Anandiben urges teachers to make ‘model schools’

Launching a state wide ‘Gyan Saptah’ (Knowledge Week) on Monday by giving a live speech to teachers, students, parents as well as school administrations of all primary and secondary schools of the state, she said, “Let us pledge to make all of our schools model schools, like we have developed the Gujarat Model”.

Terming primary education as a “base” to construct a “giant structure”, Patel said that primary knowledge of reading, mathematics and writing would be ensure educational advancement in future generations of society.

She said that it is important to sow seeds of cleanliness and health in young minds and appealed to teachers as well as parents to lay special emphasis on personal cleanliness and a healthy lifestyle among children to instil such virtues in them.

Patel said “Gyan Saptah” would provide a platform to students to bring out their natural talents.

She also urged the teaching fraternity to organise multi-faceted programmes in schools to bring out “hidden talent” in students.

Incidentally, the songs selected by the department, mostly in Hindi are also sung at Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh shakhas and its education wing Vidya Bharti. The education department ensured that the collection of eleven songs in the form of a CD, starting with guru vandana reached all schools before September 1. For this, the concerned district education offices and municipal school boards burnt CDs from the original one which were in no time distributed to all schools by Saturday.

“All students participated in the morning assembly where we were asked to play songs from the list given to us by the education department. Students and teachers are new to these patriotic songs and we hardly had any time to practice these else students would have sung these during the assembly. But students will soon prepare and in the coming days will also sing these during Gyan Saptah celebrations,” said principal of Shahpur municipal school Rahena Mansuri.

This was followed by a reading from the booklet on nationalist heroes, ‘Asmita Darshan’ distributed to the school, from which a Class VIII student Kiran Dataniya read, “Veer Savarkar- On October 7 of 1905 a huge procession along with a cart full of foreign clothes was carried out. Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Shivram Paranjape were also a part of this procession. Near a wooden bridge in Pune, the cart was set on fire…….”  as the students listened.

The book that celebrates Veer Savarkar over Mahatama Gandhi has short stories on ten leaders including Swami Vivekanand, Subhash Chandra Bose, Ravindranath Tagore, noted poet, social reformer and freedom fighter from Gujarat Jhaverchand Meghani while Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan has been listed on the last page.

These songs and book would be used during the week-long celebration for performing individual and group patriotic songs along with celebrating freedom fighters and leaders as part of the Gyan Saptah schedule of events.

In the end, students participated in decorating their classrooms and schools that listed as one of the activities on the first day of Gyan Saptah. (With PTI inputs)