I have noticed a steady decline in interest for learning among students ( in class rooms ) throughout my sixteen years of teaching. It is possible to take the horse to the water-trough, but you can’t force it to drink, if it is not thirsty! This adage applies very much to our students today. You may go to the class and do anything but teach, and the students will worship you! If you teach, then the students grumble!
Are we producing a generation of lazy students today? Yes, it seems, this is one of the reasons why students don’t want to learn in class today! There are a large number of Help Books for all subjects which provide students with all types of questions and answers possible. So, dkon't bother taxing their minds in doing home work when everything can be found all readymade in the help books!
Students seem to have been taken up by the Instant Coffee syndrome, where we get instant results and readymade, tailor made products! My own children are given a lot of project work to be done during the Summer Vacations, and I have to pitch in to help them. Their friends however don’t bother a lot, since there are people in the market who will provide you with a Tailor-Made project, just for you, for a fee of course!
We are all members of a consumerist society, where everything can be had for a premium of course! Thus, students don’t learn in schools, because, they have a tutor who comes to teach them at home! School for many is just a place for meeting friends, cooling out, and chilling out. Unfortunately, the students who wish to learn are at a great disadvantage because they become the victims of bullying by students who have tutors!
One very disturbing trend is that now, students of even lower classes like ninth and tenth are becoming more and more lazy. As a teacher I feel concerned about the whole issue, and am seriously worried about the effect that commercialisation of education is having on our students today!For students who can’t afford home-tuitions, there the so called coaching centres which provide coaching for students in larger numbers ranging from five or six to twenty-thirty students.
It is clear that coaching, tuitions, help-books, and refreshers are the reason why our students are lazy in class. But of course there is one another important reason, and that is our attitude towards the concept of education. Parental pressure on children to achieve higher marks forces them to go for tuitions and coaching over and above what they are getting from attending classes in school. If a students has to go for tuitions before school then how do you expect him to be fresh in class? I often see how exhausted some students are when I teach them. They can hardly keep their eyes open! Sorry, but this is what happens when you go to Akash, or Naraina right after school and by the time you return home, it is late evening. Then, you start working on your School home work, institute home work, and by the time you go to bed, it is late at night! Then that alarm chimes, and it is back to school!
What a hectic life it is for students these days, they have the so called Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation system which puts even more pressure on the students because they can be given a formative assessment test at any time! We have to take four Formative Assessments in a year, these can be activity based, written, oral or project based. Unfortunately the system meant to reduce stress in students, might in fact be doing the opposite! It seems that the entire system of education needs to be overhauled. The student-teacher ratio should be brought down to 30, and parents should be counselled not to drive their children too hard.The fear of under achievement, feelings of insecurity projected on to the children by their parents are some of the reasons why our students are lazy in classes today! Why do parents wish to compensate for their inability to be engineers by forcing their children to be one? Somehow, one wonders, are tuitions, and coaching classes indispensable for successful careers? What about those students who belong to villages, and who successfully top in the civil service exams? Did they take coaching classes, or tuitions? They answer, “No!” One of the important reasons why many students are successful is because they are not stressed out, nor are they tired. Successful students have fresh minds, so they are able to concentrate and grasp more than their brothers who go for tuitions!
All the stress and strain, and coachings, and tuitions make the students lazy in class! They become so tired that they find it very difficult to stay awake in class!
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