For the last month, virtually every household has been obsessively preoccupied with the preparations sons and daughters are making ? or not making ? for their exams. Family life has revolved around these exams, with parents putting their lives on hold, so that they are available to their children, either to provide moral support or to ensure that an adequate amount of work is being done. Yet, despite desperate efforts to ensure that children do well, not all of them will do so, simply because many of them are just not academically inclined. But will any parent accept this?

Parents are notorious for pulling the wool over their eyes insofar as their children’s academic abilities are concerned. If a child does badly, a dozen excuses are unearthed in justification. He was sick, he had play practice and couldn’t study, his teacher was partial? It is a rare parent who will admit that a child has done badly because he is not academically able, and an even rarer parent who will take it in his or her stride, and let the child find his own niche of excellence, be it music, art, sports, photography or whatever.

Why do we judge our children by their academic proficiency? Why should coming first in class take on such importance? Why do we become defensive when our children get low marks? And why do we feel the need to pressurise them into working harder and harder to achieve something that is often beyond them?

Because, we are told, a child’s life is governed by the rule of percentages. Not unless a student gets a high percentage when he leaves school can he be sure of getting into a good college. And not unless he gets a high percentage in his degree examination, can he compete for a post-graduate qualification, and so on. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is a good job.

But does this theory really hold good? After all, a ‘good job’ does not any longer need to be a white collar one or a professional career. There are any number of non-academic careers available now, and happily, with no stigma any longer attached to them. Yet, if opting for one of these is no longer infra dig, it would appear that the lack of a BA degree is!

The 10+2 system was introduced so that academically inclined students could do the Plus Two and continue on to college, while the non-academic could leave school after Class X to pursue a line more suited to them. But the scheme seems to have backfired. Irrespective of academic ability or inclination, every one proceeds to college! We Indians suffer from an attitudinal problem peculiar to us. This is the absurd compulsion to have the magic letters, BA, after one’s name. And, as long as this obsession persists, parents will continue to push their children to work harder and do better at their studies.