NEW DELHI, Feb 14: An entire new subject “Anand” (Happiness) is set to be introduced in the schools in Madhya Pradesh soon. Initially, “Anand” will be introduced as a separate subject in the school curriculum for classes 9 to 12 in a bid to help students pick up life skills and face the challenges in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, the state education department officials said.
The happiness department, which came into existence four years ago to evaluate the happiness index of the state, prepared an entire syllabus on happiness aimed at ensuring that students don’t end up taking extreme steps such as suicide due to stress, the officials said.
“Psychological sessions, stories about the failure of renowned and powerful persons and teaching various things like helping others, forgiveness, sense of satisfaction, gratitude, acceptance, power of meditation, self-confidence and how to live a tension-free life have been included in the course,” said Akhilesh Argal, chief executive officer of Rajya Anand Sansthan.
“The teacher will address the problem directly by explaining to the students about every issue. We won’t ask for the moral of the story but the teacher will first explain the topic like ‘Chinta ka koi labh nahi hai’ (no benefits of tension) and then through stories, assignments and personal experience, the teacher will prove the points and make the students understand about it,” said Satya Prakash Arya, a project officer.
The teachers will be trained first for teaching this subject. “This will change the lifestyle of students. They will understand their inner strength to fight against materialistic life. Basically, through meditation and teachings of life skills, we want to strengthen our future generation mentally,” school education minister Inder Singh Parmar said.
Officials said the decision to introduce the course was taken to deal with increase in the number of suicide cases among the students in the state. According to Annual Death and Suicide in India (ADSI) report for 2020, Madhya Pradesh is the second-worst state in India after Maharashtra in terms of suicide among students. The number of suicide among students has increased by 15% in MP in 2020 as compared to 2019.
In 2020, 235 students committed suicide in MP only due to failure in exams, second highest in India after Maharashtra which recorded 287 cases. And in overall suicides of students or various reasons again MP stood second with 1,158 cases after Maharashtra, where 1,648 cases were reported.
“Before Covid 19, there were three out of 10 students, who needed psychological help but after Covid 19, seven out of 10 children need it,” said a clinical psychiatrist who has requested the state government to have separate classes for mental health. “Due to online classes and the closure of schools for a long time, the students are facing unusual depression. They have been promoted to higher classes but the concepts are not clear to them troubling the students mentally,” doctors said.