Kids carrying parents' ambitions || Acharya Prashant, with BITS Hyderabad (2022)

Acharya Prashant

7min

355reads

Kids carrying parents' ambitions || Acharya Prashant, with BITS Hyderabad (2022)

Questioner (Q): My question is regarding coaching institutes. In recent years, coaching for competitive exams has certainly become more popular, and students are enrolled in it from a very young age, like sixth or seventh grade. This has happened in my family as well. Some of my cousins were forced to get into coaching at a very young age.

So, my question regarding this topic is, is this added pressure on these young kids necessary and justified? We don’t know for a fact that they will take science in the twelfth grade; they might go for arts, they might go for economics. These coaching institutes seem to just hamper their childhood with all their strict workouts and such things.

Acharya Prashant (AP): See, what do I say? It’s so obviously foolish that to bring out its foolishness is absurd. You can reveal something that’s hidden. Something that’s so obviously apparent—what do I say about it?

Q: Actually, I had a followup question on this as well. How can we convince the parents to not do it?

AP: Depends on whether the parents have any love at all. If the kid is being used just as cannon fodder to target the parents’ ambitions, how will you convince the parents? I do not know whether that is possible. I can just empathize with the kid. Too bad he was born; too bad she was born to such parents.

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