The adenovirus menace in West Bengal seems to be assuming alarming proportions as deaths of four more children, admitted in a Kolkata hospital with its symptoms, were reported in the last six hours, taking the death toll of children to 40 in nine days.
By Pervez Bari
BHOPAL – Tiny-tots and teenager students alike of Al-Asr Academia, Bhopal won the hearts of the audience by their immaculate performances on the stage with highest levels of diligence and determination to pass on a kaleidoscopic spectacle to the audience.
The program displayed immense talent of the students showcasing perfect amalgam of academic excellence and Divine values as the spectators, mostly parents and handful of dignitaries, remained glued in their seats while warming the cockles of their heart.
The occasion was when the Al-Asr Academia celebrated its 6th Annual Function with great fervour and enthusiasm on 25th December, 2022 at the new Ravindra Bhawan Auditorium near Polytechnic Square here.
The Guests of Honour on the occasion included: Maulana Mohammad Abid Khan Mazahari, Ustad Hadith & Fiqh, Masjid Tarjum-e-wali; Maulana Mohammad Yousuf Siddiqui Nadwi, Ustad, Darul Uloom, Allama Abdul Hai Hasani, Bhopal; Janab Dr. Mohammad Shahid, Maqami Ameer, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Bhopal and Maulana Mohammad Umar (Libya), Assistant Professor, Govt. Unani Medical College, Bhopal.
The opening of the programme was initiated with welcoming of guests & parents by the ever enthusiastic nursery children who presented a beautiful Welcome Nasheed honouring the presence of the audience.
A series of exotic talents presented themselves with notable efforts depicting the school’s unflinching efforts to cater to the holistic development of a child’s personality. The unmatchable confidences with which the students faced the audience and performed brilliantly on stage have brought glory to the school.
The audience was taken by awe after witnessing the perfect combination of fluent English, Hindi, Arabic and Urdu speakers who ranged from Nursery to Class 9 students proving how meticulously their teachers work on their diction.
The students presented themselves by reminding from the latest world happening like FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar to the he ever motivating sayings of the last prophet requiring mankind to follow righteous path and supplications to bring peace and prosperity in one’s life. Baby Aafiyah Ather Khan (Grade 9 Student) delivered a speech on the topic “The Status of Women in Islam” while Master Yusuf Mohammed Khan (Grade 6 Student) presented a song “Wavin’ Flag” which was originally sung by K’naan reflecting the African struggle for freedom. All these performances left an impeccable and everlasting impression on the audience.
Director of Al-Asr Academia Ather Khan spoke on the journey of the school from its inception to its extreme recognition as a distinguished school catering to educating children and preparing them to succeed in both the worlds. He announced the achievements of the students in various disciplines.
Eminent dignitaries congratulated Ather Khan on achieving this difficult task of carrying a perfect blend of education for both the worlds with and spoke accolades about the notable performances of the students in the function.
The event culminated with flashing display of Unity in the form of song “One Big Family” cheering the audience and invoking a sense of brotherhood and communal harmony.
New Delhi, Nov 20,2022: The art of telling stories comes from the privilege of growing up with grandparents and great-grandparents at home, who were storytellers, says actor and storyteller Mithila Palkar. Unlike today’s generation, who have access to i-pads while eating, their meal was never completed without parents and grandparents telling them several stories, she shares.
Palkar shares that she only learnt the art of wording her thoughts when compelled by her grandmother.
“If I used to get stubborn about something for example, and start crying about something my grandmother would say stop crying and use your words and tell me what is wrong. These are things that kind of help us word our thoughts. And then, of course, bettering our language and everything comes over time comes with age and experience,” she says.
“I say this from a place of privilege as my grandparents gave us the privilege to just say what we thought was and not just mull over or cry over it because then you can find the solution to what our problem is.”
In the upcoming Spoken Fest to be held in Mumbai on November 19 and November 20, Palkar will be performing a piece about time spent with her grandparents.
The art of storytelling is hence not learnt but passed on from one generation to another, believes poet and storyteller Priya Malik.
“For instance, my first memories of storytelling are from my dad. My dad used to sit me and my sister down and he used to tell us stories like Ek badha sa bhalu tha jungle me (there used to be a big bear in the jungle). My mom also used to make a guest appearance in the story at the end. And it is a story that my dad had made up. That’s how it started and we would get dad to tell us the same story over and over again because of the sheer joy of being able to listen to a story,” Malik shares.
Children spend most of their time at home or school or with friends. So, either they listen to the stories told by their family members or share their stories with their friends. This is how they learn to express themselves at a very young age and the culture should be encouraged, believes Malik.
“I think in all of these settings if we encourage storytelling as a source of joy, not necessarily as a subject. I think it will automatically lead to more storytellers. It will also lead to people being more open, honest and vulnerable with their stories. And I think that that is important,” Malik says.
We are all made of stories we listen to and tell. So, reading to the little ones when they sleep or encouraging them to read is also one of the ways to encourage them. Instead of handing them I-pads or exposing them to television, it is better to make them read or listen to podcasts. This way, they can give wings to their imagination.
“I remember as a child, my most important possession was my imagination. And storytelling encourages just that. Storytelling allows you to feel for characters you wouldn’t be or maybe even meet. I read out my first poem to my dad at 13 and I definitely see how that made me able to express myself and enjoy being a character in my own story than be a third person narrator to my life,” says artist and storyteller Kareema Barry, who is performing a piece about family, legacy and the things that connect us beyond life and death.
Asked how she pens her poetries and stories, Malik shares that the best stories come from the most honest experiences of who we are. In the upcoming Spoken Fest, Malik will be performing a piece on relationships.
“So it has to come from something that you feel very passionately about. It can be anything in your life. And if you see passionately about loving relationships, you write about love and relationships. If you feel passionate about mental health, you write about mental health. It has to be something that you deeply resonate with. And obviously, it has to come from your life. It has to come from your thoughts. It has to come from your opinions,” she says.
And children are the most honest individuals as they speak what’s in their minds without a filter. So, they are innate storytellers, believes Palkar. All they need is some encouragement.
“Simply listening to a child does it – they have so many stories! They just need an earnest audience for that encouragement,” says Barry.
So, this year’s Spoken Fest is the venue to take your kids to and make them enjoy the art of storytelling.
Racism and discrimination against children based on their ethnicity, language, and religion are rife in countries across the world, according to a new report by Unicef.
New Delhi, Nov 15,2022: British Council, in collaboration with Reading Agency, is organising the ‘Reading Challenge’ for children aged 5 to 12 years to help them grow as confident and engaged readers. In this programme, children are challenged to read a range of 6 books specially selected by the British Council.
Using the principle of encouragement and motivation, the Challenge inspires children to read for pleasure. Thus, leading to the improvement of their English language skills, development of their reading skills, and building of their confidence. Children will also attend multiple expert-curated workshops to enhance their writing and inferring skills along with boosting their creativity as well as critical thinking.
This year’s theme for the programme, ‘Gadgeteers’, is created in partnership with Science Museum Group and is brought to life by top children’s writer and illustrator Julian Beresford. Under this challenge, kids must read a minimum of 6 books in 6 weeks from the collection of new, hand-picked books. The books will help the young Gadgeteers to discover the amazing science and innovation in the world around them.
If you want to instil a love for reading among your children, look no further! Enrol them in this challenge and let them be free in the world of science, outer space, or coding, with books like:
Ada and the Galaxies by Alan Lightman
In collaboration with Olga Pastuchiv and Susanna Chapman, Alan Lightman brings galaxies close in a stunning picture-book tribute to the interconnectedness of the natural world. The story zooms in on one child’s experiences: Ada knows that the best place for star-gazing is on the island in Maine where she vacations with her grandparents. Will the fog this year foil her plans, or will her grandfather find a way to shine a spotlight on the vast puzzle of the universe…until the weather turns?
Agent Asha: Mission Shark Bytes by Sophie Deen
Computer code just got dangerous in this action-packed spy adventure series Asha Joshi has the perfect excuse not to finish her homework. She’s just been recruited to join the top-secret Children’s Spy Agency. Her first mission: SAVE THE WORLD. Asha’s a coder so she should be able to hack into the biggest tech company in the world, fight deadly sharks and figure out why the Internet has stopped working. All before bedtime. Can she do it?
AL’s Awesome Science: Splash Down by Jane Clarke
Al’s experiments have the most unexpected and messy consequences. Al is experimenting to find out what kind of covering his time machine will need to survive its SPLASH DOWN! back to Earth. Water experiments have a habit of making things very wet and messy. Can they finish their experiments before mum finds out?
Bears Make the Best Science Buddies by Carmen Oliver
It’s time for the first science lab, and nobody can agree on an experiment. But why pick just one when Bear is around? Bears make the best science buddies, and Bear proves it by helping each group use the scientific method for its special experiment.
The City of Rust by Gemma Fowler
Railey dreams of winning the drone races with her bio-robotic gecko friend, Atti. But when a bounty hunter crashes their biggest race yet, the pair are forced to flee to the feared Junker clans who mine the rubbish orbiting the Earth. Rescued by a couple of Junker kids, they discover a danger bigger than anything they’d imagined – but can three kids, a gecko and an ancient computer save the world against the huge trash bomb (and its power-crazed creator) threatening to destroy the world?
Deep: Dive Into Hidden Worlds by Jess McGeachin
Have you ever wondered what lies beyond the edge of our solar system? Or what lives in the cold depths of the ocean, where even sunlight can’t reach? Come on a journey to the deepest parts of our universe–but be warned, things can get a little strange here. Temperatures are extreme, pressure is intense, and darkness is everywhere.
For more information and registrations, visit: https://www.britishcouncil.in/reading-challenge-2022-new-delhi
It is a common sight these days at Indian homes to see four-five-year-old kids engaged with smartphones independently while his/her parents go about their activities at home or outside.
Such an independent engagement with mobile involves various activities such as listening to songs, watching cartoons and other material on different apps, and playing games. It usually ends up being a long engagement in every episode as the child navigates from one activity to the next and back to the first one after a while.
Since children remain occupied for a long time negotiating different apps and their exciting images and sounds, several parents have taken to a mobile handset as a babysitter.
The parents feel a sense of relief when their baby remains engrossed in a touch and response activity over a game or a video while they attend to different chores. They complain with an affectionate tint that the child does not let them do anything unless he is given the mobile in his/her hand.
The touchscreen technology has significantly changed the environments in which young children are reared and looked after. There are several dimensions to this change. When parents leave the child alone with the mobile, they lose interest as well as a desire to know what is it that the child is busy with. Even if some of them retain it, the speed at which a touchscreen works does not permit it.
By the time a parent gets into the small screen to check what the child is doing, a simple touch can alter the information. Soon, it feels impossible to check and regulate what the child gets exposed to and a parental concern takes a back seat. Their child’s wrong posture for long hours, the damage caused to the eyes by the screen’s light and vision fail to become a matter of worry.
Several studies have already reported a sharp rise in the incidence of dry eye syndrome among children. One of the most common reasons for chronic dry eye these days is spending too much time staring at computers, TVs, smartphones and tablets.
The reality gets further complex when we start wondering how many parents truly know which images are inappropriate for children. It is a popular notion that children like cartoons but whether they play any positive role in children’s development is usually not a concern felt by most people.
There are serious problems with cartoons as commercial art forms and the kind of ideas for which they are used. A five-minute experience is enough for any parent to realise that cartoon programs use adult themes and imagery but their reliance on screen as a babysitter probably restrains them from thinking more deeply on these lines.
Several parents may brush aside even feeble attempts to make them conscious about their child rearing habits as being cynical. They claim that their child only works on learning apps and is able to learn things that they themselves are incapable of teaching. Command over English will figure at the top of such things. What does not occur to them is that picking up few English words doesn’t amount to using any language meaningfully and fluently leave alone an academic variety of command.
And, learning English words from cartoons, that have been woven around adult themes including violence, rape, sexuality etc, brings its own issues. That cannot be called learning. It can at best be called inappropriate exposure and a forced entry of adult life mysteries in a child’s life. A child ceases to be a child when s/he is brought up on adult themes as learning experiences that too without any adult intervention or control.
Children are commonly spotted using them, especially in middle-class families. Giving speech commands to a virtual assistant on mobile or gadgets like Alexa or Siri has emerged as a frequently done activity by young children and even toddlers.
Parents often get excited and feel a sense of achievement when they notice their child giving repeated commands and refining them. They consider it as some kind of learning. The response by the virtual assistant may or may not be correct but it is always a reply with no emotional truth and human complexity.
A recent study conducted by the School of Clinical Medicine, Cambridge University, has established that routine communication with artificial intelligence (AI) based mechanised voices adversely affects children’s social and cognitive development. It hampers their ability to feel emotions for others, be compassionate and also,limits their critical thinking skills. Siri’s or Alexa’s responses are a collection of millions of sound bites fed into it.
They do not come out of the human mind’s thought based on morality, need of the immediate setting, concern for each other and an attitude of parental or peer culture. They come out as task specific complaint replies. A consistent interaction with these gadgets takes away the cognitive ability and the interest in a child to take a no or a complex reply. A gadget can never say to a child, what do you think? should you be spending so much time watching these entertaining videos?
This is where parents need to realise that the use of a smart screen only makes the learning activity easier and faster; it does not make the child brighter or even a learner. It does not develop any intellectual habit or ability. Childhood is a time of developing interest by being in awe of the world and human achievements.
Mobile apps and voice- based facilities limit the world of its user as it keeps bringing up only similar and thus limited items. It does not pose any real and perplexing challenge which is necessary for growth. It only satisfies an urge to watch more and more.
It is high time that the schools take on this responsibility and counsel parents against excessive use of mobile as a babysitter. Sadly, schools are also uncritical users of mobile apps in the present times.