Getting into school

A friend of mine works at a school and a couple of days back I had an interesting and somewhat disturbing conversation with her regarding one of her students. She told me that the father, of a three-year old student, beat his kid up, not because he was getting bad grades (I don’t remember but I don’t think they have grades when you are three years old) or for misbehaving with him, but rather — and I am not joking — for not getting into a school. Did I mention the child is three years old? Which means that he is not even trying out for the first grade, but more like nursery.

Now I am not a parent so clearly I do not understand the pressures of parenting (as I did not understand the so-called real world when I was in college), so I would really like to know the reasoning behind such treatment of kids and that too, on the account of not getting into a school. I am not saying that you should not be hard on your kids. Go ahead, if you think it would teach them discipline. It’s not like we have child protection services in this country to limit your child beating freedom anyway. I consider myself disciplined enough and my father never laid a hand on me, but that’s beside the point. Coming back to what could drive such actions. Is it because parents see themselves in their children, and therefore the kids’ failure means that they too have not been up to the standard? Or, is it because we care so much about which school our children go to, because that apparently determines our standing in society? I don’t know how to dissect this issue or who to blame, the parents, the schools, societal pressures, but I do know who should not bear the consequences of something like this; the children.