I stared at my mark sheet in despair. “Where now?” I whispered to myself. I unrolled the sheet and glanced at the ‘distinction’ the second time. It made me smirk a little. I had a firm faith that it’s going to help me get scholarship anywhere I got something I had been hearing since I entered the high school. “Score high and the doors will open for you”, they say. To this, I realized I was in the wrong building all this time let alone the doorsteps. 

 Everyone’s first day of high school would be special but mine was  different. It was the day I was confronted to the real education system of our country. The very first physics lecture of my life where the teacher ended up writing a question on the board which I had no idea about. Later, he explained that the particular question had been asked quite a few times during the IOM’s entrance examination. I wasn’t prepared for this and I presumed no one sitting in the class was either.  It definitely is not a bad idea to prepare students for examination but that was all I experienced during my high school days. Few months later after my first terminal exam, I found myself struggling just to pass the exam. A pile of home assignments became a source of pressure, practical classes were more hectic and every passing day invited a deadline. Amidst the competitions, deadlines and pressure, I forgot something important. I forgot how to enjoy learning. Even though, we used to have practical classes, they weren’t practical enough to be called interesting.

School is a place where you spend a crucial phase of your life. Being a student, I often find people recommending to pursue career as doctor, if not so at least an engineer  rather than a social worker. It seems as if they are imposing you to live on their dreams. Everyone advises you to join a technical field of study if you are good at studies, if not; you are left to be compared and pressured to live your life on their terms. This is our society and our education system. You are expected to excel at the profession of STEM (Science, technology engineering, mathematics) but on a serious note, I have hardly seen a tailor unhappy of sewing or a doctor smiling every day at work. The idea is not to strive for the ideal career but to furnish our own potentials, cultivating our passion and work on it. 

I pass by this very street where I see a man begging every day. The way people react to this bewilders me. Only last week, I saw a mother crying on to her child to study well so that he wouldn’t end up begging on streets. I have hardly come across someone encouraging their child to grow up and help the poor.  I have rarely heard a teacher saying that our society needs all kinds of profession, not just doctors and engineers. I firmly believe our society is only complete with the sound unity of everyone. We need a carpenter as much as we need a doctor; a farmer, a cobbler, a social worker, a policeman and every profession that has been disregarded. So why are we being confined to just syllabuses and treated as racehorses when in fact everyone carries different potentials? Why are we being prepared to earn a 6 digit salary and not a 9 letter word called ‘happiness’? All these years, the education system has blindfolded us with the belief that a good earning equalizes a sound life.  Yes school provides us ‘the interactive education’ but fails to bring out the best in us.

I took a second look on my mark sheet and realized that it is nothing else but a formality everyone seeks. I turned around to look at the high school building for the last time which was standing as motionless as I was. On rolling the mark sheet, I asked myself: it isn’t that late to remove the blindfold, is it? 

Bobby is an undergraduate student at St Xavier’s College, Maitighar

 
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