Students Keep Pace with Changing Times

It's often called a living text book. The only text a majority of children continue to read throughout their lives.

It's the newspaper, which school students in Hyderabad can now use as a tool in the classroom to take a break from the usually serious science, enigmatic math and boring history classes and peep into the innumerable, interesting and multifaceted aspects of the contemporary world.

The Times-Newspaper in Education (TIMES-NIE) programme in schools, started by the Times of India in 1985 in Delhi, and soon extended to Pune, Lucknow, Chandigarh and Bangalore, has come to the twin cities.

While, nearly 600 schools and over 200,000 students countrywide are part of the TIMES-NIE programme, 15-20 premier schools in Hyderabad have already become members since it's two months presence here.

The TIMES-NIE programme, which was a takeoff from a similar concept in the United States, involves "Learning Through Fun.. Learning for Life," which is also its motto.

Though the concept took off from the the US concept which aimed at encouraging reading habits in schoolchildren that was supposed to be dying out with the advent of television, the TIMES-NIE is innovated to suit the Indian conditions.

The NIE team has recruited consultants in various extra-curricular activities such as cartooning, ikebana, origami, classical dance, puppetry, photography, creative writing, time management and personality development skills etc, to conduct NIE workshops in the member schools.

Workshops are also held in theatre, flower arrangement, waste management, magic, mimicry, ventriloquism, aerobics, yoga, reiki, public speaking, cosmology, carnatic music, basic and career counselling.

In these sessions, the newspaper is used as a tool to start off discussions on these varied topics and in the process also teach the students various arts, crafts and skills. The programme is conducted free of cost, but the newspaper is offered to the school at a subsidised price.

Besides these workshops, students also bring out a four-page colour supplement exclusive to the TIMES-NIE members. "The Times Offspring" not just provides them an interesing forum to share news about themselves and express their views and ideas, but also acts as an ideal grooming platform for budding journos.

An exciting trip to the Times of India press to educate these young reporters on the intricacies of a newspaper company, is also part of the programme.

There are various events such as inter-school funfests spanning arts, literature, dance and music, and the Times Cricket Cup in the offing.

So are the TIMES-NIE Speak, an event to build the public speaking skills for the "future orators," and the Tree Foundation, an eco-initiative to sensitise students to the environment.

Cheers then to learning with fun!