In India, after one’s 10th grade a student can choose to take one of the three streams that are provided, namely – Science, Arts and Commerce. Mostly, students take science only because their parents want them to take it or under peer pressure. But the thing is that they don’t realize this until it’s too long. The same is also true for other fields too. But it is more widespread in the science field.

Parents only think this way – Their children will go to school, then they will choose science, then they will do engineering/medical, will become an engineer or a doctor, and will earn huge chunks of money. This is Indian mentality, not only Indian but I think of anyone living in this planet. They only go for the tried and tested method; they don’t want to take risks. Actually, in my opinion, risk’s definition would be fear. Fear of the unknown. They will live in as much poverty or low condition but will never go ahead that line where (according to them) there can be two possibilities – One, they would have to face failure and two, they would be enormously successful.

They prefer to live in whatever condition they are but will not go more than their limits even after knowing that they can have a better lifestyle by doing so because there is “risk” in that. Okay, live in whatever lifestyle you want but at least don’t criticize someone because he/she didn’t take the field you wanted them to take. For example, I have seen many parents whose children have taken science, criticizing someone who hasn’t.

I give you my example, I wanted to take science as well (because of the reason I talked about earlier) but I came to know about my passion, i.e. writing. So I will be opting for arts. I told about it to my mother and she agreed, but when my mother told about it to someone who’s child would be taking science, she exclaimed – “What?! Arts?! He will not earn a single penny by doing so. Don’t let him do that, he will never be able to live a good life. Becoming a writer is not an easy task; he will never be able to make it.” See? She is not only trying to change what I want to do but also not giving a chance to my mother to speak a single thing.

We want to take arts, and you want to take science, go then take it, but for God’s sake, don’t discourage us. Go marry your science and let us marry our arts or commerce. You don’t have any right to tell us what we should be doing with our lives. Go be whatever you want to and let us be whatever we want to.

And guess what? Those people, who are not sure of what they want to do, get influenced by them and end up messing up with their lives in future. This is really very bad. This is because of that old mindset which I discussed in my earlier post on education. And, sometimes, this really annoys me a lot. Our country’s education system needs more reforms, and I am happy that we are reaching towards it step by step.

PS: By seeing that I am writing a lot of posts on education, I should make a separate category for them! ;)

Photo credits: “You can’t!” by mazlov, on Flickr.

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