Academic apartheid leads to depression

MUMBAI: The policy of segregating students based on their academic performance has come in for some sharp criticism of late even as the Counsellors Association of India (CAI) and the PTA United Forum on Wednesday approached the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) to put a stop to the “harmful’’ practice.
Matters really came to a head at a mental health workshop held by the PTA United Forum last year, when parents’ concerns about their “reclusive and depressed children’’ came tumbling out.
Harish Shetty, social psychiatrist and CAI president, reveals that he has been counselling children who suffer from feelings of inferiority and a sentiment of being let down by their schools for years. “Many children even confided that they were jealous and angry of their own peers in the ‘bright students section’,’’ he says.
“Such a practice is violative of child rights and is considered discriminatory according to the International Child Rights Convention.’’ Dr Shetty adds that some of the schools that are known to practise segregation are Bal Mohan Vidya Mandir, Tilak Vidyalaya and King George High School.
According to Arundhati Chavan, president of the PTA forum, who has interacted with several children from such schools, students of ‘C’ division feel inferior to those in ‘A’ division. “Moreover, the intelligent students’ class prides itself on being the bright batch and doesn’t interact with the other kids,’’ she says.
“For that matter, parents don’t mix with parents whose children are in section C or D. Even the teachers’ attitude varies from one student to another.’’ Schools cite their own reasons for implementing this discriminatory policy.
The Indian Education Society’s V.N. Sule Guruji English medium school, which segregates students from standard V onwards into ten divisions, claims that this policy helps teachers.
“If teachers have children with similar abilities, they can decide on a particular teaching method which is not possible if it is a mixed group,’’ reasons school principal S. Bhawalkar. “You need to give extra knowledge to bright students, whereas with average students you need to keep revising the syllabus.’’
The most important reason, however, says Bhawalkar, is “to show good results at the SSC board exam for which students’ training starts early in life’’.
School counsellor Anureet Sethi doesn’t agree. “Some schools claim that segregating students helps average performers get more attention in class,’’ she says.
“But the popularity of this policy among schools just proves that they have no counsellors. If children need help, they should ideally be sent to counsellors or remedial teachers,whom very few schools appoint. Putting all average students in one classroom is not a good option at all.’’