The Hindu : Kerala News : A costly option for student

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 22, 2005

Kerala

Kerala

A costly option for student

J. Ajith Kumar

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: "They promise the moon, but can they ever deliver? They just can't. After all, these coaching centres are mere commercial ventures, nothing more, nothing less," says Sreenarayana Kurup, former principal and currently the head of a professional institution affiliated to the University of Kerala.

According to him, coaching does not do any good for a good student as it is `a hit or miss affair' and all that the coaching centres do is to make the students work repeatedly on, say, a collection of 10,000 questions. These are the questions that are asked year after year. A candidate is trained to identify the appropriate answer from a set of four alternatives by just looking at a question, especially in the case of a subject such biology, which does not require any computational skills or analytical reasoning, he points out.

K.A. Kumar, consultant psychiatrist and former Director of Medical Education (DME), Government of Kerala, calls it the `entrance syndrome' and observes that the stiff competition that entrance examinations imply leaves indelible scars in the student psyche. Since the other is seen as a competitor, peer group relationship becomes extremely week and every relationship is marked by stress and tension.

"I have come across many a medical student with tension and stress and lacking in self-confidence and self -esteem," he recalls his experience of long years as a faculty in the medical colleges in the State.

Dr. Kumar feels that coaching should be done with a lot of discretion and suggests a change in the selection process for admission to professional courses. A formula has to be arrived at by which the performance of the student in the qualifying examination is also duly considered. Standardised scores could be resorted to for students from different systems of education.

Equal weightage should be given for the qualifying as well as entrance examinations. Such a system will provide a definite advantage to a student who follows a systematic approach.

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