On Friday, there was much excitement among the students of Holy Angels' ISC School in the city.
Class 10 student Ahma Anvar and her four friends were positioned at the entrance to the school auditorium with lamps in their hands to welcome an important guest who would launch the school edition of The Hindu .
While they waited for the guest to arrive, Ahma spoke of how she was keenly following the news in The Hindu In School , which she started receiving a few days ago.
“The paper is very colourful and features news that we can easily relate to. The language is very simple and it has extensive coverage of current affairs,” she said. Before she could say more, a crowd, with the school band playing in front, approached the door with none other than Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the lead.
Faces lit up and Ahma and her friends welcomed the Chief Minister to their school. At a simple function, Mr. Chandy launched The Hindu In School by handing over a copy to a student representative.
Mr. Chandy said students should play a positive role in handling social issues in the State.
He advised them to utilise the opportunities that came their way and work hard to achieve success.
Class 8 student Sandra Xavier said she took a detailed look at The Hindu In School . “We hardly get time to read newspapers, but we have been reading The Hindu In School as this paper is specially designed for us. It's a paper for us,” she said.
The Hindu In School , an eight-page broadsheet, will be published on six days (Monday to Saturday) a week.
T. Anusha, who was a member of the school magazine committee, said there should be editorial pages in the school edition and a section dedicated to school news.
“The students are relatively less interested in reading newspapers. This initiative by The Hindu , where they get a newspaper that caters to their interests, will help to inculcate the reading habit among them,” V. Parvathy, a teacher at the school, said.
The edition will be distributed in schools as part of the Newspaper in Education (NIE) programme of The Hindu .
