The Hindu : Fanning the embers of exam fever

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 06, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

Fanning the embers of exam fever

By P. Venugopal

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, MARCH 5. The boy's grandmother arrived from Kozhikode a fortnight ago to fan the embers of his examination fever.

The grandmother and the boy's parents take turns to sit by his side as he pores over the textbooks day in and day out, preparing for the SSLC examinations.

The father is good at English, Mathematics and Physics and the mother just superb when it comes to Hindi, Biology, Chemistry, History and Geography.

In fact, they have mastered the textbooks to such an extent over the last one year that, if they were to take the examinations instead of their son, they might quite possibly set new records for the highest marks scored in SSLC examinations for the respective subjects.

The chink in the armour was Malayalam, especially the `worthless' grammar part. Neither the father, nor the mother, could demystify the subject and, despite the exertions of a tuition master, the boy could manage but 80 per cent marks in the model examinations in his school last month.

Then they thought of roping in the services of the grandmother, who is an authority of sorts on the subject and is, if matters come to that, an unmatched exponent of `Aksharasloga'.

She was only too glad to take on the role requested of her and, together, the gritty team of grandma, papa and mama is hard at work drilling into the boy the answers, solutions, formulas, methods and techniques that will make him the pride of the whole family and the envy of neighbours, two-faced well-wishers and everyone else. Papa runs into a temper at 11 o'clock in the night when the son messes up a problem in Algebra because of `sheer carelessness'. Mama tears up a flawed answer sheet in Biology at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, locks herself up in the bedroom and bangs her head on the wall. The grandma keeps mumbling the same thing whenever an eruption takes place: "If matters are going to be like this, I don't know whether I should have come at all".

The old lady then turns to the boy sitting dazed at his study table and says: "Don't you know we are telling this only for your good? How many times have you revised the lessons. Why should you be so careless? Why should you make your parents so unhappy?"

Names do not matter in this tragedy being enacted across the State as over 6 lakhs students prepare for the SSLC examinations this year. With just a week more to go for the SSLC examinations, the boy, his unhappy parents and the worthy grandma are before a clinical psychologist, not knowing where things had gone wrong. In thousands of other homes 15-year-old boys and girls are being driven to the same fate by their doting parents.

"I have come across several cases where children just crack under the pressure of their parents' over-expectations. Anxiety, depression and tension are quite common among the present generation of children," says Krishna Prasad Sridhar, a leading child psychologist here.

Having a healthy concern for the child's education is one thing. But, in the case of a very large number of parents, this concern grows into an obsession heaped in nervous anxiety to see the child outperform its capabilities. Come examination time and many employed parents nowadays take long leave from their places of work to help their children score big. "Nervously anxious parents are no help at all. They radiate tension to their children, making matters worse," says T. S. Arun Kumar, a clinical psychologist here.

According to him, there were seven reported cases of suicide associated with the SSLC examinations last year in the State.

Dr. Arun Kumar, who assists `Thrani', a voluntary organisation trying to help manage studies-related psychological problems among children, says that a recent survey conducted among the students of some of the schools in the capital city had brought out some shocking statistics. "Thirty per cent of the students studying for the SSLC examinations showed symptoms of depression. Ten per cent, in fact, had suicidal tendency and five per cent, suicide intent," he says.

`Thrani' runs a round-the-clock phone-in counselling service for children and parents in trouble, with 24 trained volunteers attending to the calls. "Last year we got as many as 3,168 calls between May 12 and 19, coinciding with the publication of the SSLC results. The number of calls is growing with each passing year," he says.

The havoc cholera, malaria and dengue fever causes during their periodical visits to the State, making headlines in the newspapers and eliciting crisis control reactions from the Government, is nothing when compared to the damage the examination fever does to the mental and emotional health of the children each season.

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