Mar 17, 2014 02:00 PM
210269 Views
Some people are desperate to draw attention even if it is for the wrong reasons. While I did not want to waste time on this school, today they(Chaitanya Marathahalli) have managed to get me to make them popular for the wrong reasons.
This is one school which hunts for students(Whatever I say about Chaitanya schools is verbatim valid for Narayana schools and I wont pen one separately there!). They had contacted us and asked my son to appear for an exam in their school way back in December 2013.
How did they get to know my son? The fault being he had written the NTSE exam. Written not necessarily succeeded at that point of time. Well, as a senior of my son who was also a good sportsman had joined them and his father stated that he had to use his contacts to get admission, I decided that I will spend(rather waste!) a Sunday morning going to their school.
To cut the story short, the environment was not anything to talk about, but their attitude talked everything! Everything wrong to put it politely. My son was selected in the top 3 offered a fee waiver. When I received this call, I neither agreed or refused the offer and let it pass.
Days passed by and we were not a bit interested in this option. Then the NTSE results came and with the my son having got through the first round, I got a call from the Banaswadi branch offering him free training for second level of NTSE.
Well, I did not mind it, especially given that they were the first to congratulate him! A few days later Marathahalli did the same and I said we will think about the free training offer! Alas within a couple of days a couple of so called Junior Lecturers from the Marathahalli branch showed up without any prior appointment at our home.
Not to disappoint them, I let them into my house and chatted with them. I told them clearly that my son was not really the NERD type and he was more an all rounder, one who was a state athletic medalist as well and he was not going to get JEE rank 1 as that is not for the SMARTEE. He will try to get in the first 500 and surely will be in the JEE main rank list even without a whimper!
Today I get an SMS stating that Chaitanya Marathahalli student has got the first in IMO and NSO in the state. This really took the wind out of my sail and I did not keep quiet. I wrote back stating "Who cares if their student did something?"
Things would have ended with that, but the lady in Chaitanya wont give up. She wrote back an SMS that I ignored. Then she calls up to ask what. I did give her a piece of my mind! I told her that my son had the 20th rank in IMO(did not write NSO anyway!) and it did not matter if he had the first or the hundredth! Nothing will change because a child gets the first in IMO or NSO!
All I can summarize is the following:
Too many mad parents think that their child can become smarter, stronger, greater by drinking boost! Chaitanyas and Narayanas are the boost of these parents who think their academically not so brilliant children will become JEE rank holders if they put their child in school A or B. I bet the child who got the first rank might have anyway got a good rank IRRESPECTIVE OF BEING A STUDENT OF CHAITANYA. In other words no school can make a 70% student into a 100% student! I cant help stating this truth.
However cramming schools like Chaitanya can certainly make as student go mad in very short time. I had a batch-mate of mine in IIT Madras who was a very close friend of mine in the first year of B.Tech. He had a tendency to continuously compete and if I got say half a mark more in a practical then him, he felt bad. After an year when we moved to our branches his attitude of OVER COMPETITIVENESS made him get into psychiatric issues and he ended up in trouble. He did get out of the institute later than us, but his life had been damaged.
Parents should realize that your child is god's gift and what he or she does is not for your pride and you should work for your child's happiness. Success as measured by ranks and money will not necessarily translate into happiness quite often.
Finally just by going to certain schools your child wont become smarter. Remember, the so called great schools dont make your child smart; they just are smart enough to recruit smart children and take the credit!
Cheers.
