Online help at hand for students

Updated on: Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Parents and students are making full use of social networking sites to fight all that they think is wrong with the education system. Last year, the Bombay high court’s stay on the state’s best-five policy for SSC students did not go down well with most of them. One, Smit Jobanputra, started a group on Facebook called ‘We are against the education system for SSC exam results, it’s unfair!!!’

“I created the group to oppose the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education for firstly promising the best-five policy and also implementing it. But after most of us prepared for our exams on these lines, it announced that it might cancel the policy. That was . It was playing with the lives of lakhs of students,”Smit said.Within days, hundreds of SSC students and their parents joined the group and gave vent to their anger against the system. After a boy of Kolkata’s La Martiniere College committed suicide for allegedly being humiliated by the school authorities, a group of parents started the Facebook group ‘Parents Against Corporal Punishment in Schools’. In weeks, parents all over the world joined it.

Last year, student suicides invoked concern among teens all over the country. Seeing students of their age end their lives under exam stress, many started groups on Orkut and Facebook to create awareness against the phenomenon and also fight the education system. Pradneysh Molak, who started the group ‘Indian Education System Rots N Fight Against Students Suicides’, said, “This is a group where one can post one’s views on the education system and help friends to not give in to its pressures, but fight it.”

Online help at hand for students

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