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Charting out right
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Career counselling will help children choose and pursue the right subject that will help them find suitable employment.
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KALPANA is an articulate 20-year old, all set to complete her B.Com. In an ideal scenario, she would be delighted to complete long years of education. But in today's educational scene, reality is often harsh. Far from being overjoyed, Kalpana, like many others in her class, is haunted by one question that looms large in her mind: "What next?" For, as she puts it, "These days, a B.Com is worth nothing - it's almost like Std X!" So she must perforce get back into the rat race, leaving the protected environment of her college to compete in the marketplace for a good job or an MBA seat in a top ranking institution.
This was not how it was supposed to be. Kalpana's family had advised her to forego computer science, which was her first love only because there was more scope in commerce. She had even dropped out of a computer course that had cost over Rs. 20,000 so that she could attend MBA coaching classes costing another Rs. 15,000. Application forms for exams like CAT, XAT, and NMAT and then for the institutions themselves had upped the bill further by Rs.10,000. However, when she took the simulated exams, she found that she came nowhere near the cut-off marks as she lacked the motivation to do well. Now she was back to wondering if she should do an MCA instead. After all, competition for computer science was less these days and the market might pick up by the time she completed it.
What a waste of time, money and effort! Couldn't all this have been avoided with a more careful mapping of strategy when she started out, you wonder! The problem is that at 16 when they join college, students are too immature to decide what they want to do. It is often the parents who push them in the direction they want them to take.
Balakrishnan, a father of two daughters, represents the common viewpoint of parents: "In our country, your standing in society is determined by your job. So we have to guide our children towards taking up a course that has the best prospects," he says. His daughter, Aarti, whose interest lay in arts, joined engineering instead. She says, "Ultimately you have to make a living." She however has managed to do well, but 18-year-old Arun has had a bitter experience. His parents paid a hefty sum to get him into an engineering college but he soon found himself unable to cope with the demands placed on him. But he couldn't drop out either because of the heavy investment made.
Psychiatrists say the problem is largely due to career choice, which is based on the parents' unfulfilled dreams and not on the child's interests. He adds that, while there are courses for anything and everything, there is no course on parenting. The excessive emphasis placed on academics by the middle class becomes an excuse for laying pressure on the child. "When money becomes the criterion and the child is not given freedom to express himself, he cracks under pressure," he says. The availability of payment seats aggravates this problem and when the child's IQ or skills do not match the levels required in a demanding course, a great deal of psychological damage is done.
Parents should not push their children into courses that do not interest them. If they want to take up history for instance, they should be encouraged to do so. They can then follow it up with a certificate course in tourism in the third year that will give them a flying start to an exciting career. Teachers and professors too can play a major role in guiding the students. A sensitive art master, for instance, guided Basha into joining the Visual Communications course. Today, Basha has found his niche as a `visualiser' in an ad agency. In many institutions, however, such concrete help is not forthcoming and career counselling is often perfunctory — "a room with two people sitting in it" — as one student casually dismisses it.
Thus, it is a combination of factors that leads to the sad spectacle of anxious youngsters milling around college entrances or coaching centres seeking the magic portal that will open up a fabulous future. But this blind pursuit of a fad leads to the mushrooming of inferior institutions, a dilution of standards and a consequent drying up of job opportunities. Career counselling should start early, in Std IX or X itself, when children decide which specialisation to pursue. Standardised tests are available to identify skills and aptitudes. He advises parents to look at careers from a larger perspective, as a means of equipping children to face the biggest exam of all — life itself. This can only be accomplished if they are encouraged to experiment and take responsibility for their own actions. "Even if the student loses one year in this experimentation, we should look at it from the perspective of a career span of 30-40 years," he says. To sum up, here's a piece of advice to students: "There are no shortcuts, no jobs being offered on a platter. You must aim at standing out from the rest and securing an education that will help you face life's challenges with confidence."
USHA NARAYANAN
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