As I write this, children across India are sitting their final exams.
Timetables pinned to walls. Revision schedules colour-coded. Parents adjusting work calls around last-minute doubt-clearing sessions.
What is less visible — but just as real — is what the child is carrying inside all of this.
A child in school today faces performance evaluation every single week. Something is always being tested, graded, ranked. I have not seen a corporate environment that demanding. Even in companies, reviews are quarterly.
For a child, it is relentless. And they don't have the vocabulary to tell you it's too much.
They just carry it.
I wrote about a child I met years ago who put this more clearly than I ever could. If you haven't read it, it's worth two minutes.
The school system was not designed by people who didn't care about children.
It was designed by people who cared enormously — about preparing children for a specific kind of world.
The problem is that the world they were preparing children for no longer exists.
In 2016, I visited progressive charter schools in the United States.
I walked into one and noticed something immediately.
No computer lab.
I asked the person showing us around. He looked at me with quiet amusement.
"Computers have to be ubiquitous. We've placed desktops and printers across the entire campus. Any child can use them freely. We can't imagine having a dedicated period to teach computers. Computers are part of every subject we teach."
I stood there thinking about every school I had helped build across India. Every single one had a computer lab. One room. Scheduled access. A subject on the timetable.
These schools had moved so far past that idea, the question didn't even make sense to them.
I came back asking something I had never properly asked before.
Where did this model come from? And why does nobody question it?
The answer goes back further than most people realise.
It Started With The Factory
The school system we use today was designed in the 19th century. Societies were moving from farms to factories. They needed people who could follow instructions, work fixed hours, and fit into hierarchies.
The school was built to produce exactly that. And three design assumptions from that era are still sitting, largely unchanged, in the school your child attends today.
Seated In Rows.
Children seated facing forward, not speaking unless called upon. The factory floor required people who followed direction without deviation. The classroom practised exactly that. I once asked a school principal in the US how they maintained discipline given that students could move freely and challenge teachers openly. She said: "A disciplined child learns to follow rules. If you teach them only to obey, you can't then expect them to go out and build something new."
I wrote about this last week through a story involving my son and a sandwich. It says something I've been trying to articulate for years.
Slotted Into Timetables.
Fixed periods, fixed pace. The bell rings and everyone moves on — whether they understood something or not. A child who hasn't understood something moves on anyway, because the timetable says it is time. That gap doesn't disappear. It travels with them into the next grade, and the one after that.
Measured By Marks.
A number that ranks one child against another. I was ranked 36th in a class of 42. That number had nothing to say about what I was capable of. It took one summer — and one person who saw me differently — to show me that. Most children never get that summer. Or that person.
—
This is what exam season looks like through that lens.
Not a measure of your child. A measure of how well they have adapted to a system designed for a world that ended before they were born.
I shared something on LinkedIn this week about the question every parent is really asking — and why no report card has ever answered it. It connects directly to what comes next.
Summer vacation starts soon.
Here are three tiny ideas.
1. Have one conversation about who, not what.
If your child is in Grades 9 to 12, most conversations this time of year are about stream selection, coaching classes, and college options. This summer, have one that has nothing to do with any of that. Ask: what kind of person do you want to be at 25? Let them answer. Don't redirect to a career. You may hear something that surprises you.
2. Protect at least two weeks with nothing scheduled.
If the next year is a high-stakes one — Grade 10, Grade 12, entrance exam year — the instinct is to fill every week with preparation. Resist it, at least partly. A child who enters a hard year already exhausted runs on deficit. Two weeks of genuine rest is not time lost. It is fuel stored.
3. Let them choose one thing that has nothing to do with their exam.
One book not on the syllabus. One skill that won't appear on any application. Something entirely theirs. A child who has something of their own — outside the system — carries themselves differently when the pressure peaks.
The exam results will come. Some will feel like relief. Some will sting.
Either way, they are not the full story of your child. They never were.
With love and joy,
Yeshwaanth
Founder and CEO, 21K School
Connect with me: linkedin.com/in/yeshwanth
P.S. Reply to this email. Tell me what your child does on the first free day of summer. I read every one of them.
The problem was never your child. It was always the design.
