Runaways & Suicides: Our Schools Are Not Equipped to Help Students

Our schools are unhealthily competitive and there is no mechanism to address the consequences.

We all need help dealing with pressure and our alienation from the system. (Photo: The Quint)

In the eleventh grade, I failed two math tests in a row. My report card for the unit tests that semester was incriminating evidence: I was given an indelible, red E. You must understand what a big deal it was for me. I went to a school where I was only ever as good as the grades on my science and math papers.

Until the tenth grade, I was valuable to the school. My grades were good, and I was useful for the occasional ‘speeches’ that had to be made at school assemblies. In the eleventh grade, classes were harder. I sat amidst all my ‘coaching-class’ friends, baffled by math, but too proud to ask for help. The day I got my score on those tests, I cried in the bathroom all day.

Learning to Cope With Failure

My ‘failure’ was too much for me. I used a whitener, and changed the grade. I made it a slightly more respectable D. My sin, however, was flagrantly obvious. My mother saved my skin; she wrote a letter asking the school to issue a fresh report card because the earlier one was ‘misplaced.’ To this day the ‘misplaced’ card exists, and I know where it is.

Some days ago, a 13-year-old from the same school ran away from home, taking Rs 600 with her and some clothes. Mainstream media is of the opinion that she messed up a math test. The school is fairly certain her marks had nothing to do with it; she was a ‘good’ student.

When I heard about the runaway, I wondered if an adult confidante could have talked her out of it, whatever the reason. In more extreme cases, perhaps the guidance of a kind, sympathetic adult could have prevented a number of distraught, desperate students from taking their lives.

In my last two years at school, what I sorely missed was having an adult to confide in; to tell me that despite my failed math tests, I would still turn out okay.

Adolescence is Complicated: Teenagers Need to Talk

My school dealt with life’s realities by pretending they didn’t exist. Love and death were taboo; sex was banished to the domain of our Biology textbooks. Curious, hormonal teenagers had no one to turn to. Nobody to assure them that grief was natural, or equally, that desire wasn’t despicable. Even today, the school has no counsellor.

I spoke to Nisha Menzies, who is pursuing her PhD in psychology, and has previously worked as a counsellor at a school in Bangalore.

It is absolutely mandatory that every school have a counsellor, or an adult whom teenagers can approach to discuss their problems. Adolescence is complicated; emotional, physical and mental changes take place during puberty, but not simultaneously. As a result, kids may feel things they are unable to process as they grapple with changes in their bodies. To see them through this, to discuss their anxieties and thoughts, they need a sympathetic adult.

Grappling with loneliness is hard enough when we’re adults. (Photo Courtesy: Giphy)

Parents, However Well-Meaning, Cannot Replace Counsellors

A parent, she said, cannot be that adult, because kids firmly believe that there are certain things they cannot talk about with their parents. They may be wrong, but they are not willing to risk broaching certain subjects. More often than not, however, they aren’t wrong to believe that parents are unhelpful.

Parents are often guilty of telling their kids things like they should be studying, not having crushes. But desire is something kids are dealing with – and often not very well. Parents are often simply unwilling to have a discussion about sex because they feel they’re giving their kids the go-ahead.  

Some suicides or runaways are preventable, Nisha said. Teenagers today receive much more information than they are capable of processing, and often are simply not in a position to weigh the risks or consequences.

If you’ve ever watched a movie about running away, more often than not, it involves adventures and road trips. Very few films actually deal with the dangers of running away. Everyone returns home happy. Parents are happy that their kids are home safe. It doesn’t always turn out that way, and movies don’t necessarily convey that.

If teenagers are dealing with things badly, it’s because they have more to deal with as well. The pressure to perform is immense – college cut-offs are proof of that. Schooling has become unhealthily competitive and there is no mechanism to address the fall-out from the system. As with everything else, there is no easy solution. “The system has to change,” Nisha said, simply.