If you are a parent .. by Azim Premji

    I just read this spledid piece of writing in STOI. This is written by Azim Premji, the Chairman of Wipro Ltd…

   If you are a parent, you have many aspirations for your child that may include him or her becoming a doctor, an enginner, scientist or another kind of successful professional. I believe these aspirations are driven by your thinking about your child’s future, and her centrality in your life.

   Since good education is often the passport to a good future, I presume it leads you to getting your child to study hard and do well in school exams. To bolster this, you send him or her for tuition classes. This would have primed your child for board exams and entrance exams, thereby leading to admission into a good professional course. Doing well at college increase the probability of landing a good job. And a good job means the child’s future is ensured.

   I am neither a psychologist nor and educationist, and what I will now state may seem counter- intuitive. I think that these aspirations and actions might be doing more harm than good to your child. To understand why, we need to re-examine some of our fundamental assumptions.

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