Email
Print
ShareMumbai: Gone are the days when just studying was enough to pass an exam. These days children are put through motivational speech therapy, stress management workshops and positive thinking sessions to get through the exams. This year, the board exam fever sees yet another workshop for students to go through — memory enhancement sessions to improve recall techniques to score better at the exams.
The Mind & Memory Lab in Nerul conducts regular sessions, specifically for Std X students, to ease stress and fear of exams by integrating memory techniques whereby students can remember very difficult answers easily.
At their workshops students are taught visualisation techniques, personal meaning system, sleep management, etc.
“Through the daylong workshops we teach students techniques to calm the mind, overcome panic and anxiety attacks, colour visualisation, neurobic (brain) exercises etc,” said Professor EV Gireesh, head of academics at the centre, who is also visiting faculty at SIES College of Management Studies, Nerul.
Madhuri Kavle, a parent who plans to attend one of the sessions along with her daughter, said: “This is the first time I am taking my daughter to such a workshop. I hope the session gets her motivated and confident about attempting the exams.” Her daughter Shweta from St Agnes High School in Dombivli is hopeful she will learn something from the memory enhancing techniques.
The trend has been growing since the past five years, claim counsellors. Dr Neeta Mohan, counselling psychologist at Adarsh Polyclinic in Andheri, said: “These motivational sessions are very popular among working parents. During exam time, we get numerous queries on memory enhancement, positive thinking, etc.”
Anand Surve, a parent who attended a similar session at the Aavishkar — centre for self-enrichment at Dadar, said: “During these sessions, students are put in a trance-like state and asked to visualise positive things. My daughter was told to visualise her SSC mark sheet score as 92%. At the end of it, she was really upbeat.”
The sessions cost anywhere from Rs500 to Rs2,000 per sitting. But psychologists caution parents against blindly trusting the techniques. “Parents should not force children into such activities. Most techniques have no scientific proof that they improve memory or concentration,” said psychiatrist Harish Shetty.
