News
How and when did promoting films become integral to school curriculum?
Star cast of Sanam Re was in town, visited a school, for promotion of the film. Was a school visit really required? We wonder aloud!
Yami Gautam and Pulkit Samrat, the latest stars to feature in the scandal sheets for their ‘affair’ or lack of it, were in Jaipur on Monday to promote their upcoming romantic film Sanam Re. Flitting all over the city, they candidly gave their version to the media while at a salon. A few comments created a buzz. They had to!
This is now published in almost all the leading news dailies of Jaipur.
However, what has not been talked about, or glossed over at most, is their visit to a well-known city school, and or their shaking a leg there to ‘teach the children a step or two from their film number’.
Do our schools really need to invite such ‘glamour’? Perhaps yes, if the schools in question find it necessary to invite film stars to help students of their film club. Now, do schools in our city have film clubs? If yes, why don’t we hear about the activities of film clubs?
Some of the top-notch schools of the city do have excellent drama clubs from which come some great plays, street theatre, which we got a glimpse of during Jairangam 2015. Regular visitors to Jawahar Kala Kendra would also agree how brilliantly some Jaipur youngsters perform.
But it is a little hard to fathom how a film promotion helps these future stars develop their film-related skills? And in case they do, why don’t we see some of our Jaipur exports to the Mumbai film and television industry like Himanshu Jhankal or Anup Soni or Ritu Bhatia holding workshops here? Small names, perhaps yes, but surely the right candidates to teach our children the intricacies of this art or reveal something realistic than merely signing autographs and adding glamour to the school guest book.
Maybe, Rawat Public School, the school in question, did not really think of it this way on Monday, but isn’t it time our schools thought beyond just add-ons to their lists, isn’t it time schools paid more attention to developing skills in their students?