(Image source from: newindianexpress.com)

The NDA government which is led by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has developed a Health and Wellness Curriculum under which the school children will be taught the safe use of internet and social media, reproduction health, prevention of HIV and the stereotypes based on the gender.

The Health and Wellness Curriculum has been developed together by the ministries of Human Resources Development and Health and Family Welfare. The curriculum has been launched on the 12th of February by Ramesh Pokhri ‘NIshank’ who is the minister of Human Resources Development and Harsh Vardhan who is the minister of Health and Family Welfare.

Adolescence education is also been included in the curriculum which comprises of the topics based on sex education which was a separate curriculum earlier but has now been merged.

The National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) has initially come up with the programme for the classes from 6 to 10 which is said to further be developed as modules for the classes 11 and 12.

The curriculum is said to be comprising of comic strips, role playing, group discussions and classroom activities which will be the methods that would be adopted to teach the students. The curriculum would be taught in 24 weeks and is said to focus on teaching things that are beyond what is being taught in the classrooms.

The curriculum has been divided into 11 modules which consists of growing up healthy, emotional well- being and mental health, interpersonal relationship, values and responsible citizenship, gender equality, nutrition health and sanitation, promotion of healthy lifestyles, prevention and management of substance misuse, reproductive health and HIV prevention, safety and security against violence and injuries and promotion of safe use of internet, media and social media.

The module which is named as growing up healthy covers the topics such as menstruation and nocturnal emissions for children hitting puberty. Several case studies have also been mentioned about children hitting puberty and the teachers were asked to discuss different situations regarding the same through a role play.

The study module for the misuse of social media and internet suggests that the students ought to be asked to pen down the time they spend using social media or the internet and they would be asked to analyze what is that they get to learn and also the time that is getting wasted so that they would get to understand the advantages as well as the disadvantages by themselves.

By Shrithika Kushangi