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Coaching Institutions: A Facade

Havi Singh

Fear. It is indeed a very powerful emotion, which is sadly often avoided than faced. We

frequently come across people especially in a country as diverse as India, who not only perform

certain rituals blindly but also pray, not out of love or gratitude, but fear. Our minds have been

shaped to expect and prepare for the worst, rather than to stay calm and have faith in ourselves.

This is precisely the kind of mindset that is contributing to the growth of coaching classes/institutes in every nook and corner. These institutes are fueled by student fear.


Students and their families have been investing truckloads of money on coaching classes, while

also paying for their ongoing formal education. This world is now considered to be a vast sandy

battle ground, the top colleges being the castles to triumph over and the students are the knights,

fighting with all the blood and sweat for themselves and their families. However, the coaching

classes are no more than a mirage in this desert. Parents always desire for their child to do and

be the very best in this world. But, when this desire turns into obsessive indulgence or concern,

it can in turn be unfavorable. This is because, it would further push the students to enroll in

coaching classes which would not only consume a lot of their hours but at the same time yield

minimal results.


It is not about learning certain tricks to solve a set of questions faster; a student’s mind works

the way it does and no one except that student can upskill it to be more efficient. Often, by

attending such classes, the students and their families are captivated by a false sense of

achievement and security. They substitute the task of actually putting in the required hours of

effort themselves with the contentment of attending the class instead. Till the students are not

motivated enough to achieve what they want for themselves, no coaching class will ever be

able to benefit them. Interestingly, if they in fact have that drive to achieve, they don’t need

the coaching classes anyway.


It is essential to observe that, the need to enroll in coaching classes for entrances in top league

colleges is more prevalent in India, than in any other developed nation such as the United States

of America or the United Kingdom. This comparison would not be complete without also

pointing out these nations have groomed and brought out some of the most amazing minds in

this world. The amount of competition an Indian student faces is massive, and it may lead them

to believe that they can’t face it by themselves. Also, the coaching classes induce the students

with a notion that the examination they’d face would be treacherous and extremely difficult to

tackle. While this may be true till an extent, it isn’t completely.


If we observe, we’d find that most of the coaching institutions initially instill a fear of

examination amongst the students to encourage enrollment. Further, once enrolled they

constantly motivate all students and provide them with study materials along with months and

years of regular classroom teaching. Of all the services they provide that attract students into

their money minting scheme, none are which that can’t be done by the student alone. In this

world of technology, books and internet, a huge amount of data is available at the fingertips of

each individual to read and practice on their own. These examinations may be tough and

difficult to crack, but a coaching class will never be able to solve this problem. Unless, the

students don’t take up the task in their own hands and have faith in their abilities, they will

keep spending relentlessly on coaching classes for the motivation which in reality can only be

found within themselves.


We often see advertisements or videos of students belonging to various coaching institutes,

who have successfully cracked the exam. They often thank the institute to have helped them

achieve what they did. They do so more out of respect and the basic human desire of tagging

the cause of specific events to certain external factors. In reality, those students took adequate

efforts, put in the hours, understood the importance of self-studying and thereby aced the exam.

They took advantage of the course material given to them and weren’t complacent after joining

the institution. Henceforth, they are grateful to the institution for its guidance; but in truth they

were just a bunch of smart-working individuals who would have aced with or without the

coaching class.


We could consider for instance, the case of any topper a coaching class has claimed to produce

throughout the years. It can be easily observed that any of those toppers would have had a

history of excelling even in their school or college subjects, let alone the entrances they were

preparing for. This in turn shows us a pattern of how the students who excel in the coaching

classes, are in reality a set of simply determined students. They excel through their own grit

and perseverance, which can be easily witnessed through their performances outside the

purview of their coaching class.


It is thus time, to awaken and acknowledge the fact that it’s our own actions that lead to the

consequences that we face. The coaching classes won’t share our burden, they won’t ease our

task; all they can really do is provide us with questions that are easily available otherwise and

hope. Hope, that we as students perform well in order to improve the institution’s reputation,

for them to attract more such fear-driven underconfident students in the years to come.

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