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Seen on FFB, copied here with permission. Link and attribution at the end.
FOMO is killing our students' future, one shortcut at a time.
But what if the shortcuts they chase are the biggest lie?
Last night, I stumbled upon a reel about how to ace the 10th and 12th exams.
The video explained how students should attempt questions and how to get perfect marks—fair enough.
But then my feed transformed into a rabbit hole of board exams and quick fixes for prep.
I scrolled past mindless short tricks, claims of guaranteed success, and people begging for followers, promising free videos and notes once they hit 50,000 followers.
Some X-Sirs or Y-Mams were selling below-the-basics products masked as revolutionary tips.
The pinnacle of advice came from a renowned person: Solve the SOLVED QUESTIONS of the top 3 books and read NCERT like a Bible.
Solved Questions. Not Unsolved. Really?
Have you ever noticed the likes on such meaningless videos? None less than 100K.
The comment sections were filled with—fear, doubt, and misery.
1/n
(cont'd)
Where was the joy of learning?
How did learning get shrunk down to meaningless pressure for marks?
What do these marks even signify? Learning?
What has this system truly done to us?
The pressure to conform to these quick hacks—these promises of effortless marks—is killing any real hunger for knowledge.
They're chasing virality and volume, not value.
What we're seeing is a system focused on marks, not mastery.
Concepts are lost.
Critical thinking? Forgotten.
Instead of building a foundation that lasts a lifetime, students are obsessed with patching up with shortcuts.
It's like trying to build a house on sand.
2/n
(cont'd)
And let's not forget the parents.
They, too, are sucked into this game, running after crash courses and rapid results, because FOMO isn't just the students' problem—it's a societal one.
This FOMO-fueled learning mindset has steep consequences.
We're raising a generation of students who equate learning with rote memorization and instant gratification.
They are never given the time or space to struggle with a problem or to think deeply.
In a world that demands innovation, creativity, and resilience, we rob them of the tools they need to succeed long-term.
If this trend continues, what kind of adults will they become?
Quick-fix seekers?
Problem avoiders?
And for what?
A school mark sheet?
3/n
(cont'd)
I saw a comment from a student -- "I can't do this without shortcuts. I'm too dumb for this."
My heart sank. There it was.
That moment when a child's belief in themselves gets crushed under the weight of a system that teaches them to believe they aren't enough.
That moment solidified something for me: The problem isn't just the shortcuts—it's the system encouraging them.
Joy, curiosity, and actual learning are tossed aside in the pursuit of instant success.
We need a paradigm shift.
Learning must be about building mindsets, perseverance, and conceptual understanding.
If we don't shift this now, we'll lose the future to mediocrity masked as brilliance.
-- Rakhi Chawla
4/n, n=4
The central point is this:
"We're raising a generation of students who equate learning with rote memorization and instant gratification.
They are never given the time or space to struggle with a problem or to think deeply."
The kids are not the problem. We are the problem. We (collectively, as a society) have created this monstrous system where the only way to survive is to chase a good grade doesn't matter what, at the cost of skipping all the learning and understanding.
What I enjoyed about maths at school was, outside set homework, I could play around with algebra. Most of the time I just proved 1 = 1 but sometimes interesting things popped out.
And doing silly things like calculating the volume of a soup dish or Matheus Rosé bottle.
But that was "play" with "unlimited" time and a lot of seemingly unproductive scribbling.
It's how I work on my family tree now.
But if you'd requested me to do what I did for myself I'd fail.
@j_bertolotti @ColinTheMathmo @mothninja
This is (1) 100% accurate and (2) something I remember complaining about as long as 35 years ago.
It’s not just this generation. The whole way our culture views education is wacked.
@j_bertolotti @ColinTheMathmo the students are definitely most of the problem, most of them just want an effective way of cheating or copying without being discovered or disqualified, either from other students, or by buying essays and handing them in with no viable clue as to what occurred in each lesson
There are some exceptions though, students who want to do it the proper way, students who get an insight at some stage that they themselves are capable of encompassing everything that would be required of them for this course, and students that just won’t cheat no matter how astoundingly misguided they turn out to be when their nonsense is finally handed in
@u0421793
These are a lot of words to just state you have no clue what you are talking about 
@j_bertolotti I could do it in less, or even fewer
@ColinTheMathmo It seems to me that the system is working perfectly. Its aim is not to educate; its aim is to produce workers who are intelligently compliant. That is to say, they use their intelligence to produce profit for their owners, but not to challenge the conditions in which they work. Thus, school practices become more and more arcane and meaningless, and rewards and punishments more and more arbitrary 1/2
@ColinTheMathmo 2/2 so that the children know how to navigate such systems when they grow up, and continue to produce profit, no matter how meaningless it is to them.
I think there are two extremes.
1. No exams or marks. Just a verdict after a long free flowing conversation with a head of subject at the end of the year.
This avoids narrow focus on memorising stuff to pass tests. The downside is it is hugely subjective and suffers from bias.
2. The tests and marks does reduce the subjectivity and bias but encourages idiotic memorisation.
Perhaps the answer is to do both? With the interview being a panel not one person?
1/2
We do this I think with PhDs. Interviews and evidence of understanding, not memorisation (I hope, I'm not a PhD)
But I think the idea should propagate through the wider education system.
2/2
@rzeta0 Seems difficult given the number of students involved, and the fairly obvious necessity of objectivity.
I'm pretty sure most secondary school teachers do want to move away from narrow tests. And to broaden out to more open ended discovery activities.
But I'm told by them that there is no time or funding for that
So this also goes back to investment per student being low.
3/3
@ColinTheMathmo creating the quick fix short termist politicians of tomorrow. Just like the ones of today, and last year. Ensuring nothing is properly mended.
Except it is *all* about the parents. Sure, kids have agency, but their world view at that point is ill formed and the product of their upbringing. Parents to value the 'score' over the 'understanding' damage their children into feeling the same way.
I've always told my kids I don't care what your grade is in a class, I care that you understand the material. Showing me an 'A' does nothing for me, explaining how civil liberties came to be in the US makes me proud.
@ChuckMcManis I agree with much of what you're saying, but I think you are underplaying the outside influences on kids. I work with a lot of kids, and I'm pretty sure that they're getting a lot of pressure from sources other than their parents.
But no matter where the influences come from, it's clear that overall kids are pressured to get good grades, and not pressured to understand.
Therein lies the problem.
PS: I also note that you most likely have a much better relationship with your kids than average.
@ColinTheMathmo I largely agree with this. I do have a better relationship than average which I attribute to being able to spend time with them.
My very narrow experience with the kids in this particular neighborhood was that the 'outside influence' on children appeared to be largely a search for identity and a sense of self. The desire to be 'included' and 'cool' coupled with observation of people who were considered the same drove a set of desires to achieve that.
1/
@ColinTheMathmo One big difference between my kids and their peers going into high school was that they had been home schooled up to that point (because our choice of public schools was poor, not because we didn't approve the curriculum) And that gave them a very different set of inputs during their 'middle school' years than their peers got. Was it significant? I cannot say, it seemed to be consistent with both my kids and the other kids in their cohort who had 'skipped' middle school.
2/
@ColinTheMathmo From a sample set we had ours and some other kids who were part of the same group that skipped middle school in the same high school. All of the kids in that group appear to have learned more and had fewer problems. All of them went on to college. Now from a selection bias there was this huge bias of 'parents that could participate in an alternate school structure' which tended to self select to college educated, gainfully employed.
3/
@ColinTheMathmo But you could section kids in my cohort to 'public school', 'home schooled/public high school', 'private school/public high school', and 'private school'. Pretty consistent lean toward 'scores' vs 'understanding' based on the parents background.
While difficult to control for all biases, my conclusion was that parent input was the strongest factor affecting the focus on grades/scores. Which also stressed ethics (cheating gives a bigger reward).
fin/