EDUCATION

Cool summer camps for kids
Tribune News Service

Panchkula, May 20
With schools having closed down for summer vacations, a number of exciting workshops to engage students constructively during the break have been announced, most of them commencing tomorrow.

Activities at these workshops range from dramatics to computer education, trekking to cooking, providing students an opportunity to pick and choose according to their interest.

A summer fun camp and workshop is scheduled to commence at Blue Bird High School, Sector 16, tomorrow, and will continue till June 5. Besides, the routine drawing and painting workshop, the school will hold cookery classes for those interested.

Taught by a local dance group, dancing and singing classes have elicited a good response from the students, while classes of water colouring, sketching, glass painting, foil painting and mural painting are also being held, the Principal, Ms V. Bhatnagar, stated.

Meanwhile, a comprehensive activity-based summer school programme, Headstart Kool Scool, for children between the age group of 5 to 13 years will begin from May 28 and continue till June 9.

At Toddlers World, Sector 10, the programme has five workshops to tap the creative enthusiasm for learning, the organiser, Mr Tarun Attrey, said.

The thrust of the workshop would be on interactive participation, learning relevant things through fun and games and developing the skills of the child. Theatre-in-education, for children aged between 7 to 13 years, would teach the participants the mechanics of drama and acting, in addition to how to choose a story and dialogue delivery.

Another workshop, titled VIBGYOR, has sessions for 5 to 8-year-olds on using various colour and texture media, while kaleidoscope, for children in the age group of 9 to 13 years, will enable students to dabble in clay modeling, glass painting, paper sculpture and mask-making.

A dance-oriented workshop for children between 10 to13 years is being organised in addition to a computer education one, which is also a part of the package.

The Surajpur DAV Senior Public School has planned a 10-day “Sukriti Summer Camp” for students, scheduled from May 21 to May 31.

‘Marxism not a creed’
Our Correspondent

Chandigarh, May 20
Karl Marx was optimistic about the future of socialism, but he was no determinist. There was no inevitabilities or guarantees of victory in Marx. He had insisted in the Communist Manifesto that the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle. Marx had immediately added that each time this struggle ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

This was stated by Prof Ravinder Singh, former professor of political theory, while delivering a talk on The Return of Karl Marx organised by the Janwadi Chetna Manch here.

Professor Singh said Marx was relevant in today’s world as we were living, nationally and globally, in a world of capitalism. According to Professor Singh, Marx never lacked enemies, who had been busy refuting, misrepresenting and vulgarising him over the past 100 years and more. He said, “Marx has suffered equally, perhaps more, at the hands of friends.”

Professor Singh said, “Marxism is not a creed, a system of beliefs, as the term is conventionally understood or defined.

Though friends and enemies have tended to treat it like one, Marxists themselves have ever so often behaved like believers. It was virtually reduced to a state religion in the erstwhile Soviet Union”. He said Marx had left behind no creed, no system of beliefs for the faithful to uphold and proclaim, but most importantly, a method of thinking, a critique of capitalism, the unjust and inhuman society he wanted overthrow, and the vision of a just and humane society beyond capitalism.

It was this legacy of Marx, which was today central to the making of a viable creed — if we must use the word — for the new millennium.

An eminent Marxist scholar, he said Marx had hailed the productive achievements of capitalism, but he had also pointed out both the damage capitalism regularly inflicted upon man and nature and its long-term destructive potential, which Rosa Luxemberg well summed up as ‘socialism or barbarism’.

He concluded by saying, “History has been cruel, so far at least, to Marx, to Lenin and Mao, as also to Gandhi and Nehru, and many others”.

Books, uniforms worth Rs 3 lakh distributed
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 20
As many as 600 needy and deserving school children were given aid worth Rs 3 lakh in the form of books, stationary, shoes and uniforms by the Haryana Governor Babu Parmanand under the auspices of project “Sahyog” organised by the Chandigarh chapter of Bharat Vikas Parishad in the MCM DAV College here today.

Speaking on the occasion, Babu Parmanand lauded the selfless efforts of the parishad for coming to the help of the needy students, particularly those belonging to deprived and downtrodden sections of society. He praised the parishad for undertaking such projects and called upon the rich section of society to come forward and help those who are not as lucky as them.

Quoting anecdotes and stories from the epics, he said: “All religions teach us to help and cooperate with those who are poor and needy”.

Most of the students who received the aid belonged to the slum-dwelling families.

Twentyfive of these students, who had scored as high as 90 per cent marks in their annual examinations or achieved positions in sports, were specially honoured with momentoes.

These students included Sunita Rawat, Shagufta, Meenu Kumari, Shalini, Pardeep Singh, Parmod, Ekta, Deepika, Laxmi Devi, Mohammad Danish, Shanti, Ramesh Kumar, Lalit, Neelam, Rita, Surmila, Reenu, Narinder Kaur, Sandip Kumar, Rajesh Kumar, Dimple Rawat, Rekha, Ranjita, Prema, and Mamta Taneja.

Dr J. Rai, Professor of Orthopaedics, PGI, was the guest of honour at the occasion. Mr K.L. Chauhan, Project Director, Mr B.K. Kapoor, Chairman, Mr Ashok Goyal, President (west), Mr I. S. Bansal, President (east) and Mr M.S. Chibber, President (North) were also present on the occasion.

COURTS

Lawyers’ strike today
Our Correspondent

Chandigarh, May 20
The District Bar Association will observe a strike tomorrow on the call of the District Bar Association of Sangrur in protest against the action of Sangrur police in which about 30 lawyers were injured. The President of the Bar body, Mr H. S. Hundal, in a press note issued here yesterday, condemned the action of the police and the “failure” of officials to control the situation.