No doubt children as well as their parents who achieve more than 90+ percent in board examinations need hearty congratulations. It shows that the children is sincere, hard working, goal oriented and parents are sacrificing and restricting their social and business activities for the sake of their children’s bright future.

True scoring high marks is commendable. However, experience shows that many times those students who get good average overall marks throughout their academic careers turn out to be better scientist rather than those scoring very high percentage marks and wining gold medals etc.

There are many examples to support the view that those students who score below average or even fail later on turn out to be innovators, public leaders etc.

Let us briefly analyse below the basis for above observations.

Understanding of any subject be it science, mathematics or economics involves appreciating various ABSTRACT CONCEPTS. Appreciation of these concepts involves real life experiences. A child who is only four years old can do counting and other arithmetic with numbers but to appreciate what modern (abstract) algebra is he has to be in class11 or more. This is all the more true for science. A young student who has never visited huge factories where steel is manufactured, heavy electrical like BHEL or power generating stations and has witnessed turbine in action will have lot of difficulty infact almost impossible for him to imagine what modern science and technologies are all about.

In absence of all these experiences at a young age and because he or she want parents to be happy about their scores they take recourse to learning by rote rather than putting their analytical mind to action. Analytical mind always keeps asking questions like why this, why not that, what happens if I do like this not like that. Getting answers to such questions may take lot of time and efforts so teachers do not encourage such creative questioning minds because they have to complete a chapter and a course with in a limited time. This so called smart approach where classes are held regularly so are the examination students answer exactly what is taught to them by teachers and textbooks. Results are announced well in time when you want answer to a question you may either search Google or ask your “brilliant” children both answer are happily identical.

There used to be a time when even in India PhD scholars, during his initial period of IIT Kanpur, used to take in many cases more than six years to complete their work for serious research problem there was no strict time limit. Things have changed now every project has to fit in a format before starting your project you have to be almost if not exactly 100 percent sure has to what will be the outcome of your research project otherwise no agency is willing to fund it.

Fitting of education in rigid time slots and goals essentially KILLS the very spirit under which creativity grows and finally takes a form which sometimes no one can imagine. Following a road which is less travelled or making your own pathway may obviously take more time but it may be worth it.

What can you do as a parent to make your children not to much focused on getting answer to all question correct but more about what are the various option given and why they are not correct. More than just knowing which is the correct option A, B, C, D. Ask your children why does he think, the particular option is the right one, why are the others not correct what changes in the language of question will make other option correct. Analysing a multiple choice question in this way will result in a better learning and understanding the concepts behind.

These are some of the reasons why those who score very high in board examination usually do not turn out to be good researchers. During 60’s when atomic energy Trombay, Bombay (then) used to hold interviews for those willing to join training school the interviewing scientist were astonished to find many who claim they are toppers in the university exam but when asked few basic things used to simply admit that after their exam were over in May, June in the intervening 3 months period they have forgotten everything, when interviews were being held in the months September, October.

NCERT it appears is aware of such lacuna and has come up with various activity manual for science and mathematics. Parents are encouraged to let children perform these activities.  

In India, on one hand we need basic education for masses, on the other hand we need institutes of excellence where not everyone can qualify. For a healthy growth both the school education and institutes of higher education should be given equal importance. Excellence can only come when we have a very large pool of students who participates.

The article will continue and provide some guidelines as to how parents can help their children in this direction.