Miniature Adults

Why We Need to Stop “Ranking” Our Third Graders

A blog by Pratishta Natarajan

Ambitions

If you ask a five-year-old what they want to be when they grow up, you will see a pure light in their eyes. They might say an astronaut, a dancer, a pilot, or even a dinosaur trainer. To them, the world is a giant playground of limitless possibilities. They don’t worry about what pays the most or what looks best on a resume; they just dream.

But if you ask a teenager that same question, the answer often changes. The light is replaced by calculation. You might hear a rehearsed, “professional” answer like “I want to be an Engineer” or “I’m going into Medicine,” even if it’s a subject they struggle with or secretly dislike.

What changed? The child didn’t change. What changed is that they were socialised. They learned what society considers “prestigious.” They learned that while they are allowed to have dreams, there are only a few “correct” answers to the question of who they should be.

The Three “Correct” Jobs

I recently saw an ad for a tuition center that really made me pause. It showed young children (no older than eight or nine) dressed up in oversized lab coats, lawyer’s robes, and business suits.

It made me wonder: Why do we always highlight the same three fields? Medicine, Law, and Engineering.

By focusing only on these three “prestigious” careers, we are sending a dangerous message to our kids. First, we are setting them up for a hyper-competitive rat race. Since there are only a few spots in these fields, the vast majority of children will grow up feeling like failures, even if they are brilliant in other ways. Second, we are telling them that there are only a few “good” ways to live a life.

But look around the real world. You see graphic designers, social workers, chefs, writers, entrepreneurs, and environmentalists. You see people living happy, successful, and fulfilling lives in thousands of different ways. Success doesn’t have one uniform.

The Race is Starting Too Early

I remember growing up, there was a lot of concern when IIT entrance classes started creeping into the 6th grade. At the time, we thought, “Surely, that is too young. Let them finish primary school first.”

Looking at this ad, the 6th grade now seems mercifully late. The starting line has moved to the 3rd grade. We are now asking 8-year-olds to think about their personal branding before they have even mastered long division.

We are slowly taking away the joys of being a child. Childhood is a carefree time that we never get back. But it is also a time for essential learning. Social skills, emotional intelligence, and resilience don’t come from textbooks. They come from playing with friends, negotiating rules for a game, and scraping your knees on the playground.

When we replace unstructured play with tuition classes, we shouldn’t be surprised when we see teenagers who are anxious and depressed. We simply aren’t letting them be kids.

The Trap of the “Personality Test”

The ad I saw promised a “Scholastic and Personality Test” for young kids to help identify their strengths. This worries me because of something psychologists call a Fixed Mindset.

A Fixed Mindset is when you tell a child, “You are smart at math” or “You are not a creative person.” You are telling them that their skills are set in stone, you’re telling them that they are born with them and can’t change them.

We should be teaching them a Growth Mindset, the idea that you can learn anything if you try hard enough.

If we give an 8-year-old a test and tell them they are “analytical,” it becomes a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. This means the child believes the label, so they only focus on analytical things. They might stop drawing or writing stories because they think, “Oh, I’m not the creative type.” The prediction comes true not because it was right, but because the child believed it.

A child’s interests are fluid. Maybe they love science this year because they have a funny teacher. Maybe they love writing next year because they read a book with a character they admired. We need to let them explore all avenues equally. If we box them in now, they might never discover what they truly love.

The Weight of a 15-Page Report

The ad also promised a “15-page comprehensive report” on the child. Honestly, that sounds terrifying.

Imagine being eight years old and having a 15-page document that critiques your personality and potential. It feels like an exam for your soul. It puts an immense amount of pressure on a child to be “perfect” before they have even figured out who they are.

Monetising Parental Anxiety

As a parent, you obviously want your child to be successful and happy. You want to give them every advantage.

But it is important to know that businesses understand that. They are capitalising on your anxiety. They know that if they use phrases like “All India Rank” or “don’t fall behind,” you will feel pressured to sign up. They are selling you a product, and the product is the illusion of control over your child’s future.

The Cost of “Success”

There is a huge opportunity cost to this pressure.

I once sat with a six-year-old girl who had piles of homework to finish. She looked physically exhausted. She just wanted to go play with her toys, but she knew she had to finish her “work” first. She looked up at me with tired eyes and asked, “How many more years do I have to do this for?”

She was only six, and she was already facing burnout.

If we burn our kids out with academic pressure when they are little, they will have no energy left when their actual careers begin. I also worry that this leads to rebellion later in life. If a child spends their whole childhood striving to be the perfect “miniature adult” for their parents, they may crash or rebel in their 20s just to feel a sense of freedom they were denied as kids.

A Note on Inclusion

Finally, the ad boasted about testing kids in an “exam-like environment.”

For children who are neurodivergent, for example, kids with ADHD, Autism, or learning differences, an exam-like environment is not a measure of intelligence. It is often just a measure of how well they can sit still and follow rigid rules.

A child who needs to move to think, or who processes information differently, will fail these tests. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t brilliant. It just means the test wasn’t designed for them. We are excluding so many innovative minds who just happen to think differently.

Let Them Play

The world progresses because we have people with different skills. We need artists just as much as we need engineers. We need dreamers just as much as we need doers.

We need to value our children for who they are, not who we want them to be. We need to let them play. Our job isn’t to draw the map for them; it’s to give them the skills, the love, and the resources to explore the world on their own.

Let’s take the pressure off. Let’s let them be children for just a while longer.