Somewhere, our mentality towards quality education and how to pursue it has been plagued by sexism. Don’t you think?
The story deals with that section of the young Indian population, which faces a great dilemma right after their matriculation. That section of the young population who is pushed and forced to choose a career, by people who claim to know what’s best for them.
There is a reason why we are taught so many subjects, until we are given the option of choosing. May be choosing is not the right word to be used here, because only a minor percentage gets to choose, the others just stand upto the expectations.
This phenomena I am talking about is prevalent, not only in small towns but also in the most desired metropolitans in the country. Only recently, I visited a family friend of ours, who’s been living in the financial capital of the country for the past twenty five years. Her daughter, who was about to take her boards, exceled in almost all the subjects especially social sciences. While having a chat with her, she told me that she always wanted to be a journalist. Her parents beamed when people recognized them as the girl’s parents. I am glad that I got to taste the sour side of things. Her father never really thought of Humanities as an option. Why? Because that’s a thing for the feeble minded.
Somewhere, our mentality towards quality education and how to pursue it has been plagued by sexism. Don’t you think? If it’s a guy, it has to be science and if a girl, biology or Arts would do. Do we even realize that parental pressure and taking up a career for the society, has always left students regretting on their decisions to have opted for a wrong career.
The unspoken battle between one stream over the other, between one sex over the other has left the coming generation in a dilemma. My school was the first to have opened a Humanities section in the town, while we were in eleventh. My parents had already opted for Science on my behalf. And it did not matter to them that I had almost flunked in Maths in tenth and was interested in bology. What mattered then was that I had scored a 90+ in maths when I was in the second grade. Humanities section comprised of twenty students, out of which 3 were guys and the rest girls. If you would take a look at the performance of students in Science section, you’d wonder why were they still there. But again, doesn’t matter, as they were boys.
The society we live in, expects every child to be an engineer, doctor, dentist and recently-noticed-in-uprising chartered accountant. What I am implying here is that, there is nothing wrong in choosing for either of the career options mentioned above. But measuring a student’s IQ on that basis is denigrating.
