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Please do not smother budding talents!
S. Dandapani
I read with immense relish Sumathi Chandrashekaran’s article “De-stress or distress lives of school children” (Open Page, April 27). I am glad that there is at least one individual who believes that the “summum bonum” of education is not just to accumulate material wealth, but to fulfil one’s heart and soul! I feel sorry for the plight and predicament of numerous youngsters who face the dilemma of either pleasing their parents or themselves!
Cash-enrichment courses
It is true that the National Council of Educational Research and Training engaged the best of brains in the country to write textbooks for schools, not just in Science and Mathematics, but in other disciplines as well, that are equally valuable.
Most parents try to bring pressure upon their sons and daughters to opt for the science stream so that they could join colleges imparting cash-enrichment courses! They have scant regard for the aptitudes and aspirations of their wards and never appreciate their choosing a “road less travelled.”
‘Indiscreet’ decision
Of course, they do this brainwashing subtly, silently, slowly and vouch that they do so with good intentions and lofty expectations. Do they not, on that score, crush and smother the aims and aspirations of the youngsters “to be what they really want to be in life?” Let me cite a case I handled as a counsellor some years ago.
Some two decades ago, when one of my students had finished a PhD viva voce, I took the examiner to the financial section of the university to expedite processing of his T.A. bill. The Finance Officer was known to me. He used that occasion to unburden his feelings of disappointment over his son’s indiscreet, rash decision.
It appears that his son had passed his M.Com. creditably. His father was visualising a bright career for his son as a Chartered Accountant! But the boy had left home all of a sudden and never disclosed his whereabouts for nearly a month. One day, the father received a letter from his son that he had joined a dance school at Kalakshetra, Madras, to be trained as a dancer!
I came to know from the worried father that his son, since his boyhood days, had evinced keen interest in classical dance which he was learning from a local dance teacher. But, the father never imagined that his son would choose dancing as his career! I consoled the distressed father and assured him that he would have reasons to be proud of his son!
Good news
Several years later, I met the Finance Officer accidentally in the city market-place. He accosted me and shared with me the good news that his son had joined a reputed dance school in the U.S. and has been elevated to the position of Dean! I could perceive the father’s pride and pleasure!
His son had rightly followed his heart! And was heaping success upon himself! What if he had followed his father’s words and had chosen to be a Chartered Accountant? He could have been an unknown, unhappy face in the crowd! I recall the memorable lines of the Persian poet Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself;
They come through you but not from you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For, they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls lie in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit,
Not even in your dreams!
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