Comment by shubhamjain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shubhamjain | Hacker News Reader

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I am from Kota too and your argument is just nit-picking. Of course, when you're blaming high-pressure exams, you're also blaming every factor related to it. Your analysis of suicide rates fails to consider that these are very young students barely in the age group of 15-19 and the cause is singular (high-pressure parenting).

But suicide rate is just one symptom that this industry engenders. The immense pressure these kids are subject to is depressing as fuck. They (and their parents) all have been fed the dream that working 15 hours/day is a sure-shot way to make it in. And once you make in IIT, you don't have to fret about anything else.

Some kids have been working towards this dream, right from 6-7th grade. Yes! six years before they are to take the actual exam.

I was very lucky to escape this trap. I considered myself to be very dumb and knew that there's absolutely no chance I was going to make it.

Looking back, it just escapes me how so many people can come to believe that a single exam is going to narrate your whole fate in life.

> I was very lucky to escape this trap. I considered myself to be very dumb and knew that there's absolutely no chance I was going to make it.

so what did you do instead? and can that be replicated by 100,000 other young people?

> so what did you do instead? and can that be replicated by 100,000 other young people?

Theoretically, it can be replicated. The tools that I have used to learn everything are accessible to most of the people I have met. But, whatever may be the reasons, it just doesn't happen.

I am very curious what are these tools you talk about? I am often asked by students at my old high school about what they can do if they dont want to study for JEE and I havent really been able to come up with a satisfactory answer.

"Can be replicated as in "anyone can do it" or as in "everyone can do it"?

I love that the English language has two words ("anyone" and "everyone") that seem to be similar, but which in fact lead to vastly different scenarios.

Too many "solutions" people give for societal problems are of the "anyone" kind.

> that these are very young students barely in the age group of 15-19 and the cause is singular (high-pressure parenting)

I'm skeptical that an individual suicide is single-factor and deeply skeptical that a population-wide rate of this magnitude is driven by a single factor.

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