“Oh, you don’t even know, who’s Darwin?”, says a 7th grade student to her classmate who’s just joined her class, with an accent, which is quite common among kids studying in international schools.

“Well, should I be knowing the same? Do you know who’s Ramanujan?”, replies the kid, in an accent, quite synonymous with kids studying in a remote government school, to which the girl makes fun of.

When you hear such conversations, you cannot help but wonder where our society is heading?

A language, which shouldn’t be made a prestige issue but a medium to communicate your thoughts and feelings, has unfortunately become a status symbol in today’s world.

In my childhood, if a kid got educated in a convent school, it used to be a matter of pride for the parents, which has translated to studying in an international school for kids of today’s generation.

What I see in a child today is:

A constant race to speak, act and live life as the westerners would,

A constant race to prove that you are better than someone,

A constant race to get that all coveted seat in a US university,

Of course being supported by parents:

Who take great pride, if their kid succeeds in some competitive exam,

Who are all bent upon showing off their kid as a trophy to the world,

Without realising, that what they are doing is not manav nirmaan but a creation of a generation of youth,

who are driven by materialism,

who don’t have an understanding of what inclusivity would mean,

who look at every other object as it were to be used and exploited by them for their own needs,

Which by the way, seems a very dangerous situation to be living in.

For what’s the guarantee that the kids, when they grow up, would not see parents as a means to fulfil their own ambitions and needs,

which in a way is getting reflected in today’s world, especially where the husband and the wife, both are working in a professional capacity and just want their parents or in-laws to be present at home, wanting them to take care of their own kids.

Yes, we Indians realise that a kid’s interaction with grandparents is of utmost importance to their development, but, should the basis of the same be exploitative mentality, which is a result of addiction to materialism?

Weren’t love, respect and care meant to be the foundations of the same?

The way, every Indian in today’s word, is being cultivated and nurtured, brings about a deep concern for the future.

If getting a well-paying job is the only incentive to live and leaving behind the rest the only motive in the world, day is not far when parents’ trophies will turn into disasters for themselves, to begin with, and for society as a whole.

The choice is yours:

Whether you want to change the very fundamentals of upbringing,

or

Allow your kids to be cultivated into something which ensures sadness for all stakeholders in times to come?

Source for the Image: http://edtechreview.in/news/2632-technology-for-students-education