An old interview of actor Suriya has resurfaced, in which he urged parents to stop pushing children into aggressive competition, saying the education system’s obsession with cutoff marks and the parental habit of loudly celebrating a child’s first-place finish without considering how it affects other children and families is damaging an entire generation.

In a conversation with Vanitha TV, the actor recalled an incident involving his son Dev to explain why he believes children are naturally kinder and more self-aware than adults give them credit for, and why it is adults who teach them to be ruthless.

“If they’re getting 18 marks, you’re not happy. ‘You didn’t come first. Oh, you didn’t come first at all in class.’ We put that in their mind,” Suriya said, pointing to how parents project their own anxieties onto children who would otherwise be perfectly content with their own abilities. He added that the education system feeds this problem. “The university is always asking 99.9 percent cutoff and there is a lot of competition. There are a lot of instances where kids can be treated as kids. Kids can enjoy their childhood,” he said.

Suriya also called out a specific behaviour he has observed among parents: celebrating their own child’s achievements without thinking about how it lands on the children and families around them. “If your daughter is coming first, you come back and say, ‘You’ve got 20 marks, superb, you’re the first in class.’ What will another child go through? What will another parent go through?” he asked. The actor was careful not to dismiss competition entirely. “That hardcore competitiveness is nice. Just let them not be very, very aggressive about it. At least make them a little sensitive towards these things.”

To illustrate his point, Suriya shared a story about Dev’s school sports day that he said taught him more about parenting than he expected.

Dev was participating in a running race where children had to sprint, pick up a water bottle and run back. He was among the fastest and was close to finishing first. But instead of grabbing the nearest bottle and returning, he stopped. He wanted a blue one because it was his favourite colour, and the blue bottle was in another lane. He walked over, picked it up, and then, instead of heading back, started looking for something else. While the other children crossed the finish line, Dev found a pink bottle, picked that up too and walked back holding both.

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Suriya with his son Dev

“He told me, Appa, I liked blue colour so I went and picked up my blue. But I can’t come back alone with one bottle. Diya will be there. Diya likes pink. So I was searching for pink,” Suriya recalled, referring to his daughter. “Now we have two water bottles, one for me and one for Akka.”

The race was over and Dev had not won. But he had done something that Suriya said struck him more deeply than any podium finish would have. The boy had chosen his sister over first place, without anyone telling him to.

What impressed Suriya further was how Dev spoke about the classmate who had beaten him. Rather than expressing jealousy or frustration, Dev came home and praised the boy openly. “He said, ‘He runs very well. Nobody can beat him. He’s the fastest in our class.’ But then he said, but I can draw well. He can’t draw as good as me,” Suriya recalled.

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Nobody had coached Dev to think that way, Suriya said. “He was able to clearly say, I am good in certain things and he is good in certain things. So it is fine.”

Suriya and Jyothika have two children: daughter Diya, born in 2007, and son Dev, born in 2010. The family relocated from Chennai to Mumbai last year, partly so the children could attend IB-curriculum schools.