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"There was a disturbing news item the other day that, in the city schools here in Hyderabad, Physical Education is going to be made compulsory and evaluated and the scores students get in that 'subject' would be reflected in their final grades."
The ostensible reason for this drastic step is that kids in city schools are tending to be more and more obese by the day.
Admitted.
But that is largely because schools in cities here don't have large enough playgrounds. Give any kid a ball and a bat, cricket or badminton or baseball, or just a foot ball and enough space and time to play in schools. Obesity will disappear.
Adi Shankara, the supreme poet-cum-philosopher-cum-debater, had perhaps no time to play to his heart's content in his short life span of 16 (extended to 32):
But he knew kids' mindset alright...also youths' ;). For he wrote:
But where are playgrounds in schools in cities nowadays? The grounds of age-old schools are shrinking by the day for reasons known to all...sharks. And the thousands of new schools sprouting have sham excuses for play grounds...like Hitler's mustaches. So, what do they do? They shepherd all their kids into their tiny backyard and 'drill' them...'left, right, left, right, march round and round' and 'attention' and 'stand-at-ease'...go!
Drill takes so little space...kids can be packed like sardines. And nothing in this world can be more boring than 'drilling'...ask RKN or JT!
PGW was caught napping in Paris when Hitler's troops surrounded his hotel and arrested him. And gave him one hour to pack his belongings and he was sent to a soft-prison along with a hundred other enemy senior citizens like him. They were treated rather well because of their old age and 'market value'...PGW was made to broadcast over radio how well Nazis were treating him...and he got into such hot waters with the British after the War was over that he had to emigrate to the US. That is another story.
He and his senior colleagues in the camp were subjected to only one harsh 'discipline'...the German soldiers made all of them stand in parallel lines and drilled them for hours every day. And PGW was so exasperated that he wanted to buy a German soldier after the war and make him drill in his garden 'left, right, left, right, march!' with his heavy rifle...and watch.
In our Village Muthukur in the 1950s there were no obese kids. Indeed there were no obese adults too...but for the sole 'pappu-shetty', the vysya destined to sit down the whole day in his shop vending groceries (and munching assorted dals...an occupational hazard):
The reason why we kids didn't suffer from obesity was that our school (so-called) was a little away from the heart of the village and it had no boundary walls nor fences. We come out of the class rooms (sheds) and the whole sea of grassland was ours to play games in. More about it later.
The reason why adults were not obese had much to do with our benign British rulers who sucked Indian blood for a mere two centuries (their American cousins were kinder to their Indians...they simply exterminated them). They saw to it that India had periodic famines (manufactured in Britain) like the ghastly Bengal Famine of 1943:
"The Bengal famine of 1943 (Bengali: পঞ্চাশের মন্বন্তর) struck the Bengal province of pre-partition India following the Japanese occupation of Burma. Estimates are that between 1.5 and 4 million people died of starvation, malnutrition and disease, out of Bengal’s 60.3 million population, half of them dying from disease after food became available in December 1943[1]As in previous Bengal famines,[2] the highest mortality was not in previously very poor groups, but among artisans and small traders whose income vanished when people spent all they had on food and did not employ cobblers, carpenters, etc.[3] "
I have two first-hand accounts of the Famine of 1943 (the year I was born):
1. My Guide, SDM, said he witnessed dozens of villagers who migrated to Calcutta in search of food 'dying like flies on the streets'.
2. A young boy in Midnapore watched his grannie die of starvation and decided then and there: "I won't die of starvation". And migrated to Calcutta. Did well in his studies and joined IIT KGP as a Research Scholar in Physics under HNB and won the first ever Ph. D. awarded by IIT KGP. And migrated to the Land of Gold where he helped invent the excimer class of lasers. And became a multimillionaire. And used to appear in TV shows of California's programs like: 'The Lifestyles of The Rich and the Famous'. And later won an Honorary D. Sc. from his alma mater where he gave a talk that I happened to attend.
...Posted by Ishani
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"There was a disturbing news item the other day that, in the city schools here in Hyderabad, Physical Education is going to be made compulsory and evaluated and the scores students get in that 'subject' would be reflected in their final grades."
Admitted.
But that is largely because schools in cities here don't have large enough playgrounds. Give any kid a ball and a bat, cricket or badminton or baseball, or just a foot ball and enough space and time to play in schools. Obesity will disappear.
Adi Shankara, the supreme poet-cum-philosopher-cum-debater, had perhaps no time to play to his heart's content in his short life span of 16 (extended to 32):
But he knew kids' mindset alright...also youths' ;). For he wrote:
Baalastaavat kridaasakta:
Tarunastaavat taruneesakta:
Vriddhastaavat chintaasakta:
Parey brahmani koapinasakta:
But where are playgrounds in schools in cities nowadays? The grounds of age-old schools are shrinking by the day for reasons known to all...sharks. And the thousands of new schools sprouting have sham excuses for play grounds...like Hitler's mustaches. So, what do they do? They shepherd all their kids into their tiny backyard and 'drill' them...'left, right, left, right, march round and round' and 'attention' and 'stand-at-ease'...go!
Drill takes so little space...kids can be packed like sardines. And nothing in this world can be more boring than 'drilling'...ask RKN or JT!
PGW was caught napping in Paris when Hitler's troops surrounded his hotel and arrested him. And gave him one hour to pack his belongings and he was sent to a soft-prison along with a hundred other enemy senior citizens like him. They were treated rather well because of their old age and 'market value'...PGW was made to broadcast over radio how well Nazis were treating him...and he got into such hot waters with the British after the War was over that he had to emigrate to the US. That is another story.
He and his senior colleagues in the camp were subjected to only one harsh 'discipline'...the German soldiers made all of them stand in parallel lines and drilled them for hours every day. And PGW was so exasperated that he wanted to buy a German soldier after the war and make him drill in his garden 'left, right, left, right, march!' with his heavy rifle...and watch.
In our Village Muthukur in the 1950s there were no obese kids. Indeed there were no obese adults too...but for the sole 'pappu-shetty', the vysya destined to sit down the whole day in his shop vending groceries (and munching assorted dals...an occupational hazard):
The reason why we kids didn't suffer from obesity was that our school (so-called) was a little away from the heart of the village and it had no boundary walls nor fences. We come out of the class rooms (sheds) and the whole sea of grassland was ours to play games in. More about it later.
The reason why adults were not obese had much to do with our benign British rulers who sucked Indian blood for a mere two centuries (their American cousins were kinder to their Indians...they simply exterminated them). They saw to it that India had periodic famines (manufactured in Britain) like the ghastly Bengal Famine of 1943:
"The Bengal famine of 1943 (Bengali: পঞ্চাশের মন্বন্তর) struck the Bengal province of pre-partition India following the Japanese occupation of Burma. Estimates are that between 1.5 and 4 million people died of starvation, malnutrition and disease, out of Bengal’s 60.3 million population, half of them dying from disease after food became available in December 1943[1]As in previous Bengal famines,[2] the highest mortality was not in previously very poor groups, but among artisans and small traders whose income vanished when people spent all they had on food and did not employ cobblers, carpenters, etc.[3] "
....wiki
I have two first-hand accounts of the Famine of 1943 (the year I was born):
1. My Guide, SDM, said he witnessed dozens of villagers who migrated to Calcutta in search of food 'dying like flies on the streets'.
2. A young boy in Midnapore watched his grannie die of starvation and decided then and there: "I won't die of starvation". And migrated to Calcutta. Did well in his studies and joined IIT KGP as a Research Scholar in Physics under HNB and won the first ever Ph. D. awarded by IIT KGP. And migrated to the Land of Gold where he helped invent the excimer class of lasers. And became a multimillionaire. And used to appear in TV shows of California's programs like: 'The Lifestyles of The Rich and the Famous'. And later won an Honorary D. Sc. from his alma mater where he gave a talk that I happened to attend.
...Posted by Ishani
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