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Saras may fly into primary schools
SARAS MAY soon hop into primary school curriculum along with lions and tigers if a joint meeting of the education and forest departments yields results. The primary and upper primary levels should have interesting information on the wildlife so that the children may develop an understanding of animal conservation.
SARAS MAY soon hop into primary school curriculum along with lions and tigers if a joint meeting of the education and forest departments yields results.
The primary and upper primary levels should have interesting information on the wildlife so that the children may develop an understanding of animal conservation.
With this idea in mind, the education department and the forest department held a joint meeting and arrived at a consensus that the wildlife conservation must get a place in primary school curriculum.
Both the departments are all set to work it out at the earliest.
The forest department prepared a proposal on Wednesday. M Ahsan, the chief wildlife warden, said: “The proposal is ready. We’ve proposed that there is no element of wildlife conservation in the school course curriculum. Hence it is imperative that this subject be incorporated in the school course.”
Why focus only on saras? “Since saras is our State bird, we are more concerned about its conservation and preservation. The State Government is concerned about the conservation of saras crane and it would be in the fitness of things if we lay more emphasis on its conservation,” he said.
According to chief wildlife warden, the State Government has created a saras conservation committee that would spread awareness for its conservation amongst the people in the state in various ways. To push saras conservation in the textbook of primary schools, the forest department officials are working out ways in which it could be incorporated in the book.
Secretary basic education JS Deepak told Hindustan Times: “The forest department are keen to add some elements of wildlife conservations with special emphasis on saras. A committee would be formed to study the proposal of forest department and work out in what way wildlife conservation could be introduced in the existing curriculum.”
He said: “As of now nothing can be said with certainty whether wildlife conservation would be an independent subject or it would be merged with environmental studies or science subjects. These are some of the modalities that needs to be looked into.” However, the secretary basic education cleared that it would be subject to the approval of Basic Siksha Parishad.
The education department also cleared the fact that under no circumstances the subject pertaining to wildlife conservation can be introduced this year as the textbooks and other course curriculum has been prepared for this academic session. So the children have to wait for the next session before they get to know about wildlife conservation.
