Delhi schools: Inhalant Abuse

Ever since the news of children being caught engaging in inhalant abuse is doing the rounds, civil society especially parents of adolescents have been particularly concerned.

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While parents, teachers and educationists have been discussing the issue without end, nobody talks to children. None of the schools, Principals or their teachers actually create a space to talk about it in the classroom. At max it may have been included in the assembly speech of the Principal. In most of schools the issue is a hush-hush topic, not to be discussed with students. In fact the less the students come to know about it…the better it is.

Some of the proactive teachers do touch the topic but the maximum discussion that happens with a child around it is the child is told about ‘these bad chidren’ who engaged in something ‘wrong’ and ‘how they should not be engaging in it’. Nothing more. No questions are entertained about the topic. No discussions. The same is true for every incident in the school domain, when some child is caught stealing, with pornography or something else.

This reminds me of a book Prof. Krishna Kumar, former Director NCERT and an eminent educationist had written long time back - ‘Learning from Conflict’. He specifically quotes the example of the 1984 Sikh riots in which the schools were closed for weeks and many people killed. Yet when the schools opened after a long break, there was no discussion with students about what happened in the city. While all adults were discussing the topic freely, the children were not involved. Even if children had some questions about the issue of riots, they were asked to keep shut, as the issue was not their concern. Obviously the children got information from whatever sources they could and made their own meanings.

Krishna Kumar actually questions our notion that children are not mature enough to handle issues of conflict in the society. He counters this notion and sees such incidents as suitable opportunities to talk about conflict and actually learn from conflict.

The same holds true for the present incident on inhalant abuse. We need to be talking about it openly to children in schools and at home. Answer their questions and gather information from them rather than just have closed door staff meetings to solve the problem or write intellectual articles about it.

Moreover, its not that drug abuse was not present before this incident…its been very much present in our schools. Numerous studies have endorsed the fact that teen drug abuse is a reality in India. This incident just brings forth a fresh evidence to the fact just as the Tehelka expose brough fresh evidence for corruption. Its not that the issue has suddenly seen a rise, its just caught people’s attention. I see the incident as an opportunity for us to talk to the children about drug abuse.

Do our schools want to take it on? The Life Skill Curriculum proposed by CBSE and the excellent YUVA Life Skills programme of Delhi government have suitably addressed the issue of drug abuse and suggested activities which could be done with children. These activities also include open discussions with children on the issues and giving them space to share. It is this space of sharing which should have brought forth the incident rather than a CCTV footage.

But most of our schools have not taken these life skills programmes seriously. It time for schools to implement these programmes with fresh zeal. Lets be open about this issue and talk it out with the young adolescents.