Summer camp for govt schools

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, June 7, 2007
If you thought that the word “Summer Camp” did not mix with government schools, then maybe you need a rethink. Four government schools of Kolkata for the first time are organising summer camps for their students.
The students from Hindu School, Hare School, Bethune Collegiate School and Sanskrit Collegiate School are participating in the fun venture. “Never before has any government school organised a summer camp for their students. To begin with, we have organised a science camp for students which includes subjects such as physics, chemistry, maths, biology and geography,” said Dipak Das, secretary of West Bengal Government School Teachers’ Association.
Hare School is hosting the camp and it began on Wednesday and will go on till June 9. About 100 students — from Classes VII and IX from the four schools — are participating in the camp. “Due to lack of infrastructure we are unable to take the students to a laboratory and explain various scientific theories thorough hands-on experiments. This camp is doing exactly that,” said Das.
The laboratory equipment and expertise are being provided by an NGO, Science Communication Forum. Eighteen teachers from various government schools are doubling up as instructors for the camp. Various experiments such as germination of seeds, harmful effects of paan masala, latitude and longitude, how day and night occurs, why the earth has time zones and how to calculate the time difference, what is kinetic energy, what is density and many more such topics will be explained to the students through experiments.
“In school one period lasts 40 minutes and it is within this time frame that we have to complete a certain portion of the syllabus every day. So we do not have scope for hands-on experiments in school and studies become very boring and exam-oriented, but in this camp learning through fun is the main motto and we believe that whatever the students will learn here will not be forgotten in a hurry,” said Palash Dey, biology teacher of Sanskrit Collegiate School.
For students who for so long did not understand theorems in mathematics, will have scope for learning the same through hands-on experiment on June 8. “We are thoroughly enjoying the camp. I never knew learning could be such fun. That seeing a seed actually germinate in front of your eyes, getting to know how the cells of a plant actually looks like and understanding the complexities of the solar system could be such fun, was never known to us,” said Upamanya Moitra, a Class IX student of Hare School.
“We plan to organise such camps during the puja vacation, summer vacation and winter vacation every year and extend it to all 48 government schools in the state. We have begun with the science camp, but we will also conduct camps on English in future,” said Das.
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