Do you remember what exams were like when we were students? I am sure we were nervous. I am even more sure that we should have been nervous because we certainly didn’t study as much as we could have. But I am most sure that our parents were not nervous when we were doing our exams.
They didn’t give up their routine for us. They went to parties and they hosted parties – even during the months that were officially designated ‘exam’ time in our school diaries. “Finish studying before the guests arrive,” we were told – and it was taken for granted that our studying could be finished.
Our parents didn’t expect us to devote twenty-four hours a day to revising or practising or memorising – and they certainly didn’t expect us to ‘max’ every subject. So we went for our exams happily, came out a bit sad – and took it all in our stride.
Of course, by the time we had children of our own, we had conveniently forgotten the easy atmosphere in the house at exam time and how little tension there was for us and for our parents. We remembered only our easygoing ways – and rued them. And we convinced ourselves that we had to be better parents than our own parents – and to achieve that we had to devote twenty-four hours of our day to making sure our offspring studied.
So, the great re-education process started. We knew our children’s text-books ‘by heart’ and could recite them from cover to cover. Thus, we didn’t need to be at the study table with them to ‘take up’ their lessons. We could do that as we trudged to the bus stop in the morning — in anticipation of the exam that day, and we could do it again on our way back from the bus stop in the afternoon — in preparation for the next day’s exam.
That the children needed to clear their minds and take a break and run madly on the playground never crossed our minds. In any case, who would they play with on that playground? All their friends and acquaintances – even their enemies – were doing what they were doing. Studying. All this due diligence on our parts didn’t let up for more than a decade.
And then our first real test came in the form of our son’s Class X board exam. We took leave from work and got ready to spend the day outside the examination centre.
Unbearable tension
We were convinced we had to transport him there and then hang around biting our nails for three hours, discussing with other parents just like us (and there were a lot of them) what topics they were likely to be tested on – until we saw our wards’ faces again. And when we did, we grabbed the question papers and went over them with a fine tooth comb, assessing what they had done and how many marks they were likely to get.
It was totally and completely exhausting — and totally and completely unnecessary. Which, thankfully, some of us learnt after that first day of almost unbearable tension on the sidelines.
For the second and third and all later exams, we let our children be. We encouraged them to study, hoped (and secretly prayed) that they would, wished them luck, and let them get on with it.
Our support, affection and care did not mean we had to be right there — wringing our hands and driving ourselves crazy. And we certainly didn’t have to ruin our children’s chances and their work ethic by climbing walls (literally) and wriggling through windows — as scores of parents and friends were photographed doing at an examination centre in Bihar — to slip notes to their children to help them ‘ace’ their exams!
Cheryl Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.
