STUDENT SUICIDES
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| Sahana Pal | ||
Two year after SERVE began, the papers reported the suicide of this 11-year-old child whose suicide note to her dad concluded, “PS Sorry for my bad spelling.” SERVE then-President Ms Sumitra Ray and ceo Brendan met the dad, who was utterly devastated. It broke our hearts too. But reality is that more than one such student suicide per school day is Kolkata’s claim to infamy. We stepped up our efforts even more, and gave courses on stress management to all levels of school personnel – which means Principals, teachers, students, parents. (We still do.) We were even asked by the West Bengal Government to lend a hand, which we did. |
I now understand that when your life looks very painful or very meaningless or very embarrassing, it is difficult to find reasons for getting up next morning. In my time I have encountered people in appalling 24x7 bodily pain for which the doctors said there was no known cure. I have encountered people imprisoned for no known reason, and not a chance of liberation in sight. I have encountered people who have lost their entire family and their job, and feel too old or too tired to return to the daily struggle. I have encountered people accused of sick crimes who, not in jail, are cut off from their own neighbours. And so on. Cowardice is not the explanation. One needs to have a reason for living, as logotherapy constantly emphasizes. Once you find a why, you can put up with any how.
For the vast majority of us, that ‘why’ centres on relationships. School-kids who go for suicide after exam failure do so, not because they didn’t know their arithmetic or spelling or physics or economics. Not because they didn’t get big percentages. They do so because their relationships will come under heavy fire – mum’s tears, dad’s anger, siblings’ disgust, peers’ contempt, school authorities’ blame, and personal self-rejection. In that situation there is simply no palpable reason for going on.
Add to that for us in India the izzat factor, which in practice forbids me to lose my status, my dignity, in front of others. When however that is in fact lost and the whole world knows it, then along with the relationship reasons looked at above there is this compelling escape route. Kids all over the world flunk things. Their suicide rates are nothing to ours, for this very reason – we’re us, they’re them. We celebrate qualifying among the brains of the world’s intelligentsia – good – but collapse at local inadequacy.
Recognising this reality, SERVE has designed the izzat-saving pedagogical system called Where the child is without fear. Where adopted, it has proved hugely popular and academically successful. If you who are reading this are involved in education, write to us about it.
God bless.
Brendan MacCarthaigh
SERVE