Friday, September 26, 2008

Answer sheet psychology

Surprised!? Let me give you a background for the title.
My Mom is a private school teacher. She had got a few answer sheets home to correct after the mid-term exams and I get to find total for all the answer sheets, cross check and verify the marks. etc., I am happy to help her because I do get relief of some kind in doing such petty things. I usually enjoy the funny writings of the young kids rather than verifying them.

But sometimes you have to go beyond the words in answers to get to know them better. You can actually read that kid's mind in its creative work on answer script like story telling, passage writing on a picture, own sentences.

Yesterday, I was going through one peculiar answer sheet. The kid had scored a low score of 16 on 100! I wondered what makes one score so less and the answer to my wondering lied in the sheet itself. There was a question which said - "Write about your mother in about 5-6 sentences of your own." I was shocked to see that the kid had begun the paragraph by saying that "My mother is very poor. She is always working. She takes care of whole family. I want to see her always happy. I love her very much." After going through this, It hurt me to even swallow my saliva down the throat. It was like a depression note left by someone before committing suicide! I did not find any such writings in any of the other kids paper. They all had said that their mom knew how to prepare lots of dishes. She is beautiful. She always drops me at school and picks up in the evening...and so on.

You could imagine the poverty that the kid is suffering at that very young age by it's very first reaction to thought of the family. The kid is really highly sensitive. All that he wants to be is secure, a promise of better life every new day.