ACADEMIC BACKWARDNESS AMONG RURAL ADOLESCENTS: CHALLENGE FOR SOCIETY

Academic achievement has always been the interest of educationist, school psychologist and school social workers. Parents, teachers and school too are concerned about the academic achievement of their children. Academic performance is given prime importance in Indian society as it is an important way to come up in one?s life. Now-a-days due to various factors, academic backwardness among rural adolescents is rising. There is an increased awareness in the parents, teachers and other professionals working with academic backward children. Present study is also an effort to find out the reasons of academic backwardness among school going rural adolescents. The sample from three villages of Udaipur district viz. Lakhawali, Bhilwara, and Dangio Ka Guda were selected from three classes i.e. 7th, 8th, and 9th consisted of 150 adolescents. A checklist was prepared to find out the reasons of academic backwardness among school going rural adolescents. Results revealed that most of the rural children had academic backwardness was due to familial reasons followed by academic and health reasons. In case of all familial reasons, few school going children said that their family members do not contribute much in their study, do not provide much coorperation, inspiration and guidance which is due to their parents lack of education, money and other necessary resources. Few respondents said that their parents engage them more in the activities other than studies. Regarding health reasons of academic backwardness it was noted that majority of them do not consider health problems a reason for academic backwardness.