Happy Schooling 2.0 in Madurai Corporation schools soon
The Hindu
As COVID-19 pandemic disrupts life, civic body is bringing back project to offer emotional support to children
Given the rise in both digital divide and gadget addiction as well as emotional disturbances and unwanted behaviour among children who have missed one-and-a-half years of school due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Madurai Corporation is reintroducing its Happy Schooling (HS) project in a more evolved manner to provide complete emotional support to students and help them streamline their academic life. “Many families have slipped into economic struggle, anxiety and depression or lost their loved ones and it won’t be easy to bring back the children from these families to proper schooling,” Corporation Commissioner K.P. Karthikeyan told The Hindu. Gadget-dependency has changed their habits and made them tardy, while many domestic situations have turned violent, he added. Happy Schooling 2.0 is aimed at building the mental strength of children, teach them to face fear and failure and shed inhibitions to share their problems in order to find workable solutions. For this, like in the first round, M.S. Chellamuthu Trust & Research Foundation has collaborated to train teachers to promptly identify any attention-related problem due to emotional trauma.The Shakti Scheme in Karnataka has completed its first year, yet the smart cards intended for the beneficiaries remain undistributed. According to Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy, while the smart cards have been prepared, their issuance has been stalled due to the absence of electronic ticketing machines (ETMs) in all buses, making them impractical.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly R. Ashok were engaged in war of words over the Lok Sabha election results on Tuesday, with the former calling the latter “ignorant and entertaining people”. In response, Mr. Ashok said the Chief Minister “sometimes wakes up from deep slumber to exhibit his arrogance and anger”.