The link between academic and professional success!
 |
| fredy martinez enamorado, Pixabay |
By Nita Jatar Kulkarni
Published in The Telegraph, Kolkata, in the mid-nineties.
What is the relationship between school grades and future success?
This question haunts all parents. They want their kids to do well in school, but also worry because their children are at their most vulnerable at that tender age. Parents are never sure how much pressure their kids can take. If they pack their children off to tuitions after school and demand high academic performance, parents want to believe that they are doing it for the good of their children.
But the truth is: some kids cannot cope.
Which brings us to the question of whether parents should bother at all? Will pushing the children to top the class benefit them in the long run? Do high scorers, particularly those who scramble for each extra mark, really grow up and become super successful? Do these toppers make a lot of money in life? Do they have it all? A brilliant career chock-full of quick promotions, society’s accolades or perhaps a flourishing business? After all, wasn’t this the aim of all the hard academic work?
Some might say that in some professions, marks matter, and in others they don't.
Here is a small study which could be an eye-opener:-
The Study: A research study titled ‘Success in life and it's correlation with early education' was conducted at the S.M.S. College in Jaipur by Ashok Gupta, an assistant professor of Pediatrics. It reveals that an overwhelming percentage of successful people had in fact scored average marks at school. Dr Gupta undertook the study because of the swelling ranks of children with ‘behavioural dysfunction’ due to parental and societal pressures to score high marks in school.
Dr Gupta emphasizes that students who score poor marks should not get discouraged as it does not mean that they will be failures in life.
The study revealed that good academic scoring at school does not guarantee success in later life and nor does poor performance in school necessarily mean failure.
The study was conducted by interviewing successful people in ten different professions. They were selected using the ‘reputational technique’ which means that they were identified by their own peers. The professions selected were artists, engineers, industrialists, judges, doctors, journalists, bureaucrats, executives and intellectuals. The study showed that 81 per cent of the people interviewed had a mediocre academic record in school.
Significantly, while academically brilliant students were missing in the study, so were failures.
An even more interesting finding was that 88.4 per cent of the successful people were not the products of elite schools. And 60 per cent of them were from a vernacular background. Ironically 95 per cent of these successful people from vernacular medium schools chose to send their children to reputed English medium schools.
Interestingly, only 11.4 per cent of the successful people had taken tuitions or extra academic coaching in their early academic lives.
These findings assume great significance in today’s milieu where academic success is the only yardstick to measure the success of a child. One wonders what parents achieve by depriving children of a normal childhood. Studying long hours means giving up on hobbies and restricting outdoor activities. And for what?
The successful artists who were interviewed revealed that they had received full encouragement from their parents to develop their talents and thus had managed to save themselves from resounding failure in other careers.
Analysis: Dr Gauranga Chattopadhyay, a reputed counsellor who has counselled students disturbed by academic pressure throws some light on the findings of the study.
Speaking about the bookworm he says, ‘Here we cannot say which came first. The student’s inability to socialise or his love for books. Whatever the cause, such a student can become distanced from reality and does not develop social skills. Thus he finds it difficult to get along with or cooperate with others. Parents encourage this behaviour. For example, telling the child not to share his notes. Often they admire a child who sits and home and studies at the exclusion of all else. But this does not work in real life, one cannot function as a loner.’ The doctor also believes that a packed schedule where one goes for swimming and music lessons, karate and tuitions can affect a child adversely. ‘From childhood, children get used to spoon-feeding and when they grow up, find it difficult to function as they are not aware of how to choose their own options or how to solve their own problems.’
Dr. Zahid Gangjee, a human resources consultant and a former professor of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta, feels that one should not take the study to mean that academics is not important. ‘In fact, formal education is very important as it exercises the brain and inculcates discipline,’ he says. However he acknowledges that ‘brilliant’ in academic parlance does not mean that the student is brilliant. ‘To score high marks one requires an enormous amount of rote memory, the ability to lean without questioning and the perseverance to study for long hours', says Dr. Gangjee. He adds: ‘These long hours that the student spends at studying is that much taken from learning life-skills. Skills which teach you how to work in a team, cope with disappointment, and solve day-to-day problems.’ That is why he feels that parents select schools for their children very carefully, choosing schools which encourage development of skills other than academics. ‘A school may be excellent even if it means it's students are not toppers in the state,’ says Dr Gangjee.
Highlights of the study:
However, students today cannot escape the sweat and toil of academics. If high marks are to be scored he/she also has to forfeit time with friends or at hobbies. But after this back-breaking work what reward does the brilliant student get?
The Study: A research study titled ‘Success in life and it's correlation with early education' was conducted at the S.M.S. College in Jaipur by Ashok Gupta, an assistant professor of Pediatrics. It reveals that an overwhelming percentage of successful people had in fact scored average marks at school. Dr Gupta undertook the study because of the swelling ranks of children with ‘behavioural dysfunction’ due to parental and societal pressures to score high marks in school.
Dr Gupta emphasizes that students who score poor marks should not get discouraged as it does not mean that they will be failures in life.
The study revealed that good academic scoring at school does not guarantee success in later life and nor does poor performance in school necessarily mean failure.
The study was conducted by interviewing successful people in ten different professions. They were selected using the ‘reputational technique’ which means that they were identified by their own peers. The professions selected were artists, engineers, industrialists, judges, doctors, journalists, bureaucrats, executives and intellectuals. The study showed that 81 per cent of the people interviewed had a mediocre academic record in school.
Significantly, while academically brilliant students were missing in the study, so were failures.
An even more interesting finding was that 88.4 per cent of the successful people were not the products of elite schools. And 60 per cent of them were from a vernacular background. Ironically 95 per cent of these successful people from vernacular medium schools chose to send their children to reputed English medium schools.
Interestingly, only 11.4 per cent of the successful people had taken tuitions or extra academic coaching in their early academic lives.
These findings assume great significance in today’s milieu where academic success is the only yardstick to measure the success of a child. One wonders what parents achieve by depriving children of a normal childhood. Studying long hours means giving up on hobbies and restricting outdoor activities. And for what?
The successful artists who were interviewed revealed that they had received full encouragement from their parents to develop their talents and thus had managed to save themselves from resounding failure in other careers.
Analysis: Dr Gauranga Chattopadhyay, a reputed counsellor who has counselled students disturbed by academic pressure throws some light on the findings of the study.
Speaking about the bookworm he says, ‘Here we cannot say which came first. The student’s inability to socialise or his love for books. Whatever the cause, such a student can become distanced from reality and does not develop social skills. Thus he finds it difficult to get along with or cooperate with others. Parents encourage this behaviour. For example, telling the child not to share his notes. Often they admire a child who sits and home and studies at the exclusion of all else. But this does not work in real life, one cannot function as a loner.’ The doctor also believes that a packed schedule where one goes for swimming and music lessons, karate and tuitions can affect a child adversely. ‘From childhood, children get used to spoon-feeding and when they grow up, find it difficult to function as they are not aware of how to choose their own options or how to solve their own problems.’
Dr. Zahid Gangjee, a human resources consultant and a former professor of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta, feels that one should not take the study to mean that academics is not important. ‘In fact, formal education is very important as it exercises the brain and inculcates discipline,’ he says. However he acknowledges that ‘brilliant’ in academic parlance does not mean that the student is brilliant. ‘To score high marks one requires an enormous amount of rote memory, the ability to lean without questioning and the perseverance to study for long hours', says Dr. Gangjee. He adds: ‘These long hours that the student spends at studying is that much taken from learning life-skills. Skills which teach you how to work in a team, cope with disappointment, and solve day-to-day problems.’ That is why he feels that parents select schools for their children very carefully, choosing schools which encourage development of skills other than academics. ‘A school may be excellent even if it means it's students are not toppers in the state,’ says Dr Gangjee.
Highlights of the study:
- An overwhelming majority of successful people surveyed had a mediocre scoring rate at school.
- Most of those interviewed had their education in vernacular medium, ordinary schools.
- These very people opted to send their children to elite up-market schools.
- While brilliant students were not amongst those who were the most successful, failures were not either.
However, students today cannot escape the sweat and toil of academics. If high marks are to be scored he/she also has to forfeit time with friends or at hobbies. But after this back-breaking work what reward does the brilliant student get?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your polite comments are welcome.