In India, parents play an outsized role in shaping their children’s early education. They are the most visible, vocal, and invested stakeholders in school life. This raises the central question: Are parents really the best guides for education, or do they sometimes hinder more than help?
Parents care deeply about their children and want them to succeed. Many sacrifice personal comforts to secure admission to a “good” school, attend meetings, monitor homework, and even provide extra tutoring. Up to Class 10 or 12, their attention can be obsessive. Conversations at home revolve around marks, ranks, and comparisons. At times, parents even try to live out their own unfulfilled dreams through their children — pushing them into medicine, engineering, or government service, regardless of the child’s own interests.
But the picture changes after school. The same parents who tracked every single mark often stop paying attention once the child enters college. This is puzzling, because college is when real education begins — when students specialise, think critically, and prepare for their future.
Even more troubling is the treatment of non-STEM subjects. Parents frequently dismiss the humanities and arts with the question, “What job will you get?” In doing so, they discourage curiosity and exploration. With all the obsession about scoring well in school or clearing competitive exams, parents rarely encourage genuine interest in a subject. This leaves students well-trained to crack tests but poorly prepared to think deeply, creatively, or independently.
Of course, not all parents fit this mould. Many do encourage independent choices, support unconventional careers, and nurture curiosity. And given the intense competition in India, it is understandable that parents push hard to ensure a secure career. But concern must not slip into control.
What we need is a shift: parents must move from being supervisors of marks to partners in learning. This means asking children what they understood, not just what they scored. It means talking about ideas, books, and current events at home, and above all, knowing when to step back and let children make their own choices.
Schools also have a role to play. By celebrating creativity, projects, and problem-solving alongside marks, they can help parents broaden their own definitions of success.
In the end, parents are not always the best guides if their role is limited to pressure and control. But they can be the best guides if they walk alongside their children — supporting, encouraging, and trusting them to find their own way.
And perhaps this is the real question parents must ask themselves: How far might my child have gone if I had not interfered in their choices? Many children, if left free to pursue what truly fascinates them, could discover talents, passions, and careers that parents themselves never imagined.
Parents must remember that they are not the sole guardians of a child’s journey in life. They are companions for a time — but the journey belongs to the child. The greatest gift a parent can give is not direction but freedom, not control but trust.