Till high school a student is a child under close supervision from all quarters. School timings are long and fixed, attendances compulsory. Strict discipline is enforced. In contrast to school days, one’s entry into college marks a big change in one’s environment. Students are more or less on their own. Attendance in classes as well as in extra-curricular activities is voluntary. The timings are shorter. The students are not held accountable for their absence. Restrictions on behavior are relaxed. The system expects them to grow-up, capable of making independent choices and decisions.
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Joining a college has a romance of its own. The new found freedom is intoxicating4. In college begins the search for individuals to assert themselves. A whole new world of fashions opens up suddenly. The atmosphere in a co-educational institution is all the more colorful. You enter the stage of youth. You start understanding political games and you join the cultural troupe. You become career conscious also. You set your targets high and start dreaming. You long for recognition, you wish to look smart and catch the eye of your class mates.
But so overwhelmed are the college-goers with their new-found freedom that they often get lost in the maze6. By the time they recover, they are in the final year of graduation, and they have to make quick decisions regarding their future. Sometimes, they go astray and get lost in the world of drugs and fashions. They waste their precious time before the mirror or in the college canteen the hang about girls and loser their target.
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Are college-going students really that mature to choose their course independently ? Are they really ready for the freedom which college offers? This raises serious questions about the educational system. College-goers need direction, though not close supervision of the school-kind. Teachers feel powerless in influencing them. The youth of today is precious time and money. At the most they aim at somehow acquiring a degree. Many of the students are from rich rural background, members of well-know political groups. They join the college to spread their ideology. They spend more time in socialising8 than on studies.
Companionship of the opposite sex, watching movies and visiting restaurants, smoking and misbehaving-this is all that an average college-going students cravees for. Dating is a healthy form of knowing each other, but the Indian concept is different. It is a wonderful pastime, but at the cost of one’s studies and one’s career. The teenagers abuse their freedom student ought to go through this training period with a single-track mind.