Sir,
The decision of the UP Government to declare Saturday as ‘No Bag Day’ is a landmark step towards easing the burden of the bag for the students. As a matter of fact, education should be a funfilled and enjoyable activity, especially for the students in the elementary classes. But unfortunately, students are made to carry heavy and burdensome bags on their shoulders, containing books, notebooks, water bottle, lunch box and other paraphernalia. Thus, carrying the heavy school bag on their tender shoulders has adverse impact on their physical and mental development. It is generally observed that the students studying in the Private schools, especially in the lower classes, carry heavier bags than their counterparts in the Government schools. The heavy burden of bag may affect the spine of students adversely and lead to back ache and other problems. Therefore, it is imperative that the students are not weighed down by their heavy bags and efforts be made to make the school bags lighter. For this purpose, it is necessary that the schools should direct the students not to bring unnecessary books and notebooks to schools and the Time Table is framed in such a manner that students are not required to bring all the books and notebooks to school everyday. It must also be ensured that schools provide the facility of clean drinking water to the students so that the students donot have to bring their drinking water bottles with them. The students should be encouraged to use loose sheets and make use of e-classrooms and information and communication technolgy (ICT) in schools to reduce dependence on books. Moreover, CBSE and NCERT ought to publish small and lightweight text books, especially for the lower classes, which are not hard bound.
Schools also ought to avoid giving homework to students at Nursery, Kindergarten and elementery level and provide students cupboards/lockers in schools to keep their books/notebooks in their schools. Education should be an enjoyable activity and students ought to be encouraged to spend more time in labs, libraries, playground and activity rooms to learn things by playway method and without any stress. They should love to go to schools happily rather than made to go there carrying heavy and burdensome bags as the real purpose of education is to develop and promote right attitudes and skills through the child centred methods of teaching.
Yours etc….
Ashok Sharma,
Udhampur
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