The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh plans to wean away primary school children from mobile phone that has become an addiction for them.
The government plans to encourage traditional Indian games like hide and seek, blindfold, and one-legged tag in government schools.
The initiative will help around 2 crore children studying in more than 1.50 lakh government primary and upper primary schools, said state basic education department officials.
“The new National Education Policy (NEP)-2020 envisages keeping children connected to their cultural traditions while being modern, and it is part of this very vision that experts of the State Institute of Education (SIE), Prayagraj, at the behest of State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) of UP are going to use this initiative in preserving indigenous and traditional games while also helping the school kids lead a more physically active life,” said a senior state basic education department official.
To make this possible, they plan to design and make an illustrated big-book based on these traditional games for children and the teachers will make these kids play in schools on designated “Bagless Days” to be launched under NEP-2020.
Principal, State Institute of Education, Prayagraj, Naval Kishore said permission had been sought from the SCERT Uttar Pradesh to prepare a big book (a large version of a book used to share or exercise with the whole class). This big book will be used by teachers for children on ‘Bagless Days’ in schools. This will help in reducing the growing mobile phone culture among schoolchildren, he added.
Deepti Mishra, Assistant Deputy Education Director of the institute and coordinator of the State Institute of Education’s Samagra Shiksha wing, said, “Today, children are completely forgetting the traditional games because of video and mobile phone games, reels, WhatsApp memes and YouTube. They have become so engrossed in this that now they do not want to go out of the house and play outdoor games.”
“If children play these games, their mental and physical growth and ability will also be better,” she added.
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