The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

EDUCATION

HAMARA SCHOOL
ST. THOMAS SR. SECONDARY SCHOOL
Moral education is an integral part of this school
Asha Ahuja

St. Thomas Senior Secondary School, Ludhiana.

Kanika, class VI-A

Najma, class V-A

Vikas, class VII-C

“Always abounding in the work of the Lord, afor as much as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” The school got its name after St. Thomas, the first disciple of Jesus Christ that came to India. Creation of a true citizen is the aspiration of St. Thomas Senior secondary School, Brown Road, Ludhiana.

The school was established in 1971 by the Church of North India, Diocese of Chandigarh. It had a humble beginning with just two rooms. Ms H. Malaki took over as Principal of the school in 1980. Since then under the able guidance of the Chairman Rt. Rev. Joel V. Mal, the school has made incredible progress.

The school has established a reputation of its own and is now regarded as one of the leading institutions in Ludhiana city. It is affiliated to CBSE, New Delhi, and is run by the St. Thomas Educational and Research Society. The school is spread over an area of 2.73 acres. It is situated in the heart of the city near Christian Medical College and Hospital. At present the school has a strength of around 3000 students whose physical, intellectual and spiritual needs are taken care of by a team of more than 100 experienced and efficient teachers.

The students of St. Thomas have shown tremendous acumen not only in academic excellence but also in sports and other co-curricular activities. In order to develop the overall personalty of the child, many co-curricular activities are being organised. For their all-round development, the students are encouraged to participate in various inter-house and other school competitions. Activities like quizzes, debates, declamation contests, plays, dances, music, singing, drawing, painting, art and craft, photography and gardening are held from time to time. The activities make a very positive contribution towards students’ cultural and aesthetic development.

The school follows a democratic method of administration through school house system. The students are encouraged to take various responsibilities. A team of prefects taken from the different houses helps in maintaining school discipline and in organising various functions in the school. In this way a sense of responsibility is inculcated in the students and they develop leadership qualities. Students are not empty vessels to be filled with dry facts and figures.

They should rather be on fed on solid ethics and morals. Only then they can become responsible human beings. Therefore, St. Thomas family’s main objective is to impart value-based education. In order to achieve our objectives, moral education is an integral part of the school curriculum.

The purpose of our imparting education is not confined to the scholastic achievements of the students but their holistic development, so that their approach to life may be positive. Every child with his potential human resources is an asset to the country. Therefore, St. Thomas endeavours to impart not only textual knowledge but also inculcate strong ethics to help students grow into valuable citizens of our country. We educate the children to develop self control, the habit of holding passions and prejudices and evil tendencies, subject to an upright and reasoning will, and the two bend their energies in social engineering to abolish misery and evils from society.

Our school gives utmost importance to discipline. And to deal with the child’s problems at time, when behaviour and attitude of the student become unacceptable, we try to find out the reason for such behaviour and counsel them appropriately to realise their mistake rather than a corporal punishment so that that become constructive members of the society.

‘Take religion as guide, friend and hope for future’

On religion

“If you take religion as a guide, you shall find it as a friends, a joy in prosperity, a comfort in adversity, peace in conscience, strength for duty, hope for future and endless blessedness,” says Ms Hannah Malaki, principal of St. Thomas Senior Secondary School. She believes humanity is the best religion. Building up of moral ethics is a must for the all round development of the child’s personality. At St. Thomas, that is what Ms Malaki is striving for her students. After the child finishes his education, he/she should carry the values learnt at school within oneself. The syllabus is taught keeping moral values in mind. We have to prepare good citizens for the country. Without value-based education, it is impossible to prepare citizens who are upright and have a good set of intrinsic values.

On discipline

Any school that has to march ahead has to have perfect discipline. We are all supervisors here, my teachers and I. If the students are satisfied by the way teachers teach, quite a lot of disciplinary problems never arise. The teachers carefully plan their lessons. If discipline problems arise, the best way is to reason out with the students and sometimes the parents are also called to sort out the problems. At times the child is unruly due to some family problems. So the counseller talks to the parents in order to find out the underlying reason for his aggressive and rude behavior.

On education

The syllabi is getting tougher and tougher. It causes a lot of strain on the students. We cope with it, but definitely some topics are irrelevant. The need of the hour is to make syllabi more related to real life and more useful. We have put a blanket ban on tuitions, but the trend of the parents is to rush for private tuitions, which further strains the student. I feel classroom teaching is sufficient provided the students are attentive. For the students weak in studies, special classes are organised. In competitive examination, the knowledge gained through the CBSE examination is quite useful. Education should give fecundity of thought, abundance of illustration, quickness, vigour, fancy, words, images, and expression and sharpen and beautify every common thing and that is our goal.

Poems by students

Holidays

I went on holiday this summer,

I had a lovely time,

The sky and mountains were clear and clean

And the weather was so fine

You need dear ones on a holiday

If you want to have some fun

We saw the huts and the temples

built on the mountains so high

And they presented such a beautiful sight

On a clear and starry night

That I could only hold my heart and heave a sigh

When it started raining in the evening

the clouds overlapped in the evening

The clouds overlapped the mountains

And appeared so close to us

That it almost made me mad with happiness

And I felt like dancing and singing

So wonder struck I was

To see the beauty of the place

That I think I never knew

The mountains and the trees and the clouds

Can have such charm and grace

I used my camera to capture

The glorious moments we all shared

So that I could relive them

Whenever I felt sad in future

Adurti Banerjee, class VIII-C

What is life?

Life is a cake

which needs the icing of laughter

Life is rain

that welcomes a rainbow thereafter

Life is a baby

which needs to be nurtured carefully

Life is a blessing of God

which needs to be accepted thankfully

Life is a black paper

Which needs to be filled with colours

Life is a story

which is full of humour

Life is a result of a cause

which can be imagined in a pause

Life is full of happiness

when it is shared.

Sourabh Jindal, class X-B

Teacher

When the bell sounds right in the morning,

and I sit on my seat with my face charming

The teacher enters into the class

with her purse of the colour of brass

she teaches us History and Chemistry,

She teaches us Physics and Civics

She has neither any homework to do

nor prepare for the exams

I wish I were a teacher

crying all the day

Study! Children study!

Mohit Arora, class VI-A

My favourite subject

Oh Science!

You are so fine

you make me shine

in the class of many

when I get less marks in other subjects

you never let me down

When I get bored of your colleagues

you make my reading you

enthusiastically

Learning other subjects scares me

But reading your facts cheers me

Reading history, geography

Is waste of time

But you help one

to choose his line

that’s why I consider you

As my favourite subject

Ritika Singla, class X-A

Gaiety marks KVM fete
Our Correspondent

Ludhiana, October 13
The campus of Kundan Vidya Mandir (KVM) was a hub of feverish activity as a fete was organised for the first time here today. Lala Lajpat Rai, MP, Rajya Sabha inaugurated the fete. He was presented a bouquet by the Principal of the KVM, Mrs Neena Khanna.

Excitement and enthusiasm were writ on the faces of students and teachers as they worked in the stalls. The students of six houses of the school put up their stalls having two eatables and two games each. A variety of cuisine from different states was there to be relished. Besides various games, the tambola stall also attracted a large gathering. Gifts were given away to winners of all games. Songs played on request and the dance corner kept the situation alive.

A draw of lots was taken out at around 5.30 p.m. for the ‘raffle tickets’ sold to people of Ludhiana through students. The first prize was a 1.5 tonne LG airconditioner.

The campus wore a festive look with silver and golden buntings. Each stall was decorated on a theme and was to be judged for the best decorated stall contest.

Essays invited
Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, October 13
The Dean, College of Basic Sciences and Humanities, PAU, has invited essays from bonafide students of the university on evolution and related subjects for the M.S. Randhawa medal. The topics are “Conservation of biodiversity: in theory and practices”, “The evolution of split genes” and “Transgenic animals”.

The student with the best essay will be awarded the “M.S. Randhawa medal” and a certificate at the time of the annual convocation of the university. According to Dr M.A. Zahir, Dean, College of Basic Sciences and Humanities, a student can submit an essay on only one topic and it should not exceed more than 3,000 words.

He further notified that the books, periodicals or journals from which the subject matter was taken for writing the essay should be cited as reference at the end of the essay and the references thus cited are outside the word limit. However, the tables and figures will be taken into account for arriving at the word limit.

Dr Zahir also clarified that the essays exceeding the word limit will not be considered for the medal. Five copies of the essay must be submitted to the Dean, College of Basic Sciences and Humanities, PAU, before November 3.

‘Save Environment Day’ competitions
Our Correspondent

Ludhiana, October 13
‘Save environment day’ was celebrated in the Malwa Central College for Education yesterday. Competitions in poster-making, collage-making, foliage arrangement, rare plant collection and green dress were held.

The results are:

Best green dress, depicting green environment: Raakhi Batta (1), Gurjot Kaur (2), Jasleen and Jaslir 3. More than 100 students participated in the competition.

Poster-making: Babita (1), Rajdeep Kaur (2), special prize for Manpreet Kaur

Collage-making: Shivika (1), Harpreet (2), special prize for Deepa Sharma.

Rare plant collection: Manminder (1), Bhallinder Kaur (2).

Dr Malvinder Ahuja from the Department of Education, Panjab University, Chandigarh, gave away the prizes.

A seminar-cum-workshop on micro teaching was also held. Dr Ahuja delivered lecture on the concept of micro teaching and related skills.

Skills like fluency in questioning, black-board writing, stimulus variation etc were demonstrated. Dr Ravinder Kaur, Principal of the college, presided over.