The burden of choice

Increasingly, students are limiting their career options to computers, engineering or medicine. In such a scenario, what are schools doing to help them make the right decision? MARIEN MATHEW speaks to some principals and counsellors.

IT IS another busy day in school. Outside the principal's office, a few visitors patiently wait for the principal. There is restless energy in the air. The principal arrives and the peon starts letting the visitors in, one by one. Voices are carried over. "Madam, please give my son the Computer group," a pleading tone. "If you want your son to do computers, then you will have to take him out of this school. With these marks, it is impossible to give him that group," a brisk reply.

"Come on da, the Physics classes are so boring. I don't know if I can stick with it."

"If you find that boring, wait till sir comes. Then you will know what real boring can be!"

"Oh, God! May be, this isn't for me. May be I should go to Commerce."

"Hey, don't leave me. My parents won't allow me to switch."

During June-July, such conversations in the corridors and such scenes in front of the principal's office, are frequently played out in schools. A time for the 15 or 16-year old to decide whether he\she wants to become a software engineer or a doctor or a chartered accountant.

After August, you can't switch groups. That's the maximum grace period a school can give students to make up their minds. Once the slots are filled, there is no going back. There is no time or space for second chances in our education system. No school with a reputation worth mentioning will take a student who made a wrong choice, to repeat the course. No college will admit a student who has not taken the right combination of subjects, for higher studies in a particular stream. Correspondence courses, open universities and private students do not enjoy the same status as the rest. To make it tougher, most of our universities have an age limit for doing a course as a regular student.

Within such a narrow, rigid framework, how do our students fare? Badly. The number of teenage suicides has risen. The number of children with stress-related disorders has increased. Of course, some reach the coveted IIT or medical college or IIM and the final destination, the U.S., but many fall on the wayside, stuck with jobs that are unrelated to their area of study and give them no satisfaction. In such a grim scenario, what do schools offer to help students make the right decision?

Most schools are fumbling through the maze. Career guidance is something new and the implementation is mostly on an ad hoc basis. If Padma Seshadri, DAV Boys Senior Secondary School and Union Christian Matriculation Higher Secondary School rely mostly on guest lecturers and career guidance exhibitions, Sishya, St. Michael's Academy and Bala Vidya Mandir, Adyar, go in for aptitude testing.

The programme introduced by Sishya this year involves aptitude tests for the 12th and 10th standard students and lectures on personality development, self esteem etc. It was organised by the careersindia.com. Based on suggestions from children on careers they are interested in, a panel of experts was invited to talk to the students.

The most exciting step, according to the principal of Sishya, Brian Caszo, was to place the children in a work situation for two weeks during vacation time. But he admitted that the scheme was feasible "only because our numbers are small." The test for the 9th standard indicates both aptitude and achievement in relation to academics.

At St. Michael's, the in-house committee headed by the Student's Counsellor, Arundhati Swamy, handles the career guidance programme. Besides the aptitude test for the 10th, done by an external agency, the school holds a career counselling week with career fairs and guest lectures. Apart from these, the 12th standard students are asked to share their opinion on the groups chosen with their juniors.

For the 12th standard, the ex-Michaelites in different fields or streams of study share their experience. Teachers too play an active role in pointing out to students various options open before them.

Dr. R. Karthikeyan, a clinical psychologist who provides career guidance to students, dismisses most of today's career guidance programmes as merely providing information on different jobs. "This info can be had from a book or by logging on to a website," he says. To him, it is about helping a student choose a career fit for him/her. For this, the student's dynamics in terms of intelligence, aptitude and personality need to be considered.

Dr. T.J. Kamalanabhan, Associate Professor, Department of Humanities, IIT, Chennai, who also has a psychology background, holds the same view.

B. Jitendra Prasad of careersindia.com details the action plan of the company to provide "more information on the interest patterns of the individual and arm the person with relevant information to make a well-informed career choice."

"I know a number of students who have regretted the choices they made in the 10th," laments Susila Mariappan, Head of the Madras University Career Guidance Cell. She puts the blame on the schools. Most principals and career guidance experts agree that the clamour for the first group, i.e. Maths-Physics-Chemistry- Computer Science combination, is unhealthy. They also agree that the trend is based totally on the current market trend, which is already beginning to change.

Another commonly criticised fact was the declining Humanities and Pure Science studies. None of the schools approached except Sishya, had a humanities group other than Commerce.

Yet the opinion on the school's role in managing these problems varied. Mrs. Y.G.Parthasarathy, Dean and Director of the Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan group of schools, says that though the parents attend the career guidance lectures, their minds are already made up. "The choice is not made according to the child's wishes. We have had to struggle with children who really didn't want to take Science, but were forced into the group by the parents and fared very badly."

S.S.Nathan, principal, Vidya Mandir, has the same story to tell. At DAV, C. Satish asks, "But what can I do? I do conduct career counselling throughout the year. But ultimately if the choice made by the students is Science, I cannot deny them that. They score such high marks."

The question finds an echo in Rangini Mathew, principal, Union Christian. The system and rat race are to be blamed for the situation.

"Yes, there are plenty of problems with the system," Susila Mariappan admits candidly. But she feels that schools can do more. "How many teachers know the background of a student?"

Arundhati too feels that schools have a bigger role in students' choices. V. Sundaram, St. Michael's principal, says, "We do not tell the children that computer is only a tool. They are given the impression that it is everything."

Both the psychologists unanimously decry the overemphasis placed on computers. They feel that teachers and schools can make a difference. "When I teach a class of 40, besides the subject, I also teach them values and ethics," Kamalanabhan reiterates the point.

We still follow an educational system designed by the British "to produce clerks" as Nathan puts it pungently. The whole system has to be revamped including the examination system. No one doubts the fact that it is not child centric or even market oriented.

Actually, there are hardly any choices available to students when compared to the current British or the U.S systems. Seetha Lakshmi, Students' Advisor, U.S. Consulate, talks of the "burden of choice" on the students. The combinations vary from Music and Chemistry to Maths and French literature.

All the educationists recommend similar broad-based education for students too, at least till college level.

Though the children are more aware of their choices because of the media exposure, they are not mature enough to assess the information right.

Glamour and 'value of returns' attitude colour their decisions, points out Kamalanabhan.

So, the counsellors stress the importance of emotional intelligence. "I find teaching someone leadership skill at 55 not very effective. But if you teach them at 15, it makes sense," reveals Karthikeyan, who trains corporates in Human Resources management. According to him, time management, house keeping, stress management, people skills - all these should be brought down to the school level as children are more malleable than adults.

The principals admit that Science and Maths are encouraged in both Matriculation and CBSC. "We have this unidimensional approach because people do not understand the concept of multiple intelligence," explains Arundhati.

The neglect of Humanities and Social Sciences will have a negative impact in the long run, warns the IIT Professor. They allow for wider thinking and a different orientation to the students.

"If we say that you have to get 147 out of 150 in Biology and 40 is enough to pass in English, the message sent out is wrong," asserts the Michael's principal.

Semester system and autonomy as in the case of colleges are some of the suggestions put forward to improve the current situation. But these decisions take time.

In the meantime, "we have to give our children hope. A creative person can excel in any field irrespective of the market conditions.

There is space for each and every one in the world if they have the ability to carve it," Karthikeyan points to the rainbow among the clouds.

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