Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Sunday said that during the pandemic, children studying in Delhi government schools endured an immense loss of learning, but it was mindfulness learnt as a part of their Happiness Curriculum that helped them to apply life skills to deal with stressful situations.
“Almost 3-4 lakh students who practiced mindfulness and different activities helped their homes to be strong and emotionally sound. Through the happiness curriculum, we have been able to encourage our ecosystems to think about long-term approaches to mental health,” Mr. Sisodia said.
The Minister was speaking at the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference to deliberate on innovations in mental health.
“I believe that wellbeing needs to be made as a mainstream subject in education. This is the time to change our strategy and push wellbeing into our domains of learning and mainstream subjects. Failures are a part of life, but our students should be able to bounce back from them, analyse and learn from both successes and failures, and relentlessly persevere to achieve their goals,” Mr. Sisodia said.
‘Technology here to stay’
He added that the biggest takeaway from COVID-19, for our public education, has been that technology is here to stay.
“We need to quickly adapt our systems and encourage the use of technology. Adopting the right approaches to inculcate technology within our education would in fact make learning more inclusive,” he said.
He said Delhi Board of School Education, which the government is introducing, will eventually move towards testing mindset rather than testing knowledge.
“It will play a key role in ensuring that schools develop a holistic learner profile of students, assessing and pushing for social and emotional learning in schools,” he said.
