School labs shall not display certain animals & plants...

No wild animals, plants in school labs

Head of schools or colleges face seven-year jail term for flouting rule

Schools will no longer be allowed to use wild animals or plants and display them in laboratory or museums.    Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, a statutory body of the central government, has banned the use and display of animals and plants in schools after finding some schools and colleges illegally possessing them. From now, schools will need special permission to possess such animals or plants.    As per a recent directive issued by the bureau’s additional director Shyam Bhagat Negi to all universities, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE), there were complaints that some schools and colleges illegally had trophies of wild animals in their laboratories and museums.    The CBSE board had warned schools in November 2010 and May 2012 against using endangered animals as specimens. Schools cannot use or exhibit animals and plants mentioned in the scheduled lists of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972, such as frogs, snakes, hamsters, guinea pigs, reptiles, corals and pitcher plant or any parts of them including skeletons, foetus, bones and skin.    Instead of using real animals/ plants, schools will have to use images or models for teaching purpose. “Acquisition or possession of wild animals without written permission of the chief wildlife warden of the state or the authorised officer is an offence against the Wildlife Protection Act 1972. Capturing, injuring or killing a wild animal is hunting and is prohibited under the law,” states the directive.    School authorities, heads of schools/ colleges will face a seven-year jail term or fine or both, if schools are found to be in possession of such animals or plants. Schools which possess such animals will have to surrender them to the chief warden and not acquire such specimens in future.    However, schools require specimens of plants/animals as study material for biology students. For such purposes, specimens of commons plants/animals can be used, taking care that no specimens of threatened species listed under the Wildlife Protection Act are kept or displayed in schools. Courtesy (visited 30.10.12)

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=30691&boxid=13660&ed_date=2012-10-30&ed_code=820009&ed_page=5

Prohibition Of Unfair Practices in Schools Bill’, 2012 is on its way.

Corporal punishment will land teachers in jail

New Delhi: Resorting to corporal punishment in class or forcing students to purchase books, uniforms and other stationery from a particular shop could land one up to three years in jail, according to a draft Bill on curbing unfair practices in schools. The draft ‘Prohibition Of Unfair Practices in Schools Bill’, 2012 makes it clear that no school shall directly or indirectly demand or accept capitation fee or demand any donation for admission to any class. The draft legislation, which would be presented before the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) meeting here on November 1, also prohibits schools from denying admission or expelling any student if he/she is reported to have any serious diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Schools can neither indulge in any kind of corporal punishment nor withhold students to appear in any examination for which they are eligible and desirous of appearing. Besides schools cannot expel any student due to poor academic performance or detain them arbitrarily, the draft says. –PTI

Published Date:  Oct 29, 2012

Courtesy (visited 29.10.12) http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=30619&boxid=16146&ed_date=2012-10-29&ed_code=820009&ed_page=12

Why teachers are on decline? a teacher speaks up her mind.

A teacher speaks her mind  INDIRA PADMANABHAN

        I was born in a family of three daughters to parents who were not conversant in English. I was admitted to an Anglo-Indian School in Chennai in the middle level. The school had a lovely campus with a beautiful church inside. I did feel lost for some time, but I quickly fell into the groove mainly because of my classteacher who was so supportive and encouraging. School taught me to not only admire the beautiful creations of God but also honour the values and sentiments of our family members, peers and our TEACHERS.

          As I grew stronger and proved my academic excellence, days became more memorable in school. The right mélange of play and work, the true blend of the teachers’ love and severity, the Principal’s integrity together with the passion for imparting true education — everything paved the path for us to realise the worth of good education. Today, I can proudly say that I am a teacher of English and French and curriculum coordinator of a reputed school in Chennai.

        My ardent love for my teachers made me give up my government posting and, after serving as a teacher for nearly 25 years, I look back. Have I, as a teacher, created another Mahatma Gandhi, a Mother Teresa or an Abdul Kalam? Why is it not possible for me to mould my students — nay children — into better human beings of greater values? I then realised that my children are never my own — I do not really possess him or her; in other words, I feel that children today cannot surrender themselves to their teachers as I had submitted myself at the feet of my educators.

      I am unable to frame rules for my children who are with me for the prime part of the day. Teachers are always expected to be kind. They are questioned by authorities and parents for calling a student an idiot or lazy goose — words that used to belong to the teaching faculty. Teachers and school authorities are unable to curtail children from bringing cellphones or iPods to school.

     When I call the father of a child who was found playing with a pack of cards, he says: “Is it necessary for me to come here for such a silly issue? You can just throw away those cards and forget about it. If you talk about my son, I can also tell you so much about your school.”

     I called the young father into my office and said: “I called you because I do not have the right to use any strict measures to forbid him from playing with cards in the classroom.” I need to collaborate with you to educate your child and tell him that you are with me in bringing in discipline on the school premises.” I also asked him, “If you think that there is so much to talk about the school, do you think and believe that this school will do anything good for your child?”

     We still believe that teachers are influential. I still go to school in a starched cotton sari with my hair folded the way my favourite chemistry teacher came to my class. She was my role model. We agree that some teachers have made the whole world follow in their footsteps — I quote Mother Teresa, the teacher-turned mother who made the entire world work along with her to support the fragile and the poor.

    School life teaches a child the happiness of being together, the worth of friendship, the classroom culture and, above all, to respect and love human race beyond caste, creed or religion. School is the only community that can form the basis of secularism and patriotism. School is the child’s window to this wondrous world. Are we going to guard this ambience of harmony and protect the bonding of the teacher and her child? Or, are we going to interfere in her everyday work and allow her to get disgusted and shun her responsibility. Is it possible for a mother to teach or discipline a child without scolding or raising her hand? How is it possible for a teacher to discipline a child even without scolding? Words like lazy, noisy creature — are also construed as an offence. Is the purpose of a teacher’s time in school really going to be served or defeated? In recent past, teachers have been enquired into, suspended, arrested and even killed. With fear enveloping every act of hers, should a teacher perform her tasks or wait for a set of rules to be framed by every parent for every individual child?

     The whole world has the right to interfere with children except their teachers. The law overlooks a child who uses the cane on another child impairing his vision, but penalises the teacher and the school for leaving the cane on the desk. Can’t we tell the child that he is forbidden from using or misusing the teacher’s wand? Laws are framed for school buses for the safety of the children but truck drivers who knock down schoolchildren are not penalised by any special norms that govern the road safety of the kids. The law does not worry about educating the parents that it is their responsibility as well to teach the child right from wrong.

    Are we as teachers running into the risk of being blamed, penalised and humiliated in public for the service we render to the cause of children? Is there not a single student who can harass a teacher, cause trauma in the teacher? And when they do so, the teacher should silently bear all the pain and yet render the best to every child.

Teachers today go through a lot of trauma with the responsibilities of completing the curricula, designing lessons, competing with technology and facing the new generation of poor values and attitudes.

      I am amazed that children justify the damage done by them to school property. They say that they do pay school fees and hence have the right to damage it.

My appeal is not to protect teachers who indulge in excesses and wrongdoing. My appeal is for the cause of children and for the betterment of the next generation. As a teacher, if children are not made to realise that a set of rules is needed to run their daily routine, scientists need to design vehicles that could automatically stop when the vehicle encounters the red signal. We will see more scandals, more violence and more pain within the family and all around — as we do not catch them young to own responsibility for their actions.

Courtesy (visited 28.10.12) http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/a-teacher-speaks-her-mind/article4017272.ece

'scare and inspire' may backfire.

scare and inspire' may backfire.
        It seems that the parents should be careful in opting for the age old parenting method of 'scare and inspire.' Have a look at the news story by following the link. http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2012/10/13&PageLabel=9&EntityId=Ar00800&ViewMode=HTML

Train children to set question paper. to learn pain of teachers..

Juhu schoolkids turn teachers, set question paper

Puja Pednekar

It's exam season at Juhu's Utpal Shanghvi School. But instead of sweating it out, the students are busy setting question papers and worksheets for mock exams as a part of a learning exercise. As a unique teaching method, the IGCSE affiliated school allowed its Class 6 students to set their own test paper for Gujarati and Class 3 students were asked to create their self-study worksheets for Geography. They also corrected their classmates’ answer sheets. The school plans to replicate such exercises in other classes soon.     Through these exercises, students gained first-hand experience of playing teachers. Apart from setting the papers and allotting marks, students were also allowed to get creative with and make the question paper appealing with drawings and diagrams. The exercise was also a part of their ICT module for the Class 3 students. They created worksheets using word processor. The papers were shuffled among the students and every student corrected the paper that they had set. “Students aped their teachers drawing circles and writing remarks on the answer papers. They were actively involved in the exam process,” said principal Abha Dharam Pal. “Now that they have actually set and corrected papers, they are familiar with the mentality of the examiner. This will help build their confidence and reduce their fear of exams.”       Dakshit Shah, a class 6 student, said it took him more than an hour to decide the questions he wanted to put in the paper. “I chose questions that my classmates would find tough to crack.” Gujarati teacher Alka Mehta said the objective was to help develop students' grammatical and analytical skills. “It was as a good exercise that made students revise and come up with questions that even we had missed over the years.”      Earlier the school had introduced a system wherein teachers would sit for exams with the students and answer the papers they set to gauge the level of difficulty and how time-consuming it would be. Published Date:  Oct 11, 2012 courtesy (visited 11.10.12) http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=29027&boxid=13531&ed_date=2012-10-11&ed_code=820009&ed_page=3

facebook influence becoming fatal on children!

Handle kids with care, they’ve got the FB blues         - Somita Pal l Mumbai Veda Kalekar, 12, has been depressed for some weeks now.  The reason: Her friends on Facebook have blocked her following a tiff at a school picnic.              While this would be a trivial matter in an adult’s life, the behaviour of her friends mattered a lot to the Std VIII student. Veda (not her original name) is now undergoing treatment for acute depression.  Psychiatrists say depression among children is on the rise and the reasons have undergone a sea change. About a decade ago, a child would be depressed mostly because of parental pressure to excel academically.  Nowadays children move freely in the cyber world. Often they are depressed when friends say negative things on social networking sites or when parents refuse to give in to their costly demands — say a mobile phone like Blackberry or iPhone.  Seema Hingorany, a clinical psychologist who is treating Veda, said she is academically sound. “She went into depression when her friends started ignoring her or blocking her on Facebook or posting negative messages about her,” Hingorany said. “She became paranoid. Her parents got worried when she started avoiding school.”  When they figured out that developments on the social networking site could be a reason, they sought profession help. Doctors say it is important for children to have more hits on the “Like” button or to have someone posting positive messages on such sites. Dr Fabian Almeida, child psychiatrist, said a young boy was depressed because he did not have enough friends on his Facebook profile. “His best friends had more friends than him. Also his status updates and profile pictures did not get much comments,” the doctor said.  Social media has good things as well like improving communication skills. But parents have to be careful, say doctors. They should decide when the time is right for their children to venture into social networking sites.  “In Veda Kalekar’s case,” said Hingorany, “her parents have banned her from using Facebook till the time she is matured enough to handle the negative aspects of social networking sites. In the past, whenever Veda logged on to Facebook she would check the profiles of her friends and feel depressed.”  And this is not the only reason why depression among children is on the rise. “I recently got a case where a boy was depressed because his parents refused to buy him a BlackBerry,” Dr Rajiv Anand, child psychiatrist, said. “His friends with BlackBerrys had formed groups... Since he hadn’t any, he felt alienated.”  There are instances of children going into depression because parents have refused to give them costly phones or iPhones or iPads. “At times, children even threaten their parents with consequences if their demands are not met,” Anand said.  And then there are cases of cyber bullying, online harassment, and sexting on mobile phones. While it is difficult to stop a child from venturing into the cyber world, parents and teachers can inculcate good habits like reading or playing sports. “We have to ensure children develop healthy hobbies like sports, or book reading or going to the gym or playing indoor games,” Almeida said. “Prevention is always better. In case there is a problem, parents should immediately seek professional help.”

Published Date:  Oct 11, 2012

courtesy (visited 11.10.12)

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=29031&boxid=27923&ed_date=2012-10-11&ed_code=820009&ed_page=1

Parental pressure to be competitive affects children badly.

Honey, you’ve screwed up the kids

(Anu Prabhakar finds out that parental pressure to be competitive is now damaging children as young as three. Mental health professionals warn that such kids may grow up to be emotionally stunted adults with serious self-esteem issues)

He was just another ordinary kid, except for one thing. The rare time my classmate Sameer failed to score full marks in a test, he would bawl his eyes out in the bus home. Nothing but full marks was good enough for him... or so we thought. One night, 15-year-old Sameer leapt off the roof of his building and his private life became public. We got to know his father punished him regularly for his ‘unsatisfactory’ marks. Once, after scoring 45/50 in a Maths test, Sameer was ordered to scribble the right answers in his notebook all night. He survived the suicide attempt but never returned to our school. This was in the 1990s, when parents weren’t as competitive as they are today. It would be safe to say that Sameer and his family were the exception then.      Now, an increasing number of parents are going to bizarre lengths to ensure they sculpt winners out of their children. It’s a frenzied madness that is causing terrible psychological and emotional damage to kids of all ages. And it’s not just restricted to performance at school. Take, for example, the recent news report that the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board has been besieged with requests by parents to access the answer sheets of their children’s classmates under the Right to Information Act (RTI).       Mental health professionals say such intense pressure to be competitive has the potential to change a child’s mental make-up. Besides obvious side-effects like a rise in suicidal tendencies, such children may grow up to be highly-strung loners with a very low Emotional Quotient (EQ), serious self-esteem issues, an inability to deal with failure and an immense fear of letting down loved ones and not being loved in return. STARTING YOUNG        Sharita Shah, woman and child psychiatrist for the past 14 years, has noticed a 30-40% increase in the number of stressed out children brought to her for help from the time she started her practice.       The pressure to be competitive starts as early as pre-school when children as young as three are put through gruelling pre-admission preparations. When a child fails to get into a good school, parents complain about it in front of the child, who gets easily depressed, says Asmi Shah, managing trustee of Kinnari Cultural centre that helps prepare children for school interviews, and also conducts hobby classes. “We notice the change in class, where the child’s movements become very restrictive.” Parents also push children to be competitive in leisure activities that were originally meant for relaxation. So, once they grow up, letting down their guard becomes a problem. “Most of them also begin to have trust issues,” says clinical psychologist Samindara Sawant. “It’s sad, but not surprising, to see even Grade 1 and 2 students saying that they are stressed out.”       Sudha Krishnamoorthy admits she was a pressure parent. A retired school teacher in Mumbai, Sudha says she was obsessed with her daughter’s performance in school. Once when her child brought home a dismal report card, she became so furious that she grabbed hold of her cheek, pinched it and didn’t let go till she drew blood. “But I sought help soon,” says Krishnamoorthy, adding that she shares a good relationship with her daughter today. SCARRED FOR LIFE       Children who are subject to intense pressure by their parents can turn out to be deeply flawed adults. Clinical psychologist and trauma therapist Seema Hingorrany who doesn’t have “time to breathe” given the number of child and adolescent depression cases she deals with, says such children grow up to become adults who look at everyone — a colleague, girlfriend or husband — as potential competitors. “They may not be able to sustain long-term relationships. They are always on the edge, insecure, jealous, anxious and will rate everything based on performance,” says Hingorrany.       While it might be possible for children who are pushed to be competitive to do well in a smaller environment like a school, s/he might suffer from the ‘I am not good enough’ syndrome once s/he enters the real world which is much more competitive, says Sharita Shah. “This can lead to frustration, depression and substance abuse.”           What’s worse, there is a very real fear that when such children become parents, they may turn out to be exactly like their mom- or dad-zillas, scarring one more generation. Parenting techniques children adopt when they become parents largely depends on how well they were able to cope up with pressure from their childhood nurturers. They could be extremely competitive, extremely passive or well-balanced. However, very few children fall under the last category, stresses Dr Shah. Contrary to what parents think, most children rarely feel grateful for being pushed so hard, leading to permanent rifts with parents. Computer engineer Maya Mohan, 24, may never find it in her to forgive her pushy mother for her “hellish” childhood. “My mother was very critical and hit me for the smallest of things. I hated everyone, became a loner and even contemplated suicide!” she says. It was only after she moved out of home that she learned to enjoy life. “I love my mother, but I lost a chunk of my life. I wonder if I will ever be able to forgive her completely.” Some names have been changed to protect identity

Published Date:  Oct 07, 2012

Courtesy (visited 8.10.12)

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=28679&boxid=29092&ed_date=2012-10-07&ed_code=820009&ed_page=9

Kids in the grip of morbid obesity

Kids in the grip of morbid obesity    - Somita Pal

It sets your pulse racing. You blame it on all your rash decisions. But how often do you spare a thought for that tiny organ which pumps relentlessly to keep you alive? Heart diseases and strokes are the world’s leading causes of death, claiming about 17.3 million lives each year. See who’s at risk and what you can do to stay safe.

Doctors say it is becoming common to see children having cholesterol levels as high as that of 50-year-olds. With high lipid and cholesterol levels, they say this generation is at the risk of developing heart ailments early in their lives.           Dr Sanjay Borude, obesity surgeon at Breach Candy Hospital said, “Children form 10 per cent of the morbid obese cases I see and this is a big number as I only get morbid obesity cases, not moderate ones. Their lifestyle is to blame for this.”     Eating junk and spending long hours on mobiles or TV screens with no physical activity are common reasons for this rise. “Children are allowed to indulge in junk food and not encouraged to engage in physical activities. They eat out and spend time on social networking sites, mobiles and TV instead of exercising,” said Dr Mukesh Sanklecha, consultant paediatrician, Bombay Hospital.    A study conducted in Netherlands in July on child obesity showed that two out of three obese children had at least one cardiovascular risk factor. “Hypertension and abnormal lipids in children may lead to cardiovascular diseases at a young age,” said Dr Sudhir Pillai, consultant cardiologist at PD Hinduja Hospital. He added that this study corroborated with the 2010 American research, which showed that obese kids with high cholesterol have the heart artery thickness of a 45-year-old. He also said that a Mumbai study had shown that 30 per cent of children in private schools and 10 per cent in public school are obese. “Children learn from their elders. This makes it even more necessary that parents follow a healthy lifestyle,” Dr Sanklecha said. courtesy: http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=27823&boxid=12569&ed_date=2012-9-25&ed_code=820009&ed_page=5