Impact Of A Soul To A Soul From A Soul

The papers today have posted so many posts on the release of the SPM examination results. There are so many posts on students getting a lot of As and stuff like that. They were interviewing students and other stuffs like that. In the midst of all these articles, one caught my attention and it’s still about the results but it has a twist to it. The article was about this girl who fell from the third storey of her school after obtaining her results.

We always put our interest and attention on the top scorer and how they achieve their almost humanly impossible to obtain results. The less As students just seems to vanish into thin air, not to speak of those obtaining poorer results. To me I guess this bit of news should have been in the front page rather than the top scorers.

We are putting so much attention to top scorers and the message that has been portrayed is that the results will determine the rest of your life, whether it will be good or bad. Or at least to me it is. Another sad story is that some parents are taking this message as a rule, as a guidance, as the ultimate truth. All parents want their child to be successful, who does not, but is getting 10 As, 15 As, 20 As, or even may be up to 100 As in the coming future means that they will be successful? What is the measure of successful? How do you even measure success?

As for me, I am very fortunate to have parents who gave mi a very good guide line. My dad often looks at my results and he did not scold me, even when I drop from getting position like 8 or 10 to 20 or 30 plus. Here’s what he used to say to me:

“You have improved but you did not improve enough”
“You study for yourself and not for any one else”

I was never pressured to get straight As, though it would be nice to have straight As… but then again, I was happy it turned our as it did. I did not do extremely well in my examinations, but I did good enough to land me through my six form and then college.

Today, the purpose of education has just been misinterpreted. Every one just seems to look at the results of examinations to judge a person whether he/she is clever, but in reality, we find this almost just the opposite. The less literate seems to be the majority of the business owners while a lot of scholars are jobless. I’m not sure if those jobless includes these straight As students or not, but I believe they include some of the not so straight As students which, in the eyes of their results, should have been very successful and not jobless.

Apart from that, the pressure that parents are putting on the child is just immense. Some child are publicly mocked and interrogated for getting 99 marks out of 100. It seems that parents are taking pride in the child’s result where they boast about, which misleads the children that they are studying and getting good results so their parents won’t scold them and be able to boast about them. They are just not aware that they should study for themselves and not for their parents and the knowledge they gain are their’s alone and not their parents.

I think we should stress the purpose of education which is to educate the society as well as empower them with the power of knowledge. It’s not wrong to measure the success through examinations but when examinations are taken to be the life or dead situation which almost caused the death of another promising teenager, we have to ponder upon this seriously. No doubt getting good results means that you have achieve something and it’s a milestone/stepping stone, but to survive in this world that is just a small and minor part. The attitude and character plays a big part in being successful.

We should be able to educate our children with knowledge and love, not bombard them with tuition and scolding every other hour. We should help them balance their lives with both education and play as well.

They have a life you know, the life of a child.
Don’t take that away from them with your hopes.