As the mother of a teenager who has exams, I currently spend my time bursting into my daughter’s room to see if she has studied, confiscating devices, threatening consequences, and generally being a buzzkill. I do these things because I have to, because I’m told that making your kid do well in school is one of the original covenants of being a “good mom”. I do this even though the school system is stuck in the good old days when access to information was limited, unlike now, when it has been democratised beyond our wildest imagination.

So what exactly are we teaching our children when we insist that they mug up random information for an exam? Aside from perhaps ruining our relationships with them and giving them material for future therapy sessions, we are teaching them some crucial real-life lessons. Discipline. Endurance. That life will almost certainly require them to work hard at things they do not like, or fully believe in, under the supervision of people who are annoying them, in order to get to the next level.

The school system is built like a matrix-style video game. You do not........

© Indian Express