Celebrating Average

08/06/2024

1st page of yesterday’s newspaper was an advertisement about a coaching class celebrating its top rankers. Now that the NEET UG exam results are out, every day a different institute has been putting their advertisement featuring the institute’s All India Rankers. Many parents and students might have come across this and some may have even decided their future based on these ads. What they must have missed is the actual ‘first’ page of the newspaper. And this is what it read…

Hindustan Times( Dated 07/06/24)

Some other articles from last year

These are some of the articles, or in other words, the other side of the story that many parents and others might have not had the time to go through or are not aware of. Something important that could have changed their minds or at least rethink the way we bring up our kids. Now, this is not to demotivate parents and students to not take up medical or engineering. It is about understanding what leads students to take up these steps and how to tackle them as a society.

 Last year, Kota saw 27 deaths, the highest in a calendar year since 2015. This year the tally is 10(and I hope it doesn’t rise).  Some of the steps taken by the local government to prevent this include installing spring-loaded fans or nets in balconies. These steps might prevent deaths but not suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts. However, some people and organizations believe the answer lies in the good old method of mental health counselling. I would like to add further that the answer lies even before the student decides on his/her career path.

The ads, the news and the suicides all reminded me of an unusual poster outside a coaching class I had seen some years ago, which featured not their subject or school topper, he might not be even in the top 20s or 30s, but……well, have a look at it

Yes, it talked about the student that improved the most. Beautiful, isn’t it? For many, it might seem because the improvement was so stark the coaching class took advantage of it, but for me, it talked about his personal accomplishment and success as if he was competing not with others, but with himself. Isn’t this what life should be? Isn’t this how society should be? In these times of cutthroat competition, rather than measuring our personal growth we tend to compare ourselves with others and that’s when insecurities creep in, that’s when the thought ‘you’re not good enough’ comes in, and when it gets extreme, that’s when those suicidal thoughts might get the chance to come in.

We are always taught to win in life, we are never taught that failure can also be a byproduct or a result. As a society, shouldn’t we prepare kids for failure and how to cope up with it? Shouldn’t we prepare our kids to see failures positively? This reminds me of an interview of Gary Kirsten, former Indian National Team Cricket Coach, with Gaurav Kapur(link at the end, do watch the second half where he talks about life and not just cricket) where he talks about raising his kid in these competitive times and says, “So what if he’s not the best? Most of them aren’t going to be the best. There’s one in every thousand who are the best. What about the other 999? You know what we do is, we celebrate the one... We don’t celebrate average.”  It’s time that we start celebrating the other 999 also.

Link to the interview : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHa4BGIgCCk