Parental expectations making students edgy

Hyderabad: Why students' suicides are increasing? Enquiries by The Hans India reveal some interesting facts. The students are feeling pressure of not only long study hours but also the restlessness of parents who are calling psychologists to counsel their children.

In fact, it now appears that counselling for parents is the need of the hour.

There has been lot of opinions on the reasons for suicides and many have been blaming the educational institutions for not having student counsellors. But the most interesting fact is that pressure is not only from the long study hours but also the restlessness on the part of the parents who are calling the psychologists who counselled their children and ask how many marks their child could get?

Psychologists who were previously appointed by Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (TSBIE) said that parents were only concerned about the marks their wards would get.

According to a few experts, the general concern of the students is mostly about few chapters and not examination. The education department had reduced the syllabus during pandemic. Now that the full syllabus is restored, the students and parents feel that it may not be easy to cope up with what they had missed in the past two years.

P Jawaharlal Nehru, psychologist, who has been counselling students for years said, since third week of February, he had received many calls from students and parents asking why there is no reduced syllabus or whether students will get grace marks.

He said counselling is nowhere connected with how much the marks child would score in the exams. We do behavioural scaling. Normally students should not feel stress as for them examination should be an opportunity to go to next higher class. But it is the parents and teachers who create the anxiety syndrome saying that they should get full marks or else their career would be at stake. There are teachers who ask the students how come you got only 96% and not 100%?

Parents need to understand that education is for knowledge not scoring very high marks and a medium to earn huge salary packages. They should also stop comparing their ward with others. One should understand the mental abilities and the capacity of the student and not pressurise him or her.

Dr Rajini, clinical psychologist also expressed similar views. She said as counsellors they try to find out different dimensions that affect the individual. What is lacking these days is parents do not spend quality time with children and try to understand what they want.

Parents should be the best counsellors and guide their children, tell them even if they score little less marks heavens won't fall and motivate them to study hard. At the same time proper and balanced diet should be given to them.