ack in my childhood, school was the primary place
for learning. For students who were weak in studies, parents who could
afford the additional expenses would hire a retired teacher for
after-school ‘tuition classes’ to their child. The practice was
generally frowned upon as it implied that the child was not smart
enough. Most kids would keep abreast with their class curriculum with
their daily dose of home work. The better educated parents might also
spend some time in providing personal coaching to the child. I’m sure
similar is the experience for most of you, whichever part of India you
are from.
Hence, looking around me, I am appalled at the
rampant proliferation of tuition culture in our larger cities and towns.
The coaching offered through this system is a far cry from the ‘tuition
class’ of the yester years. What we see now are classrooms filled to
capacity with pre-university students, and almost serving as a ‘pseudo
school’. Such education factories are mushrooming everywhere. Here the
students are force-fed with tons of knowledge, which is clearly beyond
their mental capacity to absorb, and all this in addition to the regular
day classes. In Mangalore, the city where I reside in, I have heard of
daily coaching regimen that commences at seven in the morning and
concludes at eight in the evening with a long break in between to allow
for the kids to attend pre-university classes. Good bye free time!This
is almost like the unforgiving schedule that we doctors follow every day
as adults. And only we know what a struggle it is to cope with the
attendant stresses.
Casualties of Coaching
I understand that the main reason for this shift is
the penchant among the parents for pushing their kids into Engineering,
Medicine and Indian Administrative Services, which are considered to be
lucrative career avenues. Even within engineering stream, there is
always a desperate urge to make it to elite institutes like Indian
Institute of Technology. The gateway to all these streams are the
‘common entrance tests’ that are considered to be among the toughest
challenges for students of that age. Hence it is thought that the extra
coaching will provide the magic edge to the student to get past the
post, and on to a bright future.
However, such intense drilling is not without its
price. On April 30, 2016, an adolescent girl jumped off a five-storey
building to end her life in Kota, Rajasthan. This 17-year-old girl was a
bright student who felt pressurized by her parents into pursuing
Science, a stream that she despised. Kota itself has emerged as a sort
of thriving centre for coaching. This adolescent girl was one of the
150,000 students from all over India who enrol into Kota’s 40 odd
coaching institutes. Her tragic suicide put the focus back on the
reality of teenage life today. Hers was the fifth suicide by a student
that year in Kota, and it was reported at the time that at least 56
students studying in different coaching institutes in the region had
committed suicide in the previous five years, with most of them
attributing it to the fear of failure. In fact, the negative publicity
all this had generated, made the media to dub the coaching classes as
‘the stress chambers’. But Kota is only a case study in the extreme. The
phenomenon is widespread all over India for the reasons already
mentioned [1].
Life on a Snow Sledge
This makes me wonder where is the time for our kids
to experience the joy of childhood? One of the most compelling messages
of the importance of childhood is to be seen in Citizen Kane, a 1941
classic movie by Orson Welles, which is often rated as the best picture
ever made. ‘Rose Bud’, the film’s ingenious MacGuffin drives home the
point all too well. In the last scene, as the fire illuminates a burning
snow sledge with its trade name ‘Rose Bud’ clearly visible, in a flash
we realize what made Charles Forster Kane such a colossal failure.
Roger Ebert, the late legendary film reviewer
observed: "Rosebud is the emblem of the security, hope and innocence of
childhood, which a man can spend his life seeking to regain. We remember
that this was Kane’s childhood sledge, taken from him as he was torn
from his family and sent east to boarding school." Anybody who has seen
the film will not fail to relate to the poignant theme and the message.
Each of us, it is often said, has ‘Rosebud moments’ in our lives, which
signify loss of childhood and the break from family. As we grow up, we
all learn to cope with them in our own ways. But what is alarming today
is the industrial scale in which they are being unwittingly heaped upon
on our hapless kids. It is obvious that the parents, living in an
increasingly competitive world, are becoming aggressively keen to better
equip their children for a perceived rat race. Tragically, in the
process they are becoming blind to the repercussions of this flawed
method of raising children.
Childhood Trauma, Stress and Anxiety
The most certain, yet immediately tangible, outcome
of this process is the enormous pressure that our kids and teenagers are
bound to feel. Dr. Tim Jordan, a leading developmental and behavioral
pediatrician, writes "kids are constantly performing for and being
judged by adults, with a relentless pressure to succeed, impress
everyone, win, be the best, be popular, and to be special. They are
constantly busy in adult-supervised activities, with little or no free,
down time. All of this pressure is telling us something about how we
view childhood. And I am here to tell you that childhood is not a race
or a contest" [2].
Few kids have the mental ability to process this kind
of stress. The unbearable emotional neglect and isolation that the
present system entails is further compounded by the addictive and
impersonal virtual eco-system ushered in by the social media to which
children are increasingly getting exposed. Scholarly articles are scant
on the subject of how childhood stress and anxiety can translate into
actual problems. But the available studies indicate long-term hazards
with high degree of certainty. In a study of 43 patients with major
depression, using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging Frodl,
et al. [3] observed: "childhood neglect resulted in hippocampal
white matter changes in patients with major depression, pronounced at
the left side and in males. Childhood stress and brain structure volumes
independently predicted cumulative illness course. Subjects with both,
structural brain changes and childhood emotional neglect seem to be at a
very high risk to develop a more severe illness course" [3].
Manifestations of Childhood Stress
In clinical practice, we often come across
manifestations of the ill effects of childhood stress and teenage stress
as follows:
• Excessive introversion, aloofness
• Juvenile delinquency
• Suicidal tendency
• Excessive violence
• Substance abuse, alcohol, drugs
• Personality dysfunction
• Prostitution
• Unhealthy sexual activity / abuse
• Low self esteem
• Rebellious / reactive nature
• Bullying, getting into fights, trouble
• Psychosomatic conditions like headaches, body
aches
• Chronic depression
• Bunking class, absenteeism
• Habitual lying, cheating
• Attention seeking behavior
• Unsocial and antisocial behavior
• Career instability, marital breakdown and
family disharmony (in adult life)
Twenty-five percent of the adolescents in India
suffer from depression according to the findings of a WHO report.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi spoke out on the issue in his radio address "Mann Ki Baat" in March
last year. This put the spotlight on the topic that was subsequently
analyzed extensively in the mass media [4].
Parents should be sensitive to the early warning
signs of these conditions and, if suspected, act upon them quickly and
judiciously.
Stress and Personality
Adolescence is a formative phase of personality.
Deviance as the ones listed above can permanently damage the teenager’s
growth process and haunt/traumatize the individual throughout life. All
species of animals treat childhood as a protected period and the young
enjoy considerable freedom under the watchful eyes of the parent. The
chief tool of learning during childhood is play (including in animals).
Through playful interaction, children gain essential life skills, which
are expected to stand by them through adulthood. The interactive
experiences develop cognitive abilities, intelligence and imagination,
which are the chief resources we need for survival and success in the
world. The cognitive resource theory (a leadership theory of industrial
and organizational psychology) developed by Fred Fiedler and Joe Garcia
in 1987 convincingly asserts that stress is the enemy of rationality,
damaging one’s ability to think logically and analytically [5].
Hence, it would be logical to conclude that exposure
to stress and anxiety at a young age can have terrifying long-term
consequences. Childhood is a period for developing cognitive abilities
required for avoiding stress in adult life. Exposure to stress at this
developmental stage will destroy childhood itself. Parents are acting on
the mistaken belief that rigorous education is the key to worldly
success for their children. On this point, I must recall an impressive
statement that I had heard in the course of a television debate. To a
question about whether campus culture should encourage free thinking or
be restrictive/disciplinarian, one of the speakers pointedly observed
that while it is the old- style free-campus public universities that
have produced many of our leading thinkers, artists and leaders, the
new- generation highly-focused corporate educational institutions are
only producing highly paid corporate robots. Thus, wealth and position
are poor substitute for a creative and independent human spirit.
What we can do
As pediatricians, our role extends beyond treatment
of clinical symptoms. Often we are called upon to play the role of
friend, philosopher and counselor. Our awareness of social and family
conditions affecting child health should guide us to play a more active
role in sensitizing parents regarding the need to protect their children
from undue pressures. Adolescent Health Academy has a special role to
play in developing the modules required to inculcate informed judgement
regarding these issues among the pediatric community.
Writing on such an alarming note on our social evils,
I however do not propose to paint a dystopian picture of the future of
our society. On the contrary, I presuppose that the solutions to these
problems are remarkably easy and natural. It requires the actors to tune
in to our basic human nature, to consciously disengage from harmful
external influences, accept and celebrate the joy of living.
As Dr. Tim Jordan, whom I have referred to earlier,
puts it: "kids need quiet, alone time for reflection, contemplation,
soul-searching, self-exploration and discovery, and to decompress. They
need time to play for plays sake, learn for their love of learning,
explore and challenge themselves, and to enjoy adventures. Kids must be
allowed to make mistakes and to learn lessons in their own way and in
their own time. Every child has their own path and destiny, and requires
space and support to build their own story and future. Childhood should
be so much more than a competition. Don’t allow other parents and the
culture to tell you otherwise" [3].
I also do not mean to deny the positive side of
coaching classes – their ability to give expression to hidden potential
of students and own up to their promise. Many a youth has scaled
extraordinary heights of success after going through the grind.
Obviously the students who fit into the coaching system will actually do
well. It’s only those who don’t fit, need to be allowed to opt-out of
the race. Parents’ role is paramount in this scenario. Parents’ deeper
involvement is needed to understand the real aspirations of their
budding teenager. This is best done through daily conversation and small
talk, when the observant parent can gain valuable clues to the
youngster’s inclinations. They should also be pragmatic enough to accept
the reality without finding the need to force their own worldview on the
child. If they find that their son or daughter is not interested in a
particular avenue of study and instead shows genuine liking for another
field, they should accept the reality and never force or pressurize the
child. While the regular schools should improve the quality of
education, the coaching classes too should know their limitations and
act within self-imposed parameters that ensure the long-term well-being
of the students.
Children, after all, are the budding flowers of
humanity. Let our flowers bloom!
References