Perfection is overrated. Yes, I said it. Globally, students are crumbling under the pressure of conforming to the very education system that was never designed for them. It’s like teaching a fish to climb a tree; it’s simply against its nature.
In my country, India, for instance, children take their own lives to such a heinous extent that fans with springs had to be installed (an attempt to prevent further suicides), but is this really a sustainable solution?
To get to the nucleus of the problem, we need to truly understand and evaluate students’ mental and emotional health; moreover, their consent is the most crucial part that is often neglected under societal and parental pressure of racing in the same rat race that their peers do. Education is not just about cramming books,it’s an all around development which includes physical and social as well as psychological well-being.
We don’t need factory products made in factories called schools, but rather it’s the need of the hour to create a holistic sphere of inter disciplinary education that allows children to stand on their feet, harness their critical thinking skills and choose the best path for them. We need to make them capable enough to make their own decisions, whether social or financial.
Courses like taxes, financial literacy, critical thinking, logical argumentation, emotional intelligence, and several other vocational courses like public speaking, etc. should be mandatory at school to make children well aware of themselves and their capabilities.
They need to realise that they are not a circus lion that moulds according to its master,they are the master of their own ship. Gradual steps, not perfection is the path that will lead us down to our ideal inclusive education chambers, a society made by the bright minds, not on the graves of their crumbled ideas.