Have you ever thought that your teacher thinks you're stupid?

I'm not too sure but their behaviour makes it look like they think we're stupid. Well, not entirely. It's as if their opinion about our intellect changes according to the situation.

1. When we score lower than we usually do:


2. When they want us to prepare for an inter-school competition:


3. When they tell us to do their work:


And then, my favourite incidents.

4. When a teacher has a conversation with a student like,


Just because the kid did something harmless that his friend said, doesn't mean he's gonna blindly obey.


So, 75% of the time, when they expect something from us, we're as brainy as Newton. But, the minute they want to scold us, our IQ is equivalent to the temperature of the North Pole.

I'm not a huge fan of the fact that we have to study all these extra subjects like P.T., P.D., Work Experience etc, but it does make school more fun, aside from all the problems that arise from it of course. But, these subjects, and our main subjects, all have too many projects. Again, it's not a bad thing, since we actually learn more from the practical projects, more than the books.

However, all these project deadlines drive the students crazy. I'm guessing there is no co-ordination between the teachers as a lot of the times, the deadlines co-incide with each other. And then we have to choose which project to do and which teacher to face.

Another problem that arises is that we don't get time to actually study, since most of our time is spent in homework. Now, every teacher will say "I give homework that can be done in 30 minutes." Well, (let's bring in some math from school)

We get homework for 5 subjects or, homework equivalent to that of 5 subjects. So, around 5 x 30 ie 150 minutes for homework. We'll round that off to 180, considering some subject's homework has to be done creatively. That's 3 hours gone to homework (school) itself.

So, my day starts at 2 pm, when I come back home from school and have finished having lunch. If I finish my school homework till say 5 pm and take a nap till 6 pm (to be able to stay up late) Then, after waking up, I have to go for tuitions, till 9 pm. After coming back, and finishing up dinner till around 9:30, I sit down to finish my tuition homework, till 10:30 pm. Now, I have around 90 minutes for studying, but, I've already spent most of my day exercising my brain and now it's tired. So, even if I sit down for 90 minutes and study, I don't really understand anything and it is more of a fruitless effort.

That's not my daily schedule, anyway. And most of the students I know have more tuitions and schoolwork than I do. So, where is the time to study? More importantly, where is the time to actually learn something for our future? No matter how much you disagree, knowing about the drainage pattern of Ganga, rise and decline of Adolf Hitler or poems written in various languages is definitely not going to help me if I decide to pursue further education in the fields of Science, Commerce etc.

No kid can survive on the small water bottle that he brings to school, nor can he lug around a bigger bottle. To solve this problem, my school bought water coolers for every floor, so that the kids would be able to fill their bottles when they're empty. However, some kids were seen washing their hands at the coolers instead of the washroom.

Seeing that, signs saying "DO NOT WASH HANDS AT THE COOLERS" were put up on each cooler. Well, I never saw a kid washing his hands at the coolers after that. But after that incident became a little old and everyone forgot about it, we started noticing our teachers wash their hands at the coolers.

So, they expect us to do as they say, not as they do?

Another example of this is one of our subjects, Personality Development. It's not like anyone takes this subject seriously, hell, most people don't even bring this book to school. But, that's where the problem lies. This subject, all about inculcation of values, mental/emotional development etc, should not be taught using books. It should be taught using active discussions between the teachers and students. And if that isn't possible, this subject should not be included as it really is a waste of time if we're just learning from books.

I understand that our education system is trying to teach just about everything in school, however, this isn't the right way to do so. And if they're not gonna do it right, they shouldn't bother.

I'm not sure how things are in other schools but in mine, students are divided into 3 groups:

Today, we got the results of an exam that was held a week ago. It was a small exam, nothing huge. The marks were pretty usual, all the students got marks according to their respective "groups". However, some from the 3rd group got really good grades.

Now, the students could have easily started to study since our terminal assessment is nearby and it is the time where we have to study a lot, so, the marks were genuine. But, instead of giving the students a thumbs up for their good job, the teacher says,


It really pissed me off because, she doesn't have the right to wrongly accuse any student for copying. I myself hadn't studied much for the exam and knew I was going to get no more than 70%. And when I went to the teacher to get my result, I was right.

However, I thought she wouldn't say anything to me, considering it was still a better performance than my previous one. But again,


So, basically,


All jokes aside though, it really sucks when you actually study for an exam, and are happy with the result, only to have someone else ruin it for you. More so when that someone is your teacher. I've heard an ex-student say that the teachers use reverse psychology. But, it really doesn't work, it just encourages the students to never improve, since this is what happens when they try.

That's how we're divided now,

NIE (Newspaper in Education, a subsidiary of The Times of India) hosted a competition, Think 'n Learn challenge a few weeks ago. They sent question sheets to 125 schools in my city and we had the 1st round in our school itself. It was just a simple test which had puzzles that required logical and analytical reasoning. No one really took it seriously until one of us read the rules and saw "Winner at the school level will receive a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3".

That being said, everyone started writing the test sincerely. It was just a multiple-choice test and we were done with it in an hour. For the next three weeks, we had all forgotten about it.

But then, last week, the results were declared. From our school, out of around 200 participants, 53 had received 90+ percentile and had qualified for the next round, city level. However, the winner of the school round was not declared. So, we all had to attend this next round.

The venue was a huge stadium, obviously meaning that a lot of children were going to be there. On reaching, we found out that a whooping 6000 students had qualified for this round, which meant that the competition was tough. For this round, instead of pen and paper, we had to do the test on a Samsung Tab.

The test itself was pretty much the same. Didn't feel like it was any more difficult than the previous one and our competition had definitely narrowed down to 6,000, instead of 40,000.

After the test, we had a one hour session on career options by a person named Byju, who cleared the CAT exam with a 100 percentile, twice. More on that later.

One thing that the person told us was, what we are doing in school now is not learning, we are memorizing. After the exam, we forget. But, if we use our common sense (which according to him, is not that common), we can simply learn without memorizing and we won't ever forget it.

Apart from that, it was a really good competition. I'm still waiting for the city level results although, since I didn't win at school level, my hopes aren't that high. 

Recently, my school received the opportunity of meeting the ex-President of India, Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam. A lot of people have told me how it was an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and envied me. But, I simply don't understand what the hype is all about.

As opposed to an actual meeting, this was more of an event where he was also present. So, none of the students actually got to meet him, per se. We were merely present when he delivered a speech. The speech was really inspiring and motivational, no doubt. But, the same points were also discussed in school, when we were told about this event. We weren't told anything we didn't already know, about him, or his work.

After the speech, I was looking forward to the Q&A session, as we would be able to talk one-on-one with the man and ask him questions. But again, we found out that the questions that were to be asked had been pre-discussed and the ones who were going to ask them were already picked. Moreover, he also mentioned that he would only answer 3 questions, which meant that there was no chance of any of the other 2000 students present there of asking a question of their choice.

So, we travelled for around 1 hour, waited for his arrival for 45 minutes, had a short welcoming ceremony and other event formalities in the next 30 minutes, listened to a 15 minute long speech (which we had already heard) and then had a fruitful 10 minutes of Q&A where pre-discussed questions were asked by pre-picked children.

What was supposed to be an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of meeting the "Missile Man" of India had just been a show, planned by the teachers. It had no more than 20 actors and actresses, while the other 2000 guests wasted more than 150 minutes of their life for the 10 minute Q&A session at the end.

Worth the effort?

PS: I would have posted a photo of the ex-President but, of course, cameras were not allowed.