Increasing student suicides. Who is to blame?

Remember the days when we would see the Principal in our schools, carrying a cane around in the hand, waiting to catch of the pranksters and the undisciplined, to cane them. The students often feared the possibility of being ‘caught’ and hence made it a responsibility to behave well. Parents too, would not mind their children being reprimanded by their teachers, often considering it to be a time tested measure to tame the young brats.

It is quite surprising to see where we came from and where we presently are. The government schools and the convents are slowly becoming ‘extinct’ and the ‘Corporate’ style educational institutions are taking over the chunk of the system. Mostly Public schools with a standard CBSE syllabus to ensure maximum admissions, these exotic set ups with lavish interiors and huge infrastructure have become the toast of the Nation. With increasing earning spending capacity and lesser number of children in each household, the parents do not mind their children to be taught by a school backed with a tie up boasting a foreign university.

However, a stupendous shift has been noticed in the way both parents and children have started reacting to the ‘punishments’. Gone are the days when corporal punishments were accepted and understood. These days, the students reacting to teachers scolding them for being improper with their conduct is leading to some disastrous concomitant. The recent episode of a group of students from a school in Bangalore writing a suicide note blaming the teachers and resorting to the ultimate – all because they were playing Holi inside the school premises is simply abhorrent!

Disciplining a child often commences in the backdrop of learning. The early years of lives are based on the foundation made in terms of behaviour, personality and value ingestion. We have seen generations of young men and women who came out shining from the confines of strictness and authority. To think of the current generation of children being atrociously fragile reacting to a simple punishment is scary, both for the Schools as well as parents.

Parents of the current times tend to overprotect their children, mostly blaming the teachers for going overboard with their control patterns. “I pay a fortune to these World Class educational set ups. Why my child should be reproached for everything. There should be another way of counselling children than scolding and caning” says a young mother, who works as an IT professional.

The lack of supervision sometimes makes children to do unspeakable things, like in the recent incident where a student tried to barge in to steal the question papers to prepare better. Upon failing, the student jumped to death from the school building. Where do such ideas come from within the heads of these young minds?

“These days, parents do not spend enough time with their kids. With both the parents working, children tend to get lonelier, making friends with cartoon shows and unreal gaming. There is no life imbibed into these children in terms of outings, closeness with nature etc., Parents are busy with their career goals and the children are lost” says a teacher from a Pre-primary school in the City.

There is a shocking decline in self-esteem, too. Kids these days demonstrate lower than required level of self-esteem that leads to making some unreasonable decisions such as suicide. “Most children from the modern families feel constantly left out. With the parents scolding for under performance and teachers threatening to punish, they get cornered without guidance. Hence the increasing number of suicide cases off late. Discipline is must require in schools. But how the child takes it largely depends on the respective parents who raise them and the teachers who monitor their behaviour” says a clinical psychologist.

With the new age schools with vast exposure trying to seek measures for policies that regulate ‘acceptable’ measures of corporal punishment, parents have a great deal of homework to be done too. The children these days demonstrate increasing amount of assurance and supporting system from the both the places which play a great part in shaping their personality.