I was in a bit of a pickle earlier today. Not sure if I did the right thing, so looking for advice.
Nilay was a little upset about his studies. I called him over (I was in bed) and he literally just started bawling tears. Long story short, turns out there are two teachers who are going very fast, and nobody understands anything in class.
He goes to the kind of school where this isn't a problem. Tomorrow we will write to the teachers and, mostly, things will just improve.
But then I asked him, why he was so upset. If the teacher is going too fast and no one understands anything, that is the teacher's problem, not his.
He said that all his classmates are able to understand later on and finish their homework; only he was struggling with his assignments. I said they might be making a note of the topics covered in class, and then doing self study. I offered to help him understand the concepts.
He says that if the other kids do well and he doesn't, his grades get spoilt. (Now we were on very familiar territory. Shout out to anybody else who has suffered IIT Madras and is reading this - RG.)
So why are his eighth grade grades important to him? Grades determine college, he says.
And why is college important?
I was asking for an incredulous look, and I got it. See, I've taken the kids to my college, and a few other colleges of repute. They look forward to attending a good college, and doing big things after. They understand college is important for success.
So now I started rattling off the names of all the people he knows, who didn't go to college but are successful. Or who went to college and studied one thing, but are now doing very well in another field. Or who did a lot of college and are now not working, or not successful.
So my question to you is - is this kind of mixed messaging confusing to a child. In the usual course I tell my children that education is important, classes can't be missed, homework needs to get done on time, and college is important. But when they struggle, I tell them that their happiness is paramount, grades aren't critical, college is dispensable, and learning is about understanding and not marks/grades. Is this mixed messaging going to set them up for failure?
(I also gave him personal examples. I came second in all of Delhi in maths competitions in grades 5 and 7. I came third in all of MP in the INMO in grade 11. Yet my CBSE grade 12 maths marks were some 48 or 52%. Even so, I cracked MPPET and made it to NIT Bhopal the same year, and cracked JEE the next year. So grades, especially school/board grades, can be tricky. A more relevant example was from IIT days. I flunked a few courses - all courses where the professor did a terrible job of teaching. A tenured prof used to teach us EMEC - they were teaching motor winding to 5 year program communication system students, because they just didn't have enough professors available to teach. There was nobody to complain to, and the bad profs would never be in their rooms after hours to explain concepts. So, not doing well in a subject is often a two way street.)
Nilay was a little upset about his studies. I called him over (I was in bed) and he literally just started bawling tears. Long story short, turns out there are two teachers who are going very fast, and nobody understands anything in class.
He goes to the kind of school where this isn't a problem. Tomorrow we will write to the teachers and, mostly, things will just improve.
But then I asked him, why he was so upset. If the teacher is going too fast and no one understands anything, that is the teacher's problem, not his.
He said that all his classmates are able to understand later on and finish their homework; only he was struggling with his assignments. I said they might be making a note of the topics covered in class, and then doing self study. I offered to help him understand the concepts.
He says that if the other kids do well and he doesn't, his grades get spoilt. (Now we were on very familiar territory. Shout out to anybody else who has suffered IIT Madras and is reading this - RG.)
So why are his eighth grade grades important to him? Grades determine college, he says.
And why is college important?
I was asking for an incredulous look, and I got it. See, I've taken the kids to my college, and a few other colleges of repute. They look forward to attending a good college, and doing big things after. They understand college is important for success.
So now I started rattling off the names of all the people he knows, who didn't go to college but are successful. Or who went to college and studied one thing, but are now doing very well in another field. Or who did a lot of college and are now not working, or not successful.
So my question to you is - is this kind of mixed messaging confusing to a child. In the usual course I tell my children that education is important, classes can't be missed, homework needs to get done on time, and college is important. But when they struggle, I tell them that their happiness is paramount, grades aren't critical, college is dispensable, and learning is about understanding and not marks/grades. Is this mixed messaging going to set them up for failure?
(I also gave him personal examples. I came second in all of Delhi in maths competitions in grades 5 and 7. I came third in all of MP in the INMO in grade 11. Yet my CBSE grade 12 maths marks were some 48 or 52%. Even so, I cracked MPPET and made it to NIT Bhopal the same year, and cracked JEE the next year. So grades, especially school/board grades, can be tricky. A more relevant example was from IIT days. I flunked a few courses - all courses where the professor did a terrible job of teaching. A tenured prof used to teach us EMEC - they were teaching motor winding to 5 year program communication system students, because they just didn't have enough professors available to teach. There was nobody to complain to, and the bad profs would never be in their rooms after hours to explain concepts. So, not doing well in a subject is often a two way street.)