"Catch them young" is a popular phrase among educators and mentors in many fields who want to give talent the most amount of time to be harnessed. But some people just took it too literally and are catching them too young. There are "model schools" in Andhra Pradesh that now train sixth standard students for the IIT entrance. When I first saw the ad I was too shocked to even be disgusted. This is pure hysteria that is being lumped on an already overbearing system of training and "education". Sadly, we live in a world where economic constraints are making it increasingly harder for a majority of our youth to choose a career according to their greatest strengths and talents. The schooling or high school age is still too unreasonably early to acknowledge this fact and put them through the grind. While art, music and sports may not fetch healthy salaries or financial stability, an educational system that allows this kind of a drill without giving any space for an individuals talent or it's growth is a hopeless failure. It is nothing but an educational holocaust administered by a money-laundering bunch of people who have nothing but a bag of tricks that can be used to pass one examination. What they exploit is the fear within each one of us that if we think rationally and behave differently from the frenzied masses, we will be crushed by the stampede of competition and left without a means to livelihood. I doubt twelve year olds actually understand what it really means to be an engineer, or what IIT and it's true objectives really stand for. If they do, then we do not have any twelve-year olds left. We just have an artificially grown bunch of super humans with a highly distorted view of life.
The coaching industry that been born as a result of the tough competition for the IIT entrance is a growing monster. I would like to think that the IIT stands not only for engineers who can put in fourteen hours of work a day, but for engineers who have a true perspective on how much engineering can contribute to human growth, and are genuinely well rounded intellectuals who have put their talent to use in non-engineering fields as well (I shall refer to them as "true" IIT-ans). I have been fortunate to interact with many such, and some of them even came from these coaching centres. My point is that the true IIT-ans would have made it to the IITs without this coaching, because their intelligence is constantly engaged, and they are always thinking and working on a plethora of technical and non-technical issues. They do not need to be taught tricks or shortcuts. The coaching centres are factories of automated production, where young people (with genuine talent in other fields I am sure) are handed out mindlessly mundane lives just so that they can perform for 12 exam-hours that apparently make their life.
What happens later on to the ones who are somehow pushed over the bar so that they enter IIT is another disturbing story all together.
It does not seem to end. Each year,it only gets bigger and uglier. The justification is that there is no other way to lead a secure or happy life. If this is true, it is a sad reflection of our society. Until we all stop and think about how barbaric we have become, and mend our lifestyle so that we begin to encourage well balanced individuals with an all-round perspective of the world, it will always seem too dangerous to defy the trend. Until then, we are all victims of this self-propagating hysteria.
