The IITs, The coaching institutes and our Schools

By, Aditya Kumar



After a sort of cakewalk over the class 10 boards, it was time for the unquestionable ritual, the IIT-JEE preparations. At that time it wasn’t some ‘Engineering Entrance’ preparation but strictly ‘IIT-JEE’ preparation. And so I was admitted into a popular coaching institute. It called itself an IIT Academy. The word ‘Academy’ put a lot of weight over the name of the institute and it felt really nice to announce the name of the institute with the phrase ‘IIT Academy’.  During classes 11^th and 12^th, I was transformed into your typical IIT aspirant.  Underline the world IIT, at that time it was all about getting into the IITs. At that time the world ‘IIT’ itself used to carry the magic. This magic itself propelled hundreds of young souls to oscillate endlessly from school to coaching institute everyday. Switching off from the nostalgia of those days let me switch on to all the hustles and bustles over coaching institutes these days.

In the recent days a lot of fuss is being made over the complete hijack of IIT entrance procedure by the coaching institutes. And there have been speculations that the IITs’ administrations want this coaching institute phenomenon to be sabotaged in order to 'purify' the IIT entrance procedure. The reason for their concern is that, these days joining a coaching institute has become an utmost necessity in cracking the IIT-JEE or for that matter any of the engineering entrances.

So are the coaching institutes the real culprits?

Frankly speaking throughout my student life all that was taught to me at my coaching institute was many times more than all I have learnt in rest of the years combined. The way in which we were taught at the institute was the way I wish we were taught throughout our student lives. I don’t know, maybe it were the teachers at the institute or the subjects, but we used to enjoy studying and solving problems sitting in the classrooms of our institutes. We were taught in a way that we never had the necessity of learning any concepts or formulas. The main aim of the teachers was to impart us with the right concepts. Concept-building was the thing that was emphasized upon. Once we had carefully listened all that was taught in the class it was as if all had been inscribed in our minds. We could derive all the formulas in our minds. The only problem left was to apply our minds to use the concepts in the problems to be solved. And then there were frequent tests to test what all we had learnt. All this was not confined to my institute only. I say all this on the basis of my experiences as well as the interactions with friends from other coaching institutes. All the coaching institutes were more or less equivalent   because the fierce competition among them had leveled them all.

Back at schools it was all ‘shut up and take down notes’ business. The students were divided into four groups. Some simply noted down what the teacher was writing or dictating, a few others were busy solving their coaching institute packages. A few were busy making merry, sharing jokes playing paper games, displaying their new cell phones and telling others how could they efficiently smuggle the phones in.  The best of the lot were the ones dozing off at the back benches in pure bliss. The last three groups did not even care what was being taught or to be precise what was being dictated. I could easily be found in any of the last three groups at random. The teacher would regularly reprimand us on discovering us doing coaching institute packages. And we were forced to listen to whatever the teacher was teaching. We only tried to follow what the teacher said when the topic in progress was the one already being taught or been taught at our institutes. And then we would be all up with our doubts, trying more to know what the teacher really knew. And most of the times we were disappointed. The teacher either rubbished the doubt saying that “These types of questions never come in the exams.” or the teacher would start lamenting us (the kids who had joined coaching institutes).In all, the schools had little to offer. There was a time when I only went to school to meet my friends and play football.

This is the story of all schools and not just mine. So if the move to scrap coaching institutes is really implemented, how will the students study to get into prestigious institutes like the IITs because most of  the schools are incompetent to teach what’s required to crack entrances, and the IIT-JEE(or even other entrances like AIEEE) is really very tough to crack without any guidance even for the ‘intelligent’ students. And come-on, we are average students, we are not prodigious child geniuses, even we want to get into the IITs. Who will teach us to get there if not the coaching institutes???



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