In India, playtime ends early for preschool hopefuls

Like most doting parents, Rocky Gupta wanted the best for his daughter: a future career as a doctor, lawyer, or Internet start-up chief.

But in 21st century India, where spaces at even ordinary preschools are far fewer than the demand, Mr. Gupta was shocked to learn that his daughter - then a 3 year old - would have to take an exam to get into a neighborhood preschool. He was even more shocked to find that many parents were sending their children to rigorous cram schools. The tots were memorizing poetry and learning the proper way to walk, all to prepare for the preschool tests.

When the school in question, Montfort, wouldn't even give Gupta an application, he filed suit. Last week, the Delhi High Court overturned a magistrate's ruling in favor of the school and demanded an appeal by March 15.

"She was going to a play school," says Gupta, three years after the event, and still midway through the trial process. "I feel a child of this age should not be bothered with all this. It's useless information they expect them to learn, and it's harmful for the child to undergo this stress. And if a child is supposed to know everything, then why are we sending her to school?"

India is not the first nation to experience such pressures on the road to prosperity. High-schoolers in Japan, for example, have been known to commit suicide after poor results on year-end exams.

But in this country of educational extremes - home to 52 percent illiteracy as well as elite universities - the growing pressure to make it to the educational mountaintop and obtain high-paying tech jobs overseas has created fierce competition all the way down to a child's first step into school. Elite private schools offer the promise of a leg up. While few can blame private schools for their need to winnow the thousands of applicants for the few hundred available school desks at an ordinary preschool, a growing number of Indians are complaining that the method of choosing children is arbitrary, costly, and cruel.

"Forget the parents, what about the poor children?" asks Dipankar Gupta, an anthropologist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and no relation to Rocky Gupta. "These kids become so stressed out. It's extremely cruel; it's the most heartless system ever."

"You can't imagine the sort of effect this has on Indian families," Mr. Gupta adds. "I've seen fathers shouting at their children after an exam, saying, 'How could you be so stupid to forget that answer?' And these kids are only 3 years old."

Suneeta, a mother who works in the office of an elite kindergarten, recently has begun to face that stress. Every afternoon, she reads to her daughter and teaches her poetry and songs. Then she takes her child out to a park and teaches her the names of common birds and other animals. She has even begun to simulate the shock of a one-on-one school examination, separated from the parents, by asking friends to take her daughter for long walks.

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