Aamir’s movie to guide teachers

How about learning a thing or two about child sensitivities from Taare Zameen Par?The Women and Child Development Ministry is doing that by screening the film for teachers and principals during a workshop in Delhi, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 18, 2008, 12:25:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Women and Child Development Ministry will hold a novel training workshop for school principals and teachers through the screening of Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par so that they could learn a thing or two about child sensitivities.

The movie would be part of a larger goal of WCD ministry to educate teachers about child rights and how every child is different from others in their peer group when it comes to learning ability.

“The movie is an eye opener for many parents. It tells us about the problems children face, and how to deal with it. Each school principal should compulsorily watch the movie,” WCD Minister Renuka Chowdhury told Hindustan Times on Thursday.

The ministry is talking to PVR cinemas and Khan to stage a special show of the movie at Mavlankar Hall for about 250 school principals, state education department officials and representatives of NGOs during a conference in Delhi next week.

Chowdhury said the conference is the government’s first attempt to sensitize educators about children and their feelings.

“Calling a child naughty may hurt the kid. We would like to tell them not to use such harsh words and ask administrators to take strict action against teachers and schools for any form of corporal punishment,” she added.

The workshop is part of a government campaign to spread awareness among teachers about the rising incidents of crime against children, including corporal punishment, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, says a letter by Loveleen Kacker, joint secretary of WCD ministry, to state governments.

“The aim is to provide a safe and secure environment for school children,” Kacker said.

Such a conference would do people a lot of good, the ministry thinks, and help curb incidents like a child stabbing a classmate in Delhi, the death of a student after he was made to run for coming late to school or a teacher sexually abusing a minor in Uttar Pradesh.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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