Something that often pains me as a student is how our countries education system failed us. Our curriculum is not made for learning or understanding but for writing in exams, the outcome does not matter. If you pass you were always gifted If you fail you were a troubled or lazy child. Most teachers are unhappy with their salaries and wish to complete their syllabus and just move on.
In business studies we hear the term " Perform or perish". For those who do not know what this is, it is a term called for the private sector companies and their work life. Unfortunately this culture has seeped its poison in our school oh I mean factories. India at one time was a learning hub with the most knowledgeable beings amongst us.
Parents often complain about how children now ever days don't play outside but have they ever thought why? when children play or even express their creative side in schools, it is squashed like a bug, stamped upon like a useless piece of junk. Children who are confident are given the main role while the average children a mode the trees, stones or side characters as if they don't matter.
In Grade 1- we learn how a big school works. We are taught to suppress our creativity and how to memorize long answers. But at least at home you can draw your stories to life, make dresses for your dolls and make forts with your favorite people.
Grade 2- We have to learn how to make new friend after the old ones are moved to another class. You feel left out no matter what you do no one talks to you after the teacher scolded you in front of everyone called you an idiot or a duffer. You stop making dresses for your dolls because you are not a baby anymore. Your classmates say their parents don't allow them to speak to bad students. After all this you decide to eat your lunches alone, quietly in a corner, invisible. When expressing yourself in speech by talking to friends does not work you take up art or other hobbies.
Grade 3- There is a drawing competition in school, with all the courage you walk up to the teacher and ask her if you could participate. As you expected she did not pick you, even before looking at your drawing.
Grade 4- This year goes in a jiffy and suddenly its open house. The teacher asks a student to divide the workbooks in two groups - the bad students and the good ones, the student in front of you automatically puts your book at the last in the pile, even though you worked very hard to complete your books and get good grades all year.
Grade 5- You finally start to make friends.
Grade 6-8 go in a blur and suddenly your are a teenager? that to in grade 9! You have to work extra hard for your boards, although your parents do not pressure for grades but somewhere you know that if you do not score above 85% you will not be valued.
Grade 10- You run ,jump and hustle from one class to another. This coaching that tutor. And then its time, that time. You scored exactly 85 and you are now looking for collages and you suddenly realize , you learned nothing, you have nothing. Even the creativity you started with in grade 1 when you would make stories in your head and draw them on paper was not gone. You are now left with even lesser things than what you stated with.
A small poem
Grade 1.
We are tiny artists with crayons and dreams,
but school teaches us
not how to draw —
but how to color inside the lines.
Stories die beneath the weight of "Write this. Memorize that."
The bell doesn’t ring in freedom;
it rings in compliance.
Grade 2.
New class.
New faces.
Old friendships lost in the shuffle.
One mistake — a scolding in front of the class.
“Idiot.”
“Duffer.”
Now you eat lunch alone,
invisible, quiet, forgotten.
Bad students don’t get friends.
They get silence.
Grade 3.
You try again.
A drawing competition.
Hope stitched into every line on that paper.
You ask, Can I join?
The teacher doesn’t even look.
“No.”
Because bad students don’t draw.
They just fill blanks in tests.
Grade 4.
Open house.
Workbooks separated —
Good and bad.
No rubric.
No reason.
Just names and reputations.
You land at the bottom.
Where you've always been placed,
regardless of the truth.
Grade 5.
You finally find a friend.
Maybe two.
The silence thaws.
Grades 6 to 8 —
They blur like a montage.
Laughter, pressure,
a few moments of joy between lessons that teach fear of failure
more than love of learning.
Grade 9.
You're told, “This year matters.”
As if the rest didn’t.
You’re not a child anymore —
you’re a score waiting to happen.
Grade 10.
You run.
From class to class,
tuition to tutor.
You chase marks like they’re oxygen.
You hit 85.
And then…
nothing.
No applause.
No fulfillment.
Just silence.
Like the lunch corner from Grade 2.
You realize:
You learned how to obey, not understand.
How to survive, not create.
You lost your stories, your colors,
your spark.
You have less now
than when you started.