Educational institutions have a responsibility to dissuade students from pursuing fields of study in which they are unlikely to succeed.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and suppo

Educational institutions may choose to discourage students from pursuing certain fields of study that they do not have an aptitude for. However there are several factors which must be considered before they are allowed to do so. While there are many issues which may skew the judgement of an institution, we limit ourselves to three prominent ones here - the capability of the institution to judge the student, the social and cultural prejudices against certain fields of study and the effectiveness of the methods of estimation employed.

Firstly, an educational institutions ability to judge it’s students academic aptitude largely rests on it’s teaching staff. The teachers interact first hand with the students throughout an academic year. In order to effectively judge a student a teacher must know the student at a personal level and also understand various different fields of study. But the situation today is rather the opposite. The student to teacher ratio is extremely high in most schools and colleges. Consequently, teachers cannot get to know their students too well. Moreover, it is common for teachers to specialise in a subject and teach only those subject , hence their knowledge of fields of study outside their own might be limited. This does not paint an ideal picture for our topic.

Secondly, the social and cultural background of the teachers determines their personal prejudices, if any, towards a particular field of study. For example in India, engineering and medical studies are the most prevalent. Commerce and Arts are slowly gaining prominence. Whereas creative professions like fashion designing and acting or singing are mostly looked down upon. As a result most institutions in India are more likely to recommend one of the popular fields of study regardless of a student’s aptitude for it. Such skewed recommendations can prove detrimental for students who are of a creative inclination and do not prefer pure sciences as much as humanities or arts subjects.

Lastly, the current paradigm - exams determine a student’s academic performance in various subjects - does not necessarily indicate of his aptitude for a subject. There are many reasons as to why a student who has a keen understanding for a subject may perform poorly in an exam. Students may suffer from anxiety issues. Anxiety and stress are the leading causes of poor exam performance amongst students. Autism or other learning disabilities may also severely affect exam scores. Alternatively, exams only provide a superficial understanding of the student’s academic abilities since exams can easily be hacked by rote learning the subject material. In such cases students who posses little or no interest in a subject may also score well. Hence there is a high chance of exams producing misleading results for the purposes of this topic.

It is easy to see that educational institutions face many challenges that hinder their ability to effectually and accurately judge their students. These shortcoming may be met over time. However institutions must always remember that a student’s academic interests are not set in stone. They are subject to change just as everything else in life. Dissuading a student from following his interests does not account for this unpredictability. In light of all this, I recommend that institutions not be allowed to dissuade students from pursuing any field of study.