Aug 17 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)
The
one hour given to midday meals (MDM) in schools is an opportunity for
discussing a variety of issues related to sustainable development. The MDM
scheme, introduced mainly to encourage kids to enroll and remain in school can
be used as teaching aid, argue the authors of a recently-compiled manual on
education for sustainable development for elementary schools published by
National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
`Towards
a Green School' says that MDM provides a ready setting for discussing "resource
conservation" (fuels used and cooking practices), pollution (type of cooking
device), socio-cultural exchanges (types of food and taste), health and others.
Treating
sustainability and environment as yet another subject isn't enough anymore.
United
Nation's `Decade of Education for Sustainable Development' will be up in 2015
but there's much to be done.
While
ESD requires “infusion of environmental and sustainability perspectives into
the school curriculum“ what has actually happened, as the manual writers
observe, is that “at the school level the responsibility for this lies
exclusively with teachers teaching the environmental component, thus limiting
it to a subject-centric role.
The
manual uses several Delhi government schools as examples of institutions that
are doing it right. A government school in Baprola has an `eco-park', a gazebo
made of waste pipes and a water harvesting system. The students make compost
with the surplus being sold. Government Girls' Senior Secondary School (No. 1)
in Tilak Nagar ran a “my plant in my school“ drive-each student sowed a
sapling and took care of it. As water at the school was in short supply, some
kids brought water from home.
The
communal midday meal, however, is one exercise all elementary school children
take part in and the manual, preparedly by Kavita Sharma of NCERT's department
of elementary education, stresses on using this. Teachers may encourage
students taking MDM to inquire into where ingredients are grown, how they are
procured, in what quantities and at what costs and even how they are stored and
cooked. This, in turn, will help initiate discussions on hygiene, the link
between the nature of ingredient and geography and nutrition.
The
manual encourages teachers to undertake audits--including natural light,
ventilation, cleanliness, ambient temperature, noise, accessibility, seating
and water use to find out exactly how `green' their schools are.
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