We are back with FlippED! And this time our two Bloggers are fighting (we seem to do that a lot) about Competitive Coaching Institutes. Remember your Aakash and Fiitjee days? Yep, by institutes we mean those of a similar kind.
Competitive coaching institutes pose the greatest threat to the bright, young minds of school goers
–Sanchari Pal (Blogger 1)
So, there is this particular school in Vishakhapatnam where students get sent to “study” for joint entrances. They have to wake up at 5:30 am every morning and be ready for morning classes by 6 am. Their classes continue till 4 pm in the afternoons with a 30 minute break for breakfast and a one hour lunch. Throughout the day, they have no recreational classes. And it doesn’t get over after 4. After school, they are made to study till 9 pm during which a supervisor sits to check if they are actually studying. Dinner is followed by ANOTHER study sessiion lasting till midnight following which they are required to go to sleep only to woken up after just five hours, the next day.
The above routine is being practised in various residential schools across India in the name of preparing students for competitive examinations. Kota, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai…such barbaric coaching institutes have sprung up faster than mushroom on a dead bark.
Getting into a course after school has become an immensely difficult task nowadays and anxious parents are shelling out money by the lakhs to send their children to these coaching institutes.
It’s time for a news flash: coaching institutes are NOT imperative to qualify joint entrance. I am pursuing my MBBS from a government college which means I had a decent rank and before you ask, no, I do not have reservation. I did not join Aakash, Resonance, Narayana or any such thing. Acing entrances is not rocket science.
Food for thought for every student: if you are spending all your time running to and from coaching institutes, where is the time to study on your own?
However, the real evil probably lies in the methodology these coaching institutes employ. They never teach you the subject, they only teach you tips and tricks to solve MCQs. Back in school, I used to love solving HC Verma. Students nowadays do it because they HAVE to.
Where will our future scientists come from if the entire student population is learning Physics by solving Arihant and MTG’s MCQ books? Surely, that is no way to master a subject!
Children as young as 8-9 years are being sent in Narayana schools to be ‘competitive ready’. These coaching institutes are capitalising on the intrinsic fear of “what if my child doesn’t get a good college?” in every parents’ minds.
Dear parents, please relax and let your child breathe easy. Nothing good is ever going to come out of starving your child of adequate sleep for days on end. Students from unknown villages qualify the entrances and some of them may not even have continuous electricity at home.
There is nothing more important than self study in order to crack the entrances and while study routines and MCQs are important, an adequate sleep of 8 hours is also infinitely important.
[Also read: FlippED: Is Parliamentary Debating Better Or MUNs? Our Bloggers Fight It Out!]
It is the education system which is at fault here
–Dhairya Kumar Garg (Blogger 2)
Coaching institutes are being equated as evil nowadays. But its unfair to see them from one aspect. Yes they mint crazy money but then they are not running an NGO. Not all institutes are Super 30. This fees charged is on the basis of their success of getting top rank students in entrances.
The past success rate of an institute helps them charge hefty fees which seems justified even if the batch size is large.
They are built with one direct purpose and that is to help you clear an entrance/exam. Some big coaching centres even give you a scholarship. Basically an incentive for being smart.
The argument that such centres kill the creativity and love for a subject is baseless. That is the objective of an education institution. The coaching centres are actually plugging the gap between students and educational institutes. Coaching has become a compulsion due to the faults in our education system.
And If coaching centres are blamed to make mind boggling money well then hospital bills run in lakhs per patient for even a small surgery these days. But do you shut down hospitals? No. You use them to get better and let’s just accept that not everyone goes for a public one.
We all have the right to choose the best education for myself and I personally believe coaching institutions are doing one hell of a job in helping me get there!
Also, every aspirant is not that disciplined and focussed towards course completion and revisions and tests. Coaching centres have a pre decided schedule that helps a student stay on track. Also if you’ve bunked classes (which we all have) and your basics aren’t clear, well then coaching is the best way.
Image credits: Google
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