Lesson From Coaching Centre Tragedy: Don’t Break the Dreams of Students
Avijit Pathak | 08 August 2024 | The Indian Express
Finally, the Supreme Court had to intervene and remind us that coaching centres in India are becoming like “death chambers”. This is not surprising. If you keep your eyes open, you can see the way the coaching industry has been allowed to colonise the domain of education, cripple the imagination of young students and their parents, and make them pathetically dependent on almost every rite of passage: From standardised tests like NEET/ JEE/ NET/ CUET to UPSC civil services exams. Moreover, the neurotic rat race for select careers and job opportunities, and the mythologies of “success” these coaching centres sell through the brand value of their “star” strategists, or well-packaged “success manuals” accelerate the growth of this lucrative business.
However, it is impossible not to notice the inevitable consequences of this pathology — the tales of broken dreams, the innumerable narratives of “failure” amid a handful of much-advertised “success stories”. Indeed, as our youngsters are compelled to run after some sort of mythical success, they find themselves mentally exhausted and aesthetically/spiritually impoverished. And this societal neurosis manifests itself in the growing suicide rate and/or psychic depression among young students…