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12-yr-olds protest against unnecessary heavy school bags, threaten hunger strike.
Rigved and Paritosh have become the youngest individuals to hold an independent press conference. While Rigved weighs 28kg, his school bag weighed over 7kg (about 25% of body weight). This figure is clearly way above the stipulated norm. They have threatened to go on a hunger strike if the school do
The government is concerned about the burden of education on children, both on their shoulders and on their minds. For the former the Maharashtra state government has already issue a circular back in November 2015 mandating schools to ensure that the weight of the school bag is not more than 10% of a student's body weight. However it seems some schools in Chandrapur have turned a blind eye to the directive.
The situation has come to such a head that 2 class VII boys – Rigved and Paritosh from the CBSE affiliated Vidya Niketan School have taken matters in their own hands as they have decided to protest and go on a hunger strike if the school doesn’t lighten the burden.
At a press conference held at the Press Club in Chandrapur, Rigved opened his school bag and displayed the books to the attending media making a point that the students were forced to carry all the books to school irrespective of the number of periods they had. This was due to the fear and uncertainty of the teacher ending up asking for a particular book.
Inadvertently the boys, Rigved and Paritosh have become the youngest individuals to hold an independent press conference. While Rigved weighs 28kg, his school bag weighed over 7kg (about 25% of body weight). This figure was clearly way above the stipulated norm.
"I carry this heavy bag on my shoulder up two floors to my classroom every day. After school ends, we have to queue up for 15 minutes or more every day at the stairs to allow the students on the lower floors to leave. I had to switch from schoolbus to autorickshaw this year as I had to often carry the schoolbag on my shoulders on way home failing to find space to put the bag in schoolbus," Rigved said.
He further shared that he suffered from pain in the shoulders, neck and back due to the heavy bag. He has trouble concentrating due to the pains and the accompanying stress. He pointed out that because of the heavy bags, many parents accompanied their children all the way up the two flights of stairs till the classroom.
Rigved's uncle Mayur Raikwar, a former district convener of Aam Admi Party, said he had already submitted a letter to the school principal asking for a reduction in weight of the school bag, but no action had been taken.
Seeing no result of the letter, Raikwar even approached the education minister Vinod Tawade. After giving a patient hearing to the case, the minister noted the name of Rigved's school. Even after regular follow-ups by the minister's personal assistant no action was initiated.
Rigved’s family feels that carrying a lighter schoolbag is his (Rigved's) right and hence they are fully supporting his protest.
Sapana Pittalwar, the Principal of Vidya Niketan School claimed ignorance of the protest threatened by the two students for reducing the weight of schoolbag. She said that the school was already aware of the issue and measures had already been initiated by the school for the same.
She said that the school was concerned about the weight of school bags and the matter had already been resolved for pre-primary and primary classes. The students in these grades keep their books and notebooks in school only unless they were assigned homework. Plans are on the anvil to follow the same guidelines for the senior classes, however, the implementation has suffered a delay due to the construction time for installing additional cupboards.
Many parents said it was the same story at most other CBSE schools in the city. Schools blatantly flout government norms. The schools are always prompt in hiking the fees by 10-25% annually but don’t care enough to install lockers in classrooms, the parents said. The parents want the local education department to proactively visit CBSE schools to verify whether the school bag weight is as state government per directives.
Last year, in September a state government-appointed committee had reported that children were forced to carry 20-30% heavier schoolbags than what could be carried by children of their age. This resulted in approximately 60% students below the age of 10 ending up with orthopaedic as well as stress-induced ailments.
* Read the original story by Masher Ali on www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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