In my opinion, coaching has its own uses and disadvantages.

If we talk about the classes I to VIII, there really is not such a big need for a separate trainer to coach the student. We must understand that a coach or a trainer is required to prepare the student for some major examination. So when we talk about our school system, the major examinations begin only from class IX. Coaching institutes definitely do a great job at making the student run. They try to make sure the result shows up. Thats their only job.

The school studies are quite sufficient in terms of their content and number of periods allotted for preparation for the examination at hand. Most of the teachers in schools also have sufficient knowledge to train the student for the exams. So it is not really the lack in value addition from the school system that is to be blamed for growth in the number of coaching setups these days.
It is something else.

The student has been trained to go to school as part of a regular routine. He has to go to school whether he makes use of that time or not. And, as far as preparation for examination is concerned, there is coaching or tuition in the evening. So the student makes this a routine… to go to school unprepared, come back empty headed as if nothing really happened there with some homework to be done, and then tries to get real value from the coaching. Even the student is not to be blamed here.

In fact, there is no place where ‘what is the right way to prepare for your life and examinations?’ is taught. The school and coaching are only aids to prepare the child for the exam, and both do their duties quite satisfactorily, but thats not all. The student in the early years has to be taught HOW to study, WHEN to study, HOW MUCH to study, how to MANAGE TIME and WHY to study at all. What he should expect from the school and what from coaching. This training, everyone thinks is not useful and time wasting. But I surely feel that if I was given this training in my childhood, I would have saved a lot of my own time and would have been more happy and stress free.

As I said, school does bring in its own value. So the student must focus hard on whatever is being taught in school (for school studies), and then put all focus in the evening in coaching (for competitive examinations). Arts, science, commerce, it does not matter. There are competition exams in every stream now-a-days.

For choosing the right institute, one should only look at how near the coaching is to ones house and how much time is he going to spend there (because self study is the most important thing). Cost should never be the criteria. Time is everything, once lost, never comes back. Money lost, comes back.

While going to school, the student must prepare well for the class thats going to be held in school in advance. So much so, that the student must do a thorough reading of the chapter thats going to be taught in school and take his doubts (whatever was not clear) to the school to ask the teacher. If this is done by the student regularly, performance of the student will improve drastically.

For Students of class X going to XI or class XI going to XII
The students going from class X to XI have a lot of fire in them (carry over from class X board exam time), and so do their parents. Board exams have been rated so high (as a performance measure) in the minds of the students, that they put in everything they have in terms of scoring well during these exams. They are told throughout their class X that this is THE year, their ULTIMATE test of intelligence and aptitude.
The sad part is that it in reality is just a simple test of knowledge. It does not, in any way, measure the student in terms of (a). Grasping power (b). Conceptual understanding (c). Thoroughness in all the areas of a ’subject’ and definitely not (d). Intelligence.
I have got so tired of telling parents about this again and again that I really felt the need of just writing this down in a blog and post it on my website for everyone to see.
1. “My daughter has scored 93% in her board examination, then she is definitely a very intelligent girl and therefore has the aptitude for engineering and a chance to make it to IIT”
My take on such statements or thoughts is that your daughter is definitely ‘hard-working’ and ’sincere’, but is she intelligent…? I am not sure. So how can we be sure about her intelligence. Well, class XI might be the best initial measure for it. Class XI brings a whole variety of concepts, new theories, and entirely different set of fundamentals. If she is able to grasp class XI fully and with ease, then I can surely say she has the potential (just like I said, inital measure of intelligence). I know lots of students who secured 90% and above in class X and thought that . They thought the root sign simply cuts the square powers. I hope you get my message here, that concepts are a completely different ball game.
2. “My son had scored 90% in class X and is scoring above 80% in class XI. Therefore he is capable of clearing IIT also”

Once again, class X only shows hardwork and sincerity and class XI only shows potential. Now i shall point out the difference between class XI level of school and the class XI level of what comes in IITJEE.

The following are some of the questions from class XI school level

and the following is a question that came in IITJEE 2006 (based on class XI).

This one single question in IITJEE requires a mixed understanding of the all the three questions (school level) that I listed. So if the student has the capability to solve the 3 school questions, he might not necessarily have the approach or strategy in his head to mix the three things to solve this single problem. I have seen this ability in very few students. But, I am not saying that these few students were born with this ability. Definitely not. If that was the case, it would have been sheer discrimination and an incorrect way to select students (like the movie ‘gattica’, only the perfect people survive).

This skill of approach and strategy, can be BUILT in the students mind. There are strategies for that which will be listed in my other blogs.

The bottomline is… IITJEE is not a mystery.

(b). The spiritual help: This is the mother of all solutions to problems in life. Here I just tell students to ‘Stop thinking’ altogether. The very fact that the mind is the one which gives pain in your life, that makes you restless, gives anxiety in your life, makes you very happy at one time and extremely sad at some other time.

We are taught a lot of things in our school, college, work place and home. But we have never been told about the mind. What it is and how we can use it to our advantage, and when it becomes a evil. I will try to explain as clearly as I can. (Many have tried to explain this same thing and died painful deaths trying to help compulsive thinkers)

The brain has connections to the rest of the body through the spinal chord. Every part of your body is connected to your brain. So you cannot afford to mess around with your brain, can you?? If the wrong signals are sent, you do not know where those signals will eventually land up, and what they might convey to that part of your body. But what does the brain produce?? Nothing but ‘Thoughts’. Just like the bone marrows produces Red Blood Cells. Its just keeps producing thoughts. Thats its job. But now just wait a moment and analyze the difference between the bone marrow and your brain. Both were given to you as part of a self-driven programmed mechanism called ’save this guy… help him live’. The machinery of both was programmed in the DNA of every cell in your body. So thats what they keep doing.

But haven’t you ever noticed that you definitely have some ‘CONTROL’ over your thoughts. But you do not seem to have any control whatsoever on your bone marrow. That control is the ‘YOU’. You are not your hands, legs, brain, body. The ‘YOU’ is that control ’sometimes’ exercised. This control sometimes even appears in the form of ‘ATTENTION’ while reading a book, watching television, listening to someone speak. It can even be the ‘CONCENTRATION’ thats needed often while studying. You are simply this attention, this control, this knowing, this observer. Once you have got this, then only you will understand the next para.

Now that you have got your ‘ATTENTION’, whenever you have a thought like ‘I do not feel like’, or “I feel sleepy’, or ‘I am a loser’, or ‘I cannot…’, then just start to observe your thoughts. Simply observe without any prejudice or judgment. JUST WATCH your thoughts… if you do this the right way, your thoughts will not survive your attention. They will die/vanish.

Whenever I am faced with this expression from a student, I get into a state of confusion myself as to which way I should help him out…

(a). The psychological help: The thing that separates the two ‘helps’ is that this one has at least some acceptance. Almost no one likes to hear ’spiritual lectures’.

You have to know the following sequence -
Thoughts -> Words -> Actions -> Behavior -> Habit -> Personality -> ‘Who you are’

So in a way, we are saying that what you have thought of, will eventually become ‘who you are’. There are just some steps involved in the process that I have written down above. Hence, when you say ‘I do not feel like doing something’, then you are already in stage 2 of the process of becoming ‘who I really am’. Which means you have already thought that ‘I do not feel like it’. Meaning that ‘I have actually made up my mind. And you just listen to what I have committed to myself in my mind, which is, that I do not feel like it’. Well, in this case I really cant do much to help you, can I. Nor can you yourself do anything about it. I hope you got what I am trying to say here.

I am not trying to play with words here. Just trying to help you out a little, to make you realize that your just saying something starts to put shape to what you want to become. The moment you say ‘I feel tired’, you begin to become tired (I mean how can you become tired when you have not moved too much of your body the whole day, and have just been thinking and solving problems). I know so many students who say they get tired by studying. How can you?? How can your muscles get tired or be out of oxygen, when all you were using was your brain?? So in reality, when you said ‘I feel tired’, you wanted to quit doing whatever you were doing, because now you have got ‘bored’ of doing that thing.

But not that you have said that ‘I feel tired’, you will begin to get yawns, your muscles will begin to ache a little and you might want to lie down, or even sleep. “Your body will do what you want it to do”.

Has your brain or your body ever “disobeyed” you?? They just cannot. They are not programmed that way. Then how are they? Well, they will always help you and follow your instructions. ALWAYS. So you will ask, ‘But even when there is exam tomorrow, I feel sleepy, so my brain is not helping me!!’. I will then tell you that you yourself have told your brain to feel sleepy. It is you who thinks!! Its not your brain that thinks. Your brain is what you use to think. Let me explain… does your hand move on its own? Or do you make it move? In the same, how can your brain do anything on its own. It looks like its functioning on its own, but in reality it is you who is asking it to do this, or that.

‘So what do we do if we cannot really control our brain like we can control our hands and legs? What if we just keep thinking compulsively. Thoughts just come in and we do not have a way to close the door?’ … Try N.L.P. (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). Read about it in the book ‘Unlimited Power’ by Anthony Robbins.

This is one of the things that I do… I visualize situations in my head. Suppose that I have a big headache. I will create an image in my head of all the bad, red, hot, angry, negative things in my head and collect them all in a box. I then start shrinking the box in size, and imagine complete peace and blackness outside the box as it shrinks. The peace increases in size and the box reduces in size progressively, till it disappears.I keep doing this again and again for 5 minutes. And the headache goes away. This simple technique actually works every time in all situations. So you could be in a situation where you are feeling lazy, and all you have to do is close your eyes and imagine a situation in which you have been selected in IIT. You have secured a rank of 340 and have just gone for counseling in IIT-Delhi. And you have been awarded the stream of your choice, ‘Computer Engineering’. And you are so happy and enthusiastic with joy that you have never been in life … Just imagining this situation is enough.  The next time you feel lazy, imagine a similar situation, but cook up a different future story, otherwise you will start feeling bored of the same old story.

We have different styles of study. Some like to read and remember, some others like to read and understand the phenomenon and still others like to practise by writing and solving.  If we want to do well in IITJEE, we should have skills in all three areas:

• Reading and remembering
• Conceptual understanding
• Practice

Every subject requires all three skills.

Reading and memorizing

Whatever we read gets retained in the head as memory. We can recall from our memory when we are needed to do so. It has been observed that we tend to remember better if we have written something ourselves. We are required to reproduce these things at will while solving problems.

We have to learn the formulae. One can understand their source by going through the derivations, wherever possible. However, eventually, what matters is that we know the formula. We can learn/remember all formulae by reading, writing, and revising them again and again. It helps to have a compendium of all formulae.

For example, if we don’t understand the derivation of formulae in mathematics, we won’t be able to apply formulae effectively. However, while solving problems, one does not have the luxury of time to derive it. So, it must be pulled out of our memory instantaneously.

Conceptual understanding

It is critical to understand the conceptual framework of a subject. It is important to understand the flow of the logic in the argument being put by the narrator. The examples and illustrations used should fit well into our understanding. We observe various phenomena around us in everyday life. Physics and chemistry attempt to explain the reason behind these phenomena through various concepts, laws, deductions etc. We should gain a thorough understanding of the system / concept being explained, before attempting to learn any formulae or solve any problems. This can be done, with the help of examples. Apply the concept to different real life situations and predict the outcome. If the understanding is correct, the outcomes predicted will be right. Conceptual, theoretical questions are a great way to check ones learning of concepts.

Practice

After writing down the formulae required and applying the concepts, we still have to solve the mathematical equations. Solving problems is a skill. If there is no limit to the time available, a lot of students may end up solving all the problems in a test. However, the key is to solve maximum number of problems in a given amount of time, which is the duration of the test. The best performer manages to solve maximum number of problems in the given time. This needs practice. In a competition, we don’t want to lose time in experimenting, deriving etc. If we have practiced enough, we would know the exact manner in which a problem can be solved. This saves time in solving a problem and gives s extra time to solve others. Therefore, to score high in a competition, practice is a must.