The report presents a mixed picture. Over the past 25 years, there have been notable improvements in child well-being in the group of countries examined in this report: steady decline in child mortality, overall reduction in adolescent suicide and increase in school completion rates. But the last five years have …
A LITTLE girl gazes wide eyed at the elephant while her bored mother pulls her away: "You've seen an elephant on TV haven't you". "But ma," replies the little girl, "I didn't know it was so big." Jeremy Chervais science writer and author of Zoo 2000 recounted this story recently …
SANSKRIT -- long the preserve of priests and Vedic scholars -- may soon become more accessible to the common person, thanks to a new computerised educational system being developed by researchers at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Says G V Singh, leader of the project that is being conducted at …
The National Literacy Mission (NLM) plans to lead Delhi's 2.48 million illiterates "from darkness into light". Besides reading and writing, the mission will focus on sex education, AIDS awareness, drug and alcohol addiction, greenery, sanitation and hygiene, physical fitness, family planning, first aid, legal education, women's empowerment and immunisation. K …
HOW DO Chinese tots outperform their American counterparts? Psychologist David C Geary of the University of Missouri at Columbia, USA, who has studied the performance of Chinese and American schoolchildren, found the Chinese kids got three times as many items right in a test and they could hold more digits …
Under a 1978 agreement between the ministry of health and the Delhi Medical Students' Association, 33 per cent of all post-graduate seats in AIIMS were reserved for AIIMS graduates because they were not eligible to apply in regional medical colleges. As SC/ST students found it difficult to qualify for the …
IN CONTRAST to Indian Science Congress at Jaipur,the Children's Science Congress in the Capital was a vibrant affair. For the 350 youngsters who attended the National Children's Science Congress in the Capital recently, the projects they had prepared "were not science, they were fun." As a result, the projects were …
Dental students of Bangalore University can now face the prospect of failure with a broad display of teeth. University authorities reportedly granted grace marks to several Bachelor of Dental Sciences students to enable them to pass the 1992 annual and 1993 supplementary examinations. University sources say more than 150 students …
A SUSTAINABLE society is one that is prepared to monitor the impacts of its activities carefully, openly and democratically, analyse them and use its wisdom and knowledge to solve problems. The knowledge capital of a society is just as important for sustainability as its natural or human-made capital. Several meetings …
ANY ATTEMPT at promoting awareness of the interdependence of humans and the environment is a welcome step. This is especially true of the need to tell children about the harm that has been done to the once-good earth by generations of Homo sapiens -- the only species that is mentally …
AS PART of its literacy campaign, Bangladesh has started a food for education programme, under which a poor family will get 15 kg of cereal a month if one child goes to school, reports Panos. This would be an incentive for parents to send to school children who are otherwise …
India's agricultural universities are producing far too many forestry graduates for the jobs available. Protests by the graduates prompted the Union ministry of environment and forests (MEF) to write to the department of personnel in the Union home ministry, requesting them to include forestry as an optional paper in the …
LEWIS Carroll would have been delighted to put Alice into this wonderland. And James Thurber's Walter Mitty would have found in it an excellent refuge from his importunate wife. Virtual Reality (VR) is the latest in fantasyware -- a three-dimensional, computer-simulated landscape in which, unlike the dreamworld created by novelists …
WITH US unemployment remaining steady at an unhappy 7 per cent, the only consolation that President Bill Clinton had to offer Americans is that the Japanese are finally experiencing the same problem. In an effort to counter the joblessness that is troubling the world's largest economies, Clinton proposed a global …
Centre of Concern for Child Labour 247, Akashdarshan Apartments Mayur Vihar-I New Delhi 110 091 Ph: 2252298 Bandhua Mukti Morcha 7, Jantar Mantar Road New Delhi 110 001 Ph: 3329043 Nanban Obula Padithurai Manuchalai Road Madurai 625 009 Institute for Social Education and Development Block No 41/3, 14th Lane, Indira …
CHILDREN comprise six per cent of India's total organised work force; they also contribute an average 23 per cent of a household's domestic savings. Yet, exploitation of children as a social problem has only recently begun to agitate the international conscience. Germany and USA have now refused to import items, …
AFTER years of trying to make family planning enthusiasts understand that population control is not merely condoms, pills and other birth control devices, next year's international conference on population in Cairo nevertheless looks like it will be dominated by, well, condoms, pills and other birth control devices. The second preparatory …
WHEN CHINESE leader Mao Zedong opposed curbs on China's population growth on the ground that productivity of each extra pair of hands outweighed consumption of each additional mouth, international birth control activists were aghast. The country already accounted for about a quarter of all humans on the earth, they said, …
BANGLADESH'S massive afforestation programme is fast becoming a people's movement. More than 60 million saplings were planted last year under the programme, partly funded by the UN Development Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation. According to official sources, a countrywide radio and television programme has been started to educate …
QUEST, the science quiz on Doordarshan, has jazzed up its act with buzzers. But it is still conducted by a trio of earnest Bengalis and continues to lean heavily for its content on national science museums, such as the one in Delhi. Those who frequent this interesting museum may often …
AT THE National Film Festival this year, the winner of the award for the best feature film on family welfare was a 150-minute, tear-jerker starring Aparna Sen. Directed by Prabhat Roy with gusto, the film has enough dramatic touches to guarantee box office popularity. Shwet Paatharer Thala tells the story …
