Dr. Zavise Rume
Counselling Psychologist
Modern school education system is almost treated equivalent to examination and certification. Students are made to think that they are almost going to die if they fail in the examination or they would not have any option in life if they fail. Due to all these wrong notions created in the society, every student experiences certain level of stress and anxiety at the time of examination. Many lives of brilliant students were taken away by such a wrong notions of education.
Examination is the best moment for the students to critically think, reason something independently. Students need courage and emotional strength to bear the stresses and anxieties that they are undergoing. In this context, cis universally recognised as a professional strategy to cater to the needs of emotional and mental wellbeing of the students.
Students of the modern school education experience all kinds of mental and emotional stresses due to constant academic performance, competition, fear of failure. In this context, there is a need to focus on physiological, psychological, emotional and mental wellbeing of the individual rather than a normal routine exercise.
The Rastriya Midhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) which is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme implemented in the country for universal secondary education in its implementation framework has emphasized the need for all the school boards of examination to set up a counselling centre in the examination board so as to ensure that the examination stresses and related matters are taken care of. Almost every education policy talks about the need for Reformation of the present examination system. The academic wellbeing of the students needs to be taken care of through counselling service. We always expect our students to learn their lessons fully well. But the students fail to do so. It may be due to the mental and emotional problems which do not have any direct pathological evidence to be seen.
Every human being with a normal intelligence would experience one or the other difficulty consciously or unconsciously. Therefore, the need for counselling is universal, needed by every normal individual. The need for counselling does not necessarily confine to only problematic people. Counselling is not necessarily a problematic oriented service alone. It is needed by every individual to empower onself for full self realisation so as to enable to use his or her resources and potentialities for holistic personality development.
Counselling is universally recognised as an integral part of the School Education to cater to the needs of mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. It cannot be separated from the regular school education process. In this context, every student must essentially be required to receive or undergo counselling process just like a student needs to get through any curricular subject of study like Mathematics, Science, Language, Social Science and Life Skills Education. Counselling as a therapy will be most effective when it is most needed by the client. In view of this, it may be best working for students when they encounter problems or willing to achieve something.
Man is resourceful and powerful born with 100 billion brain cells capable of receiving and transmitting information. Brain information can travel at the rate of 268 miles per hour. It is believed that we are created with the capacity to generate upto 50,000 thoughts per day. However, we lost our memory power. Today, children suffer from lack of concentration and memory due to restlessness and stresses. Therefore, we must encourage our parents, our teachers and our school principals to encourage their children and students to receive counselling regularly especially during the examination period when the students are highly tensed and stressed with the examination, so as to enable our students to ealise their resources. Counselling is used as a strategy to empower the individual to enable him to realise the innate potentialities.
Apart from the counselling selling services and classroom teaching, teachers and parents must develop regular interactions with their children and students. Many students in Nagaland do not know the names of their own teachers. Many parents do not know in which class their children are studying. All these are clear indications of non-interpersonal relation with children and students.
There are so much that our children and students can do but they need human touch through interpersonal interaction. Students must be encouraged to remain quite, spend more leisure time to relax, meditate and critically think over the lessons that they are going through rather than studying day and night without proper way rest. Our children are losing the power of memory and concentration due to their engagement with mobile, computer and internet. If this trend continues, the generation of thinkers, innovators and discoverers will be killed. Therefore, the modern education system should come to liberate the potentials of every child.
