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 …
Cold start A 10-YEAR old controversy about whether a nuclear reprocessing plant in northwest England was responsible for a high occurrence of leukaemia reported in the area has been finally laid to rest. The English High Court recently ruled that there was not enough evidence to implicate the company -- …
DAY after day last February, scores of students in an Uttar Pradesh village spent hours outside their classrooms. They were not playing truant -- they were in the fields collecting leaves and plants for a biodiversity competition. The contest at the secondary school in Gangagarh village in Bulandshahr district was …
How do you know the uses of these ? Did you take help? I am from this area and know about these plants -- I see them being used everyday. I also asked my father and brothers and the elders in my neighbourhood. Even though my brothers don't go to …
VASANT Yeshwant Gharpure of Pune palms a very unlikely calculator -- one made of cardboard, but capable of addition, subtraction and squaring upto four digits, including decimals. "The principles," says Gharpure, "are very simple and follow those of the well-known slide rule and log tables." The doodad can even handle …
Children suffer from high blood pressure (BP) almost as much as adults, according to two studies conducted among 3,200 children aged 5-16. Among the factors attributed for the high juvenile BP levels were obesity and a family history of hypertension. One study, conducted in Ahmedabad by A B Desai and …
If a girl child in India could benefit every time somebody recounted her problems, hers would be a happy lot by now. Unfortunately, efforts to better her condition have been restricted to pieces of paper which do the rounds in various "concerned" ministries, elaborate action plans that serve to make …
JOHN BERGER, American art historian and sociologist, in an essay entitled Why look at animals?, points out that in the 19th century, animal toys such as rocking horses became popular during a societal move away from nature and towards urbanisation, and animals ceased to form a part of the immediate …
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 …
IN DECEMBER, newspapers seized gleefully upon yet another episode originating in Hyderabad of a minor Muslim girl married to an Arab. Kaneez Begum, said to be 16 years old, had been sold for Its 20,000 against her wishes. As always, the reporting was one-dimensional. So it is appropriate to focus …
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 …
Awerness-raising videos made for Western consumption are better not seen or shown in India. Though they strive hard to be politically correct, oversimplification and factual inaccuracies inevitably creep in. Neighbours -- The Life and Times of Yesudas Kemel, an educational package prepared for schools by ACTIONAID UK, a non-governmental organisation, …
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 …
Terre! Terre! (Earth! Earth!), an exhibition held in New Delhi in October, seemed to draw more children than adults. As is evident from its name, the exhibition aimed at a better understanding of the Earth's environment and its social, biological and physical dimensions. Experiments, visuals and complementary video films served …
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 …
The drug controller of India is considering banning anti- diarrheal drugs for children because they are increasingly replacing oral rehydration solutions -- the first-line treatment for replenishing lost water and salts in the body. The ban will be part of a plan to ban "irrational" combinations, which is likely to …
A CHILD at a blind school in the Okhla industrial area of Delhi feels his way around the school's grounds during recess, one hand clutching a stick and the other, a glass of milk shake. A curious combination, but the mystery is soon solved. The milk shake comes from the …
THE ACHIEVEMENTS are quite remarkable. But the challenge that still remains is quite daunting. During the 1980s, 20 developing countries halved their under-5 death rates -- the number of children who die before the age of 5, per 1,000 live births. In its first report on The Progress of Nations, …
The VERY Special Arts (VSA) programme uses art to help children with various disabilities, especially those who are mentally handicapped. Art is used for education, emotional, social and economic rehabilitation and as a vocation. Says VSA's Moyna Singh, "The idea is to use art as a tool of rehabilitation." Hypersensitive …
FOR MOST girls, fear emanates from an under-the-bed-world. In an experiment in which children aged three to four years were asked about their night-time fears, significantly more girls than boys referred to an underworld peopled with ogres and monsters, says Richard Coss, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis. …
TALKING of environment education in schools, I can't help feeling the painful irony that we, the inheritors of the Vedas, are exploring in 1993 ways to conscientise our young citizenry about our environment. Vedic chants such as Servai Bhavantu Sukhina placed value on balance and equilibrium; sanyam (discipline) and sahachar …
