Students, teachers, Gen Z angst... and the quest for happiness
BHOPAL: It’s 11am, and in a conference hall of the Water and Land Management Institute in Bhopal, a fierce conversation has broken out. Behind one long table, Vanchana Singh, a professor from Delhi University’s Indraprastha College is holding forth. In front of her, across the table, 120 teachers from government schools across Madhya Pradesh are struggling with the concepts being imparted to them.
From behind the lectern, Singh says, “You are a student in Class 10 and still don’t have a girlfriend; your school doesn’t have the facilities that other renowned schools in the city do; you arrive to school on a cycle, but your friend has a motorcycle -- these are just a few examples that can cause students to develop an inferiority complex early in life. But now, in this generation, it is also our duty to explain to our students not just what is right and wrong, but how to grapple with these complex feelings, and address these issues.”
Ajit Singh, though, has a question, speaking perhaps for many others in the room. “Ma’am, our children are between classes 9 and 12. Don’t you think these explanations will be an additional burden on their young minds? We can always tell them not to pay attention to these things, not to compare themselves with others. Besides, those who ask questions like these are not usually good students,” says the teacher from CM Rise School, Raisen.
Vanchana Singh smiles. She was expecting the question, and it is time to be forceful. “Will that response (telling students not to pay attention) resolve the issue? Will it clear their minds? Or prepare them for future challenges. The answer is ‘no’. We have to prepare young minds to be clearer about human values and emotions.” Conversations similar to these are playing out in training sessions across Madhya Pradesh after the state government decided introduce, as a pilot project, a “Universal Human Values” course for classes 9 to 12 in 274 “CM Rise” schools and 46 government excellence schools in the state, aiming to understand and interpret emotional triggers for children, and provide answers to questions, beyond academics, that plague Gen Z. The course, designed in collaboration between the education department, the All India Council of Technical Education and the Anand Sansthan, or the department of “happiness” created by the state government in 2016, will be introduced in this academic session, to be taught over 30 hours in the year in specially designed classes.
The course
Senior officials involved in the training module say that while this is a first-of-its-kind exercise for schoolchildren, the course has been tried and tested in higher educational institutes over the past few years.
“It has already been introduced in several IIT’s. Two years ago, the All India Council for Technical Education(AICTE) cleared the course for engineering colleges. The UP and Punjab technical education departments have also introduced the course in their jurisdictions. The course applies to students of all castes, religions and communities,” said Vanchana Singh, a physics professor at Indraprastha University.
Madhya Pradesh officials said they first decided to implement the course after startling data on student suicides and low morale were put in front of them. Data from the National Crime Records Bureau also lists Madhya Pradesh the second from bottom state (after Maharashtra), in terms of student deaths by suicide. In 2020, there were 1,158 such suicides, rising to 1,308 in 2021 according to government data.
In 2022, the state education department conducted a survey of 134,000 students to assess the mental health of teenagers in its government schools. “In the test, we gave students 45 questions on mental health, rating this on a scale of 0 to 100. The average score was 37%, and for students of rural areas, the average was 35%. This was a wake-up call and we realised we had to engage with the problem of depression in this generation,” said Shankar Khatri, a subject expert employed by the state education department.
Course designers say that the “Universal Human Values” subject matter contains a workbook that evaluates student responses, and speaks of emotional responses to different situations that life throws up, and the best ways to respond. “In the 30-hour module, several eventualities that arise in young people’s lives are discussed, with material that engages with what the appropriate response is, what an aggressive response is, and what generates feelings of satisfaction, gratitude and empathy. We use the stories of various famous personalities and how they dealt with situations to make it more interesting,” said Satya Prakash Arya, coordinator of the Happiness department.
Teacher training
But course designers say that even before students begin to engage with the course, it is important for teachers to undergo training. For one, teachers themselves need to be convinced of the benefits of the course. Second, once convinced, they must learn how to deal with emotional trauma and the questions around it.
Inder Singh Parmar, the state’s school education minister, says that this is why the “CM Rise” and government excellence schools are where this course will first be taught. “CM Rise” schools, introduced in October 2022 with a Rs 2,519 crore budget, are government institutions that seek to match the facilities of top private institutions. “This is where the best teachers teach the best students. Therefore for a better understanding of the course for teachers, we devised a six day training exercise in Bhopal,” Parmar said.
When Vanchana Singh spoke to her classroom of teachers — a session that HT attended — she referred to the notes in front of everyone. One page had the words, “What is true love? What are the popular assumptions regarding love that teenagers must have GF/BF by Class 9?”
One teacher from the audience stood up and asked, “Ma’am, what is wrong if a student has a good friend, and best friend in Class 9?” Singh laughed and responded, “Here GF/BF means girlfriend and boyfriend, and not good friend and best friend. To understand what students are going through, we must learn the language of teenagers as well.”
Some of the subject matter that Singh deals with at the training session is about issues such as stalking. “From an engineering college, we have a case study where a female student said that a classmate had ‘proposed’ to her, and was asking her to reply incessantly for three months. At one point, he confronted her aggressively after class, told her he loved her, and that he cared for her. Under this kind of pressure, the girl may have said yes to his demands for a relationship. But after being part of the Universal Values class in that college, she found the courage to identify that this was not love, and stand up to him,” Singh said.
Sapna Rani, a teacher from the CM Rise school in Sironj said, “For the first two days, training was difficult and I was blank. I kept wondering, who thinks like this, and how will I communicate this to my students. But there were misconceptions in my mind that went away as well.” Next to her, Sunil Kumar, another teacher said, “I realise now that if this course can help my students deal with emotional and mental issues better, they will be able to focus on their studies as well.”
Clinical psychiatrist Dr Satyakant Trivedi hailed the idea behind the course, and said that, after Covid 19, the number of students that need psychological help is growing. “Just as an example, this is the era of social media. You find students making reels, but they don’t understand that for most, this is not a sustainable long term goal. They are affected emotionally by the likes and comments they get. Courses like these, especially if teachers are respectful of these issues, are key,” Trivedi said.