Students must be taught to face failures

Mahbubnagar: With over 25 Intermediate students committing suicides across the State, psychiatric experts revealed the main reasons for the students to take such a drastic step and said it was because of the faulty education system, where in students are told to do rote learning rather than understanding the concepts and applying them in the real life.

They said the students must be taught to face both success and failures with same spirit as there are various opportunities to excel in life.

"The education system that we are adopting today is a faulty system.

Our examination pattern and evaluation methods measure only the capacity of human memory and not to really educate the students about human values, importance of life, or real scientific concepts. Particularly, in Intermediate education, students are subjected to mental pressure right from the beginning which is not good for the students as they may undergo deep mental trauma and depression.

Because of which, we are witnessing a large number of suicides by young students," said Dr Srinivas Raju, a psychiatric expert from Mahbubnagar.

Particularly, for the students of science background, they are given the targets of cracking various competitive examinations like Eamcet, NEET, AIEEE and IIT examinations.

To train the students to face the tough competitions, parents are joining their children in coaching centres. "Today's parents want their children to get MBBS and engineering seats and they are giving them intense pressure.

The attitude of the general public in the society is that if their children cannot win the competition then there is no respectable life at all. This kind of a negative attitude is very dangerous and because of this, the students who sometimes fail due to untoward circumstances do not have the courage to face the failures and feel insulted in the society. Due this they get into depression and try to take their lives," explained Dr Srinivas Raju.

Recently, an Intermediate student from Narayanpet district who had committed suicide is one typical case wherein it can be said that because of faulty evaluation of Intermediate examination, she was declared fail and not able to bear that insult, she committed suicide.

Out of eight lakh students who had taken Intermediate exams in Telangana, as many as 3 lakh are declared failed. This kind of an mass failure of Inter students is seen for the first time.

"The deaths of more than 25 intermediate students are because of the wrong evaluation method. The State government must take responsibility for this and must pay Rs 25 lakh as compensation to kin of each of the deceased student.

The culprits behind this fiasco must be published severely," demanded BJP leader Kishan Reddy, during a condolence meeting in Narayanpet recently.

As the 10th class results are also awaited, the Commissionaire of Education has already given instruction to all the teachers in the government and private education institutions to conduct student-parents meeting and provide counselling to them so that no such untoward incidents like suicides take place.