Articles

Lokmat article : Heavy school bags - 1

Lokmat article : Heavy school bags - 2

India today article : India's unhealthy kids

Lokmat article : Heavy school bags - 1

 There was an interesting article in the Lokmat Supplement on 10^th Nov 2009. Here is a translation of the article. It is followed by comments from the Millennium Team.

‘Oh mother! How heavy this school bag is!’ This is the thought with which our children express everyday when they pick up their bag to go to school. However, these thoughts somehow are not understood by the school teachers and the education board. The State Health Commission has understood the feelings these children have and has set a guideline about the maximum permissible weight the schoolbag of a child of a certain class can have. However, no school follows these guidelines. That is why these little children think about their parents (Aai ga, Arre baap re) every time they pick up their bag. And in many cases, it is the parents who carry bags for these children to school. It is really necessary now for the education board to give an order that schools should follow its orders!

The order was to be implemented from this academic year onwards, however no such thing was done. For many years now, school students have been carrying heavy school bags. Lesser studying and heavier bags is what we have been observing lately. The heavy school bags are causing backaches in children. School children spend 8 hours outside their homes with these heavy loads, akin to manual labourers.

Because most people live in cities, children have to travel great distances to get to school. At the same time, the burden on their back is also increasing. Parents have been complaining that the load of the school bag is giving the children increasing shoulder pain and back pain. The State Commission for Human Rights has given orders to all education boards to look into the matter and has asked them to look into ways of reducing the weight of school bags. If the schools fail to reduce the weight of the school bags, they are liable to pay a hefty fine. However, till date, not a single school has taken cognizance of this rule.

Comments from Team Millennium:

We had already tackled this problem long before parents and the education board even realised it existed! Dr. Phatak started the system of worksheets way back in 1988 when the term wasn’t even coined. At Millennium we have completely eliminated the school bag and brought in high quality academics. Children get everything they need in the school – including pencils and erasers. We are a bagless school where kids learn more things than any school – period. Sometimes we wonder, why don’t these people just pick up our working model and follow it! We already have found the solution to all these problems, haven’t we?

Lokmat article : Heavy school bags - 2

There was an interesting article in the Lokmat Supplement on 11th Nov 2009. Here is a translation of the article. It is followed by comments from the Millennium Team.

 The school education board has given guidelines to schools about how heavy their students’ school bags should be. The weight changes according to the class the child is in and is shown in the chart below:

There is no restriction on school bag weights beyond std 7 however, the order states that the weight should not be so high that it puts the back of the students under strain. Schools have been told that children should not have to carry anything other than the textbooks to school. They should not be made to carry guides and workbooks.

Human rights officer, Justice V. G. Munshi has stated schools not following these guidelines will have to face strict punishment. It is the duty of the education department to make sure that schools are following these guidelines. The education department has to check for this every 4 months. However, it is necessary to check whether even this order has been understood by the education department in the first place!

Actually, it was in January 1997 that the state government asked for school bag weights to be reduced. A committee was formed to look into the matter. The committee surveyed 1475 schools from 15 districts and covered 10,000 students. Their studies show that children carry anything between 4 to 10 kgs on their back to school. This results in children suffering from backaches, headaches, dizziness and other such problems.

Former Justice R. G. Sikander realised that schools do not follow any load reducing directives. That is why he complained to the Human Rights Division. Acting on his complaint, the Commission has taken stock of the situation and given orders again. It was expected that a formal announcement to follow this decision would be made at the beginning of this academic year. However, the year is about to come to an end and still no directives have come from the education board.

Comments from Team Millennium:

We keep would have to keep repeating ourselves – we have a solution to this problem. How much does the school bag of a Millennium student weigh? Right from Nursery to class 10, the weight of the student’s school bag is ZERO mg. What the human rights and education departments need is some advise from us to guide the way!

 India today article : India's unhealthy kids

Here are some excerpts from an article in India Today (Nov 2 2009 issue). The article was titled ‘How healthy is your child?’. It states the results of a survey of 40,000 schoolchildren across seven states in India and reveals alarming trends about how unhealthy our children really are and a public health crisis in the making. (Team Millennium comments are embedded within the article in parenthesis and in italics)
 
Original article at India Today

Shocking facts:

    * 12% of Indian school children face hospitalization compared to 3% adults.
    * 62% each irregular untimely meals, snacking mindlessly through the day
    * 34% children are in poor health, 37% physically unfit
    * 34% children pop pills everyday, compared to 31% adults.
    * 37% gorge on sweets everyday.
    * 32% eat junk food as a major meal 3 times a week
    * 43% do not eat veggies and fruits daily
    * 49% have low protein intake
    * 31% drink less than two cups of milk a day
    * 19% feel they are at breaking point, unable to cope with studies
    * 30% children have dental problems, compared to 22% adults
    * 40% of children are seriously overweight
    * 30% have poor muscle strength and shape
    * 63% become breathless when climbing stairs
    * 54% sent off to coaching classes after school
    * 30% do not have the time to play outdoor games
    * 30% watch television for 4 to 6 hours daily
    * Q: "Do any of your friends indulge in alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, reckless driving and sexual activity?"
      Yes: 34%
    * Q: "Have you ever indulged in alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, reckless driving or sexual activity?"
      Yes: 32%

(Team Millennium comments: It is indeed shocking for us to see these statistics. Coming from a reputed magazine like India Today, we cannot even reject it as false. That does indeed mean that India has a very unhealthy next generation! We take comfort in the fact that students at Millennium are definitely not part of this population. They play sports everyday for 1 ½ hour. They are given nutritious food for lunch. They drink a glass of milk in school. Healthy snacks are served in the school too. Other than the meals at home, they do not get a chance to gorge on sweets. Their meals in school are also on time. Most of their studying is done in school itself, they do not need coaching classes. With such habits, it is very unlikely that they would indulge in bad habits.)

From the article:

Here’s some news that will give parents more reasons to lie awake at night. India’s children of prosperity may have much more – clothes, toys, gadgets, sports equipment – than their parents ever did. But with the economic advances of recent years-pumping in new money and new foods-there has been a telling change in the health of the country's young citizens. According to a sweeping study conducted by the wellness R&D section of Apollo Hospitals, urban Indian children are not well.

The numbers tell only part of the story. In a world that's raining food, making healthy choices about what and how to eat is not easy. The saga of little lives reflects that diet conundrum. Ankit Parashar of Lucknow might be just 12, but he has already been to the OT and back for what is essentially an adult affliction-gall stone. The doctor's diagnosis? Too much junk food. "Instead of preparing fresh tiffin, I used to give him money to buy food from the canteen," says his contrite mother, who works with a bank.

"The shifting contours of the post-globalisation family-with more working mothers and both parents putting in more hours on the job- have created new circumstances of parenting," says Delhi-based counsellor Gitanjali Kumar. As lives become busier, there is less time to cook healthy meals, more people eat at restaurants, grab takeout food or buy frozen foods to heat up at home.

Ankit, obviously, belongs to the brigade of surveyed children, who score high on knowledge related to food (81 per cent), yet have appallingly disbalanced diets (29 per cent). "Except for the fact that more adults are overweight (61 per cent adults to 39 per cent children) in all other aspects of nutrition, children fare far worse than adults," points out Kennedy.

Track the diet demon: 31 per cent drink less than two cups of milk every day; 37 per cent eat sweets with each meal daily; 43 per cent refuse fruits and veggies; pizzas and burgers form a major meal at least three times a week, for 32 per cent; 35 per cent frequent fast food centres more than twice a week.

When endocrinologist Dr Nikhil Tandon went around Delhi in 2006- measuring and weighing 21,485 schoolchildren between age 5-18-he was taken aback by the high burden of excess weight (18 per cent) and obesity (6 per cent) among them. "In the past two decades, adolescent weight has gone up by 5-15 kg," says Tandon, professor at the department of endocrinology and metabolism, AIIMS.

"The soaring symptoms of metabolic dysfunction among them indicate early onset of conditions like diabetes, hypertension, heart diseases and polycystic ovarian syndrome." It's not just the rich kids in the capital. An ongoing Fortis Hospital study, that also covers cities beyond Delhi (Agra, Jaipur, Allahabad and Pune), finds abdominal fat, insulin resistance and hypertension in one among four schoolchildren-indicting a likely explosion of lifestyle diseases when they reach the 20s.

(Team Millennium comments: Terrible and sad. With the current lifestyle demanding that both mother and father work, it is the poor children who suffer. Strangely, the whole idea of working is to provide a better future to the children – so the whole situation is one big paradox in itself. But again, we can say that Millennium has solved this problem – all we do is have the children eat healthy meals in the school. They cannot choose to have a burger and fries for lunch. They cannot reject drinking milk. They cannot say no to the first serving of salads and vegetables. Millennium is on the right path to a healthy future. )

From the article:

Pritish Daudkhane is all of 11. But his schedules are more demanding and days more packed than his parents. And his mother, Parumita, who runs coaching classes in Navi Mumbai, is worried sick. Pritish looks and acts drained and exhausted at the end of each day. The student of Vasant Vihar High School wakes up every morning at 5.30 to catch his school bus, gets back by 2 p.m., watches television or plays computer games till it's time to do homework or leave for coaching classes.

"He wakes up too early," claims his mother. "With the pressure of homework and coaching classes, he hardly has the physical stamina or enthusiasm to do anything else." Pritish got into this mode ever since he entered high school. "I have never consulted a counsellor because every child seems to be leading this sort of a life. But it upsets me," she says.

The survey rings alarm bells over the physical fitness of children. The World Health Organization guidelines recommend 60 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity each day, with activities to improve bone health, muscle strength and flexibility at least twice a week. But India's couch potato kids (over 30 per cent) prefer to spend 4-6 hours a day in front of the TV. Over 37 per cent are physically unfit; 30 per cent don't have the time to play; 30 per cent have poor muscle strength and shape and 43 per cent have poor joint mobility.

"Children are turning out to be sitting ducks for bone disorders later in life," says Dr Ambrish Mithal, endocrinologist with Apollo Indraprastha Hospital in Delhi. A new study by AIIMS and the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences in Delhi found rampant vitamin D deficiency (essential for strong bones) in nearly 90 per cent schoolchildren in the city in 2006.

(Team Millennium comments: Children come to school in the morning and have all the things they need at one place – academics, activities, sports, meals. They do not have to spend time commuting between activities, school and home. Moreover, with our planned and systematic academics, most of the children do not even need coaching classes. Through our e-school system, they can revise material, listen to lectures and take tests again from the comfort of their own home! )

From the article:

"Teenage is the time for hormonal change. A lot of parents don't recognise that," says Bedi. "Kids don't feel at home when they are at home. When they come back from school, parents are away. At home parents are either too tired or too busy. Home is like a hostel these days," he adds. No wonder, for 36 per cent of the surveyed children, home is not a refuge, 40 per cent can't confide in their parents, 16 per cent crave for love from extended family and 7 per cent are from broken homes.

Ahmedabad boy, Satyam Patel, 14, landed up in a hospital with an abysmal haemoglobin count of eight. It was just waiting to happen. The reed-thin student of class IX would skip breakfast, scarf down unhealthy fried food at school, hurry through lunch, slog at his all-subject coaching class in the afternoon and burn the midnight oil over his school and tuition homework. No one noticed when the drudgery started telling on him, until one day he fell sick.

"Parental pressure to do well in life takes a huge toll on today's troubled children," says city psychologist, Dr Prashant Bhimani. "Another thorny issue is a father's unwillingness to spend enough time with children," he points out. With Bhimani's help, Satyam is well on his way to recovery.

(Team Millennium comments: Again, the problems of both parents working for a better future and lifestyle for the child backfires. Intention is good but results are devastating. A good day boarding school which encompasses all activities under one roof would be a good solution to this. The child would study properly, eat well and be active. Parents wouldn’t have to worry about homework and would be able to relax and have a good time with their children. Is there a school where this does actually happen? Yes. Us. )

From the article:

 Doctors across the country are pressing the panic button. Paediatrician, Dr Paresh Majmudar, who owns two hospitals in Vadodara, feels worried about the lack of awareness among parents. "A 11-year-old weighs 70 kg, yet he is a 'healthy child' to his parents," he says. "Parents also tend to pass on their stress and ambitions to children. More than a child's health, the fact that he would miss a day of school bothers some parents more." Ask Dr Gaur Chaudhary of SGP Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow. His project, Hope Initiative, surveyed 22,000 children in 10 districts of Uttar Pradesh. "There's a huge gap between the health of urban and rural children, yet all of them are united in one thing-bad health."

This is one study where there are only losers: parents for their lack of understanding and children for the predicament they find themselves in. The truth, however unsavoury, is writ large on the wall: regaining the future health of the nation ultimately rests on parents. Cardiologist Dr K.S. Reddy, director of Public Health Foundation of India, recommends looking back and learning from the past.

"A 100 years ago, there was no such thing as snack food-nothing you could pop open and overeat," he says. "People ate plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. And low-technology lifestyles demanded more physical activity." So find ways to get your child 60 active minutes each day, at least; encourage them to jump around; opt for regular, timely and home-cooked meals. The route to wellbeing is never easy. Parents will need to be healthy role models more than ever if they don't want to be responsible for the dwindling health of generation next. Turn off the television now and go for a walk for your child's sake.

(Team Millennium comments: Yes, we have seen these problems too. We would rest the blame entirely on the parents in this case. We have this experience ourselves. Parents do not like to accept that they, or their children are overweight. When we spoke to some kids who were really overweight and needed to lose weight, we were told that he ate out with his friends every night. Now, we provide the child with all meals except dinner. So, we expect at least parents of our school to make sure the child eats healthy for that one meal at home. One meal of the week can be a junk meal but the others should be quality ones. We recommend that parents accept their children’s obesity, stop giving them access to pocket money for food and also make dinner time a family activity at home. It will lead to healthier bodies and emotionally stable children. )