School Education Saga-II: Imparting co-curricular subjects in obsolete mode turns into bane

Hyderabad: Does Telangana hang on an outdated and old-fashioned mode of imparting education in co-curricular subjects?

This issue comes to the fore following the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP-2020) doing away with an artificial division of subjects in terms of 'curricular' and 'co-curricular' and 'extra-curricular' models of imparting education.

The School Academic Calendar-2024-25 underlines the promotion of co-curricular activities for the overall development of the children. Stressing the activities prescribed "are creative in nature and value-oriented and guide for the development of proper citizenship. The activities shall be given due importance on par with the curricular subjects."

The School Academic Calendar mandates conducting a total of 14 classes for primary, 9 classes for Upper Primary and 8 classes for high schools per week to conduct 'co-curricular' subject activities in all the schools in the state.

However, when it is time to walk the talk, the burden of it has been thrust upon the school headmaster. Mandating, "The Headmaster shall plan and allocate co-curricular subjects to the teachers based on their workload in their respective schools and see that all the co-curricular activities are implemented, assessed and recorded in the Cumulative Records."

However, speaking to The Hans India, several headmasters, teachers and teacher union leaders are scratching their heads as to how to plan and integrate what the academic calendar is expecting them to deliver.

For example, "The 'Health & Physical Education shall be dealt by the PETS/ PDs. Apart from the above, integration of co-curricular subjects like art and health activities may also be included so that the children do not feel tired and stressed. Mental maths games, word Anthyakshari (to improve vocabulary) etc."

Speaking to The Hans India, UTF leader Chava Ravi said, "Wherever Physical Directors and Physical Education Trainers exist, they do impart such training. However, when it comes to art and dance, there are problems in implementation."

Further, it was only in the residential schools that students had access to the dance and art teachers. When it comes to government schools, it was mostly drawing and a few others taught in the name of art education. There are many schools which have no teachers even to teach drawing. Besides, not a single government school has dance and music teachers.

What is turning more interesting is the academic calendar stressing that "music and dance activities may be conducted in the classroom linking with subject areas which keeps the children happy and stress-free besides being healthy."

Because, neither mathematics, physics, biology teachers and in many cases, even the Physical Directors expected to handle the physical and health classes are not trained in the interdisciplinary areas to link music and dance with their subjects.

For example, a biology teacher was not trained on how to relate biomechanics of human body and mind studies with Yoga and meditation.

A mathematics teacher or physics teachers with an integrated B.Sc in mathematics and physics with a B.Ed degree were not trained in are not trained how to extrapolate and interpolate geometric patterns in Kuchipudi, Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Odissi or Mohiniattam or even the tribal dance forms native to Telangana or Telugu states. And, how each geometrical patterns in these dances have an impact on a person's physical and mental health.

Similarly, there is no data from the school education department as to how many Telugu, Sanskrit and other Indian language teachers engaged could relate to ‘chandas’ (prosody) to that of the logic of computer programming.