yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Newspapers once took children beyond textbooks. What happens when they disappear? Published at Deccan Herald here . Thanks to the team at Deccan Herald. One of the happy memories of the school days, for many of us, is reading the newspaper at the library - we began with the sports or the entertainment page and then slowly moved to the other pages. Another major attraction was the magazines; Illustrated Weekly was a favourite with its large format and eclectic content, and India Today followed suit. There would also be the colourful weekend newspapers like the Sunday Observer or the, loaded with numbers, salmon pink newspaper that we picked out of intrigue. Skimming pages was fun as was the element of surprise these newspapers and magazines brought in. Today when I look back, they took us beyond the text-books and helped us realize that there was a lot else happening in the worlds beyond our small worlds. They got us hooked on reading, made us aware of our interests, and our country, an...

A World of Possibilities Thanks to the team at The Hindu. Published here .  Recently, a board was installed at our institution to to put up newspaper articles. The idea was to encourage students and teachers to read newspapers. Actually, to just read. We began with an open mind and four dailies. We were keen to get to know of the developments in the country and the subjects we pursued. We began by reading and rereading the newspapers, short-listing articles, pondering over them, and neatly putting them up on the boards. In course of a few weeks, we increased the board area and made it more reader-friendly. ‘ Shall we read? ’ talked of parents’ and bookstores’ efforts to increase reading. We were doing our bit here. Next came the themes. AI is extensively written about these days. We put up articles on how it reinforces gender and caste biases ( Sociology ) or even on how it discourages creativity . We also had articles on the water guzzling and carbon-footprint ( ESD ) that go into...