PM Modi hits it off with school kids on Teacher's Day

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi seemed to have won over a new constituency on Friday - the children. Though the Teacher's Day routine in the city did get tweaked in many ways that people were generally not comfortable with, at the end of the day it seemed the kids had been imparted important lessons. The florists may not have sold the number of roses they usually do, but the children got a lot of food for thought.

They found the PM likeable and no one was complaining about being detained till 5. In fact, there was a lot of laughing and clapping over his anecdotes. In fact, even Modi may not have counted on this ? Many said they could relate to him because he was jovial. Many others felt he had raised important issues like toilets for girls, their role in saving energy, sanitation and cleanliness in schools.

Lavanya Kaushal, a Class IX student of DPS Mathura Road, was impressed with the PM's focus on girl students. "I really liked the fact that he spoke about toilets for girls in schools. He said that girls in rural areas feel very uncomfortable about going to common toilets. We may be comfortable in our schools but so many girls face safety and hygiene problems. After the interaction, we talked about the

girl students in remote areas," she said. Lavanya and her classmate, S Mahalakshmi, wished they could tell him about the crunch in medical seats. "Even bright kids cannot get into medical school simply because there are no seats. There are less than 50 seats in AIIMS.

Do you think he can do something about it," asked Mahalakshmi.

Garima Sharma from Jammu and Kashmir, a student of Class IX who watched the interaction at her hostel, wanted to tell the PM about the pathetic condition of government schools back home. "If I have a chance I will tell him that IT education really needs to be improved in government schools. They should be our equals." Anushka Gupta from Uttarakhand, a student of Class IX would have requested the PM to do away with Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) because it leads to parents doing a lot of project work and children not getting enough practical experience, she claimed.

Raju Sharma of Class IX, Gargi Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya, Green Park, wished the PM had acknowledged the plight of science students. "I study science but the best opportunities aren't here and people are going out," he said. Paridhi Bhanot of Class IX, Bloom Public School, liked the way the PM answered a question.

"The most interesting bit for me was his response to a question put to him by a girl from Port Blair. She asked him whom he would focus on?an intelligent student who is lazy or an average student who is hardworking. He gave a very nice answer saying, basically, that a teacher is like a mom and she'd treat everyone equally," she said.

Many children said they had interesting ideas to take back like- the Japanese education system where children are extremely disciplined or about how reading autobiographies can help grasp history.

Paridhi stayed back despite attendance being optional and said that most kids were in fact looking forward to the speech, especially after his Independence Day one. Vani Sekhri of class XI also thought that his answer on treating children equally was the highlight of the interaction. But that's the exact question another 11th grader from a south Delhi school objected to. "Why ask the prime minister that? He's not a teacher," he said.

"I would've personally liked spontaneous questions. The question part was 100% scripted and seemed totally artificial," he continued, "Also, tell me something new. I already know toilets should be built for girls' schools." Modi's brief description of the Japanese school system, he concedes, "was interesting." "I would've liked to hear more on that."

Teachers too seemed like they didn't mind the trouble. Vikas Dutta, the physical education teacher at DPS Mathura road loved the fact that PM urged children to take up sports and to be physically active.

His speech made Anjali Gupta, a Physics teacher nostalgic about old students. "The entire speech was extremely touching. But what I liked the most is his talk about the relationship of students and teachers; he spoke about students forgetting to call teachers for their weddings or generally about how we lose touch with teachers. I was really moved because I have thought about it myself quite a few times. Now with social networking sites students are getting in touch with us again. The digital age has made it possible."