NEW DELHI: As the government scrambles to contain the political damage from the Ambedkar cartoon, one may be tempted to believe that somebody surreptitiously slipped Shankar's satirical work in the NCERT textbook. Or that the HRD ministry was caught unawares by the political heresy.

However, the fact is that the books were released by NCERT after having been thoroughly vetted by a National Monitoring Committee appointed by the ministry which includes several civil servants from various states, experts and academics as members.

Also, there was no protest against the contents of NCERT books, now being blamed for pollution of impressionable minds, before April when RPI leader Ramdas Athawale woke up to the insult to dalits. The political science books for Classes IX to XII which have been recalled were being used in at least 15 states for the past five years. Not one state ever complained to the National Monitoring Committee.

Naturally, the political uproar caught former NCERT director Krishna Kumar unawares. "I am totally puzzled by the reaction. The textbooks have been approved through due processes. All textbooks have been approved by the National Monitoring Committee appointed by the HRD ministry that includes several civil servants, experts, academicians and mediapersons. It is being taught in 15 states of very different political ideologies for the last five years only because the books are of very high quality," he said.

The books that were put together for political science were Democratic Politics 1 & 2 (a compulsory read for Class IX and X students); Contemporary World Politics, Political Theory, Politics in India Since Independence and Indian Constitution at Work prescribed for Class XI and XII students of political science.

This last book, Indian Constitution at Work is what caused the furore over the inclusion of a B R Ambedkar cartoon that's been in existence since 1949 but was never a subject of controversy. On Monday, another NCERT book, Democratic Politics 1, prescribed for Class IX, was also criticized in Parliament for another set of cartoons.

The textbooks were developed in 2005 to 2007 by Textbook Development Committees constituted by the NCERT, and chaired by experts in the concerned areas. In case of political science and social science, it was chaired by Prof Hari Vasudevan and the chief advisors were Prof Suhas Palshikar and Prof Yogendra Yadav.

These textbooks were placed before the National Monitoring Committee chaired by Prof Mrinal Miri and Prof G P Deshpande and consisting of representatives of state governments and educational experts from across the country. It was only after the approval of the committee that the textbooks were released from 2006 onwards.

It is the same set of academics who were celebrated for the innovation in enriching the books with cartoons as a device to provide students respite from bland texts. The sense of betrayal among academics is palpable as nobody in the ministry is stepping forward to defend them who only carried out their brief.

Social scientist Shiv Vishwanathan said, "Instead of treating it (the cartoon) as an act of pride, our politicians, in an act of cowardly populism, read it as something shameful. It is a misreading of politics, an act of bad faith, made doubly ridiculous by the fact that an education minister lets down a responsible group of academics.''

Vishwanathan added that there was no academic or political argument in removing the cartoons. "There is only a populist argument.'' If BJP leader Yashwant Sinha felt that young minds would be influenced by lampooning cartoons, Vishwanathan said, "All of them (politicians) behave like cartoons on TV every day... Do they think that a 14-15-year-old is so naive?''

Prof Yash Pal, who headed the steering committee, said education was a continuing process and there could be complaints even after such thorough processes. But the strong backlash against cartoons has come as a shock to him. "People have to learn to laugh at themselves. There are different ways of looking at things and humour is one of them,'' he said.

The "inappropriate material'' now rendered orphan was the work of several years. NCERT's executive committee had taken the decision in July 2004 to revise the National Curriculum Framework following concerns of saffronization, rote learning and the need to develop a new pedagogy.

The NCF proposed five guiding principles for curriculum development: connecting knowledge to life outside the school; ensuring that learning shifts away from rote methods; enriching the curriculum so that it goes beyond textbooks; making examinations more flexible and integrating them with classroom life; and nurturing an overriding identity informed by caring concerns within the democratic polity of the country.

Subsequently, national steering committee, chaired by Prof Yash Pal, and 21 national focus groups were set up. Membership of these committees included representatives of institutions of advanced learning, NCERT's own faculty, school teachers and non-government organizations. Consultations were held in all parts of the country, in addition to five major regional seminars held at the NCERT's Regional Institute of Education in Mysore, Ajmer, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar and Shillong. Consultations with state secretaries, SCERTs and examination boards were carried out.

Indian Council of Social Science Research chairman Sukhdeo Thorat, who is chairing the review committee, said the group was likely to meet this week and try to finish the task in the required time. The committee includes A S Narang from the School of Social Sciences, IGNOU, Patricia Mukhim from Shillong Times, scholar M S S Pandian, Abha Malik, teacher of social sciences in Sanskriti School and Saroj Yadav, head of department of education in social sciences, NCERT.

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New research shows about a third of kids think their parents are spending too much time at work. A study of 10 and 11-year-olds found that 35 percent felt their dad worked too much, while 27 percent said their mum worked too much. But Jennifer Baxter from the Australian Institute of Family study says working isn't always a bad thing.

"Parents say that their working has a positive effect on their children. This might be because parents enjoy the social interaction from work, they feel satisfied doing meaningful or interesting work, these things can flow through to children."It's Families Day in New Zealand today.

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Kids have several abilities to do, for that they can amend there ability in several facts, there is as well a explore that shows Fun kids Games provides kids the best beginning to develop all the skills that they require in the early ages, even so, you know kids development in their early aged immediately affects future IQ and EQ. Lot of parents like to teach the skills consequently and early frustrate the child. If you like to avoid the frustration of the child, you can select some kinds of the kids Games, just to better the skills that a child need.

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There will be caring Games for kids, parents must allow the kids to know how to take care herself and others, if you are concerned about how to instruct them, might be you can select some of the Caring Games for kids Online which is as well safe and free, what's more kids can as well learn how to caring their pets or many others from the caring Games.

There are several types of Games that have the time limits, which will make the kids to know how to supervise their time in a best way, and this is what you can do for your kids too. Simply to look for the right type of Games for kids Free Online and in the end, all will be fine for you to know that  which is the good for you to select and how to improve the kid's all accepts of abilities. But you all know lot of kids play Games just for make them more clever, they will ascertain so many skills, as parents, the more and more you should do is to supervise what they uses the kids Games, and if the Games are secure and have no violent, that is simply what they should do, but not prevent the kids play Games. Racing Games have always appealed people of all ages but for children they have held fascinates unlimited.

With the Racing Games for the kids, it is really possible to let them relish the thrills of speed without having to concern about them having an accident. Racing Games for kids have been present in the offline version, because the early days of Computers and Video Games. With the growth of Online Gaming, the Racing Games for kids have come up to a totally new level of enjoy ability and interactivity.

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It is an important question asked by many parents that how important is preschool? What are the benefits? What are the benefits of sending kids to Pre School? At the nursery, kids can play and learn in organized activities. They learn social interaction, physical skills, cognitive skills, creativity and self-esteem. One of the most obvious benefit is the socialization of your child will receive. This is something every two, three and four years needs. You can try to arrange opportunities for socialization in the home itself. But the group's activities that your child will be in a nursery school on a weekly basis cannot be duplicated by you in any other way.

During the social interaction the kids learn valuable lessons. They learn to share, take turns, to share the attention of their teacher, following directions from other adults, to wait in line and many more. Your child will learn the rules of interaction with others. They will learn what is good and what is not. The preschool years are a period when the organs are developing at a rapid pace. Children can do something new every day it seems. In kindergarten, they can race with other children to learn quickly. They check their friends to see what they do well. Their physical abilities will be challenged every day in kindergarten.

The best way to learn these skills is to play and learn which will bring more interest in kids. Find things that start with a certain letter and counting games are great way to learn by playing. This will be more interesting to kids. In preschool creativity is a fact. When children go to kindergarten their knowledge will automatically increase. An infinite range of ideas and materials were used to get the thinking of little minds. And then there are many possibilities to be creative, which is not possible at home. Puppet shows, pretending, finish the story, what do you think and many more activities will help the kids to think and learn more in easy ways.

Children learn self-esteem in preschool. They can be able to accomplish something new or something hard. You cannot put a price on that ability which kids will earn from there. They are challenged to out that parents can put in front of them. They have teachers who were trained and they are around their peers. The importance of early childhood education cannot be stressed enough. Sending your child to a quality preschool will make them more prefect than simply sitting at home. They can improve self-esteem, social interactions with peers and to learn to be creative and all these things will surely help them to make a good future.

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The nation's first-ever national mental-health strategy is expected to call for an overhaul of services for children and youth - an under-resourced and fragmented system Canada's former mental-health commissioner says is in "desperate" need of repair.

Six years in the making and due for release Tuesday, the strategy will recommend priorities for prevention and treatment of the leading cause of disability in Canada. Mental illness costs the economy an estimated $51 billion annually in health care and lost productivity.

The strategy is also expected to address the psychological health of employees in the workplace and call for a more integrated system to improve access to treatment and services across a person's lifespan. Only a third of adults and one in four children who need mental health services in Canada actually receive them.

"The system can become significantly more efficient and effective without having to spend a whole lot more money, which is not to say it doesn't need money - it does, because it's under-serviced," former Liberal senator Michael Kirby, who recently stepped down as chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, told Postmedia News.

"Even if you only attack those two areas (children and youth and workplace mental health) and if you focused on making the system more efficient by stopping some of the duplication and by getting much better co-ordination on the ground, you could have a very dramatic impact," he said.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 20 per cent of Canadians will experience a mental illness during their lifetime. Yet public health spending on mental health is lower in Canada than in most developed nations.

"The worst part of the system is the children and youth system, and that's for a whole variety of reasons - not the least of which is the stigma, and therefore the reluctance of some parents to try to get their children help and admit that their child has a mental-health problem," Kirby said.

Seventy per cent of mental illness in adulthood has its onset in childhood. "And yet only 15, 16 or 17 per cent of those get diagnosed and treated while they're still under the age of 20," Kirby said.

"People grow up, they become adults with mental illness, the illness gets worse ... Those people end up very typically needing social assistance, needing supportive housing; they end up on the street, they end up in prison and they end up costing society a whole lot more money."

Families are frustrated by the scarcity of services, he said, the difficulty of finding their way through a confusing system and a lack of publicly funded psychological counselling.

"If you can't afford that, your child doesn't get treated, you wait for a child psychiatrist and you wait, in most places in the country, on the order of a year," Kirby said.

He hinted that the strategy may address the controversial issue around whether parents or caregivers should be given access to medical information about their child once they reach the age of majority.

"There's no simple solution to that, it's going to require a lot of thought, but it clearly requires some element of rebalancing of the rights of the patients vs. ensuring the patient gets the best health care possible, which means some information to the caregivers," Kirby said.

The need for reform is equally desperate, he said, in workplace mental health. Mental illness is the fastest-growing cause of short and longterm disability, he said, while drugs used to treat mood disorders, stress, anxiety and depression are the fastest growing part of any employer's drug plan.

Many workers are fearful of admitting to depression or other mental illness for fear they'll be fired, Kirby said. That creates the problem of presenteeism, he said: "So they come to work and work anyway, so they're there, but they're not functioning at the level they're capable of functioning."

According to a recent survey for the Conference Board of Canada, 44 per cent of Canadian employees have dealt with mental-health issues at some point; 12 per cent are currently experiencing mental-health conditions, the survey suggests. Yet nearly half of managers said they have had no training in how to work with employees suffering a mental illness.

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Kids' Dental Health was created by Alexandr Stacanov and is an e-book that teaches kids about oral hygiene. Yes, there's an app for that! I have to admit that I was not a very good teeth brusher as a child, but luckily, no cavities to date! Would this book have encouraged my younger self (and probably current self) to brush and floss better? Price: $1.99

The topic matter is of course relevant to young kids. Brushing teeth is probably part of their daily routine. This book explains why brushing and flossing is important and that you should go tot he dentist for routine checks. Although you can tell that there was effort to make the text more kid-friendly, it could've gone farther. While the graphics seem to aim for a young child, the text seems to be aimed for older. Also, the text is pretty much informational - it's not really a story that draws you in and makes you care about oral hygiene. It attempts to draw you in in two ways.

First, you can choose a character that then becomes the character in the story. This is a good way to get kids to identify with the character in the story - unfortunately, nothing is really happening to the character in the story. So there's nothing to identify with, other than to learn the information the character is learning. Second, there is one game within the book (there are supposedly more games coming with the updates). In this game, you tap on bacteria until they go away. You earn points, but there's no real goal. Actually, when it was done and told me that I was great at brushing away all the germs, I still had a mouthful of germs plus some that I didn't get that became plaque. So, the feedback was not all that accurate and actually teaches you poorly about the consequences of not brushing well. You would also think that the way to kill the bacteria would be some kinda brushing motion or something related to brushing instead of tapping.

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CHERRY HILL, N.J. (AP) — Teachers hurled insults like "bastard," ''tard," ''damn dumb" and "a hippo in a ballerina suit." A bus driver threatened to slap one child, while a bus monitor told another, "Shut up, you little dog."

They were all special needs students, and their parents all learned about the verbal abuse the same way — by planting audio recorders on them before sending them off to school. In cases around the country, suspicious parents have been taking advantage of convenient, inexpensive technology to tell them what children, because of their disabilities, are not able to express on their own. It's a practice that can help expose abuses, but it comes with some dangers.

This week, a father in Cherry Hill, N.J., posted on YouTube clips of secretly recorded audio that caught one adult calling his autistic 10-year-old son "a bastard." In less than three days, video got 1.2 million views, raising the prominence of the small movement. There have been at least nine similar cases across the U.S. since 2003.

"If a parent has any reason at all to suggest a child is being abused or mistreated, I strongly recommend that they do the same thing," said Wendy Fournier, president of the National Autism Association.
But George Giuliani, executive director of the National Association of Special Education Teachers and director of special education at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., says that while the documented mistreatment of children has been disturbing, secret recordings are a bad idea. They could, he said, violate the privacy rights of other children.

"We have to be careful that we're not sending our children in wired without knowing the legal issues," Giuliani said. Stuart Chaifetz, the Cherry Hill father, said he began getting reports earlier in the school year that his 10-year-old son, Akian, was being violent. Hitting teachers and throwing chairs were out of character for the boy, who is in a class with four other autistic children and speaks but has serious difficulty expressing himself. Chaifetz said he talked to school officials and had his son meet with a behaviorist. There was no explanation for the way Akian was acting.

"I just knew I had to find out what was happening there," he said. "My only option was to put a recorder there. I needed to hear what a normal day was like in there."On the recording, he heard his son being insulted — and crying at one point. He shared the audio with school district officials. The superintendent said in a statement that "the individuals who are heard on the recording raising their voices and inappropriately addressing children no longer work in the district."

Since taking the story public, Chaifetz, who has run unsuccessfully for the school board in Cherry Hill and once went on a hunger strike to protest special-education funding cuts, said he has received thousands of emails.

At least a few dozen of those he has had a chance to read have been from parents asking for advice about investigating alleged mistreatment of their children. It's easy, he tells them. "It was a simple $30 digital audio recorder. I just put it in the kid's pocket," he said. "Unless they're looking for it, they're not going to find it."

With more parents taking such action, he said, fewer educators may get out of line with the way they treat students who cannot speak up for themselves. "For the tiny percentage of teachers that do it, I hope that they live in fear every day that a kid's going to walk in with a recorder," he said. He gives just one caveat: "Make sure it's legal in your state."Laws on audio recordings vary by state, but in most of the U.S., including New Jersey, recordings can generally be made legally if one party gives consent. Over the past decade, courts in New York and Wisconsin have ruled that recordings made secretly on school buses were legal, finding that there is a diminished expectation of privacy for drivers on the bus.

The recordings have led to firings in several states, criminal convictions of bus employees in Wisconsin and New York, and legal settlements worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in Ohio and Missouri.
Even if it is found to be legal, the recording could have a chilling effect on classrooms, says Giuliani, of the special-education teachers' group. Teachers could worry that every one of their words could be monitored. And a recording could be edited to distort the teachers' meaning. He said that the rise of the secret recordings suggests it's time to discuss a way to make sure the most vulnerable children are not being mistreated in a more formal way. "In classrooms where children are nonverbal, unable to communicate, defenseless," he said, "we should start to have a discussion of whether cameras in the classroom are necessary."That's a move that the National Autism Association's Fournier also says is needed.

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Children have their own surroundings that they perceive in very imaginative ways. Kids' furniture is an integral part of their environment. Even little toddlers feel happy that they have their own workbenches and plastic chairs.

Kids/teens
If you like to buy fine furniture in your house, make sure you get some good kids furniture in Australia for them, because kids want to have things that belong exclusively to them. While small kids might be happy with colourful plastic furniture, teenagers might want to have more sophisticated furniture for their room.

So pay attention to your kids' demands and buy them good quality furniture. If you cannot afford expensive furniture for kids, you can get kids' furniture for sale. Every parent loves his or her children, but if you do not pay attention to their demands, it sends a negative message across.

Furniture differences
At about the age of 6-7, a child understands the difference between his own furniture and the rest of the household furniture. If he thinks that his furniture is low quality, then it would make him feel that his needs are not very important for adults. Indulge him. Grant him his burgeoning adulthood.

Agreed, high quality furniture is high priced, so you might want to start with a nightstand and a bed for them. When you go shopping for kids' furniture in Australia, make sure you take your child along. This will make him feel important and he'll get the kind of furniture he wants in his room. Allow him to select the dresser or the bed he wants. This way, he will always cherish the furniture- even as he grows older.

Get it cheap
It is important to get good furniture for your kids' room, but it is also important to get it cheap, because furniture is a big investment, and rates of even simple furniture pieces are skyrocketing. It is best to look for kids' furniture for sale, because your kid will soon outgrow his furniture and then it will be of no use.

If you can afford furniture to replace the existing old and boring furniture in your kids' room, you shouldn't hesitate. They will be happy to get brand new and more exciting furniture for their room.

Sooner or later, the time will come when you have to replace kids' furniture with adult furniture. But do not burden them with furniture of your own taste. Encourage your kid to select the furniture that he likes and will be able to cherish in the coming years. Tastes do change, but old furniture will have many sweet memories.

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About three decades ago, a participant in one of Paul Axtell’s personal effectiveness courses brought him a list of the 30 statements kids hear most from their parents.

“No. 1 was ‘No.’ The next was: ‘Why can’t you be more like your brother.’ They were all pretty negative,” recalls Axtell, a Minneapolis, MN, consultant to Fortune 500 companies who specializes in the way people converse.

The experience made him “pretty aware” of what he said to his two children, Jessie and Amy, then 8 and 9. Axtell also noticed that his clients had positive feedback about how changing the way they speak had improved their home lives.

Jessie and Amy are now in their 30s, and Axtell, a grandfather of 13, has penned the book Ten Powerful Things to Say to Your Kids: Creating the relationship you want with the most important people in your life.

Here’s a sneak peek at five of those key phrases every parent should say.

1. I like you.“ ‘I love you’ is unconditional and that’s the broader context for our kids,” explained Axtell in an interview with the Star. “ ‘I like you’ says ‘I like you as a person, I like how you’re turning out, I like spending time with you, I like you as a friend.’ ” The two sentiments are both important, he stressed, but together they’re a lot more powerful.

2. Tell me more. “The typical question we ask when kids come home from school is ‘How was school today?’ ” says Axtell. Opening the conversation that way prompts kids to give an assessment and usually yields answers like, “Fine.” If you say, “Tell me about your day” instead, suggests Axtell, or even “Tell me what you learned that you think I should know,” you’ll be far more likely to start a meaningful conversation. Really listening to their answers is key, though, stresses Axtell. “Give each child 15 undivided minutes of your time each day and see where they take the conversation.”

3. You’re a fast learner. Tell your kids that they are fast learners rather than that they are smart. Why? If you emphasize being smart alone, kids may peg their early success in school on intelligence. Confronted with tougher classes — in university, for example — that confidence can quickly waver. But if you emphasize being a fast learner instead, kids “equate success to working hard.” That’s something your kids will benefit from their whole lives. “Early childhood educators say that working hard and feeling good about your ability to learn are two of the primary indicators of whether kids do well or not.”

4. We all make mistakes.Kids get upset about not meeting all of our expectations, and (at least until they hit the teen years) many are under the false impression that parents are perfect, says Axtell. If you talk to your kids about your own mistakes when they’re grappling with theirs, it helps cultivate a healthy attitude about problems. “All generations of people could benefit from a different perspective on mistakes or problems.”

5. Let’s read. When he was raising his own kids, Axtell would often come in the door after work and say, “Let’s go play catch.” But looking back he now wishes he’d emphasized reading instead, and does so with his grandchildren. “To guys that love sport, given that they are heroes in their kids’ lives, if they say, ‘Let’s go read’ it would set these kids up wonderfully for both school and learning about life,” he says.

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Melodie Ingwersen’s plan after moving to Columbia in the mid-1980s was to help out part time in a new toy store a friend was opening on Saluda Avenue in Five Points. After less than a year of managing the store, she and her husband, Lowell, bought it. “I didn’t really imagine I’d do this 25 years,” said the owner of Creative Kids, who is closing the shop 725 Saluda Ave. at the end of the month. “We’re serving the grandchildren of the (customers) we started with.”

But a sea change in the way consumers shop — as well as the challenges of having three teenagers at home — has prompted Ingwersen to shutter the business for good. “It’s getting more and more challenging to do it profitably,” she said. Folks are using their smartphones to scan bar codes and find the best possible deal on items — often from online retailers who don’t charge tax and often offer free shipping. “That’s a different ballgame than competing locally or regionally,” she said. Even when customers ask her to match the price, it leaves little to no margin for profit.

“That is just the start of what’s happening,” she said. “Things will just be configured differently (in retail) than they are right now. This was a time that we could exit honorably and so that’s what we’re doing.”
But Ingwersen leaves feeling “rich in the return of people who have been so kind.”

When she bought the specialty toy store, she hoped that it would become a place that evoked happy childhood memories for a generation. And saying goodbye to longtime customers — who bought for their children and now buy for their grandchildren — has proven to her that the store fulfilled that purpose.
“We actually accomplished what we started to do,” she said.

Ingwersen, who taught high school art for 10 years before moving to Columbia, said she will take the summer off to be with her children and then turn her sights on a new direction. Her husband will continue to run their apartment rental business. Meanwhile, merchandise is marked down at the store as Ingwersen moves toward her closing date of April 28.

And another locally owned business plans to open in the Creative Kids spot in July after two months of renovations to the building, she said. It will be a gift shop that will carry some toys, she said, but she did not have further details.

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