| Education department consults experts on ways to reduce bag load | ||
| DAULAT RAHMAN | ||
Guwahati, Feb. 4: The Assam education department is on a fervent mission: make schoolbags lighter for junior students. If anyone wonders why, here are some cruel facts: the average weight of schoolbags in India stands somewhere between 5kg and 8kg. And students as young as six and seven years old are carrying this huge load on their frail shoulders. The upshot of this unhealthy trend, physicians say, is that the bags are causing lower back pain in children. The agonising sight of toddlers trudging to and from school weighed down by their bags, however, may soon be a thing of the past, at least in schools under the Board of Secondary Education, Assam (SEBA), with Dispur deciding to cut down on the load factor. An Assam government official said the education department has already begun consultations with experts and educationists about the methodology to be adopted to make schoolbags lighter. He said the government is also studying the guidelines of the Central Board of Secondary Education with regard to reduction of schoolbag weight. According to the plan, the government would recommend that students of Classes I and II be allowed to leave their bags in school. “Teachers will be asked not to give homework to children of Classes I and II. The education department will evolve an alternative to homework. The State Council of Educational Research and Training, Assam, will design the content of the curriculum from Classes I to VII in an innovative manner to ensure that the number of books and notebooks prescribed for junior students should be as minimal,” the official said. SEBA secretary D. Mahanta said the board has already reduced the number of compulsory subjects in the syllabus from Classes V to X and helped reduce the load of schoolbags. The problem of heavy schoolbags was first pointed out in a report titled “Learning without Burden”, in 1993, following a study commissioned by the Centre. The National Curriculum Framework (NCF), 2005, had also made several recommendations on reduction of physical, psychological and transactional load on schoolchildren. Based on the framework in 2005, new syllabi and textbooks have been prepared by NCERT and adopted in schools affiliated to CBSE. The former vice-chancellor of Dibrugarh University, Kamleswar Bora, said there should be no disagreement in any quarter on the issue and Assam must evolve a suitable mechanism to reduce the burden on children. “In our schooldays, there was no concept of schoolbags. I am pained when I see my grandchildren carry heavy schoolbags. I participated in several discussions on the issue and favoured stress-free education. I believe that children will find school fun without the bag and become more enthusiastic and creative,” Bora said. |
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