feeling defeated, Dr. Kalam took it as a challenge and disciplined himself into late-night studies and scored a perfect 100/100 in his next mathematics exam. The same teacher then praised him in front of everyone and predicted that he would bring immense glory. Dr. Kalam's life is proof that you do not need to be a school topper to do great things. He proved that curiosity, relentless hard work, and a refusal to give up matter far more than grades.
The youth of the nation have to be molded in the same way and have to learn all the characteristics that are essential to become a better version of themselves than merely becoming a high grader. History does not remember people for the rank they had in school but it surely remembers them for what they built after school ended. That is the real lesson that every average student deserves to hear.
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