Co-curricular Activities in School

Most of what happens in a school each day comes straight from the curriculum. Teachers teach and guide, and students learn the knowledge and skills each subject sets out. But a school is not an island. It stands inside a community, and that community is always busy with fairs, festivals, clean-up campaigns, tree planting, blood donation drives and much more. When students join in, they learn a great deal that no textbook can give them.

Many of these activities involve the community around the school. The link between a school and its community works in three ways:

• The school talks and plans with the community when it draws up its plans and programmes.
• The school sends its students out to community work, fairs and festivals, places where they can use technology, and the programmes of social organisations.
• Students carry what they learn at school back to their families and neighbourhoods and spread social awareness there.

A school is one part of its community. Its students, its teachers and the parents who support it all belong to that same community. By preparing educated, aware and skilled citizens, the school helps make society complete.

For example, the farming families who live together in one village form a community. The trading families of a nearby market town may form another. Only when many such communities come together does a society form. That is why a society needs many communities.

Because it sits inside a community, a school has to keep talking and working with that community in order to run its regular programmes and improve its teaching. It should listen to the feedback the community gives and build its plans on that feedback.

The community knows its own geography, culture, economy and religious life. So it can suggest what kind of education policy and plans suit the place, and this discussion supports the school. Parents too should keep up a steady dialogue with the school about its finances, its administration, its technical work and its future programmes.

The relationship runs both ways. The community needs the school's help to develop, and the school needs the community's help to improve. So one meeting is never enough; the discussion has to continue. First the school decides the exact topic to be discussed. Then deep discussion and interaction take place among these people:

• the intellectuals of the community
• social workers
• educationists
• donors
• officials of the local bodies

Imagine a village school with no drinking water tap, where students have to walk a long way to fetch water. The school names this as the topic and invites parents, ward officials, local social workers and donors. At the meeting the parents offer free labour, the ward promises part of the budget, and one donor offers to buy the pipes. The school puts these ideas into its improvement plan and gets the work done. The school gains a tap, and the community comes to feel that the school is its own and that it shares responsibility for it.

The aim of education is the all-round development of children. That means growth not only in book learning but also in skills, behaviour, social feeling and responsibility. Activities inside the school cover the subject knowledge and skills the curriculum sets, but on their own they cannot develop a student in every way. To make students fully capable and successful, a school must also involve them regularly in co-curricular activities outside the school. These give students the chance to understand their duty towards society, how social life works, and the part they themselves play in it.

Alongside their regular lessons, students gain these benefits from activities outside school:

• (a) They can understand the real condition of their society and community.
• (b) Their abilities develop.
• (c) They can understand their own role towards the community and society.
• (d) They can help raise awareness in society.
• (e) They can take part in social development and explain why it matters.

These activities are not left to chance. In its annual calendar the school should state clearly which outside co-curricular activities it will hold and when. Usually they are of four kinds:

• taking part in community activities
• taking part in cultural fairs, festivals and ceremonies
• using technology and tools
• working with the organised bodies of the community

The community a child lives in is that child's larger home. Children already know about festivals, fairs and worship, because they have joined in these with their families since they were small. What they rarely get is the chance to take part in awareness programmes, the work of local organisations, or building and development work. So the school must arrange for them to take part in these.

Not every student will be interested in social work. For such students the school should explain what they gain by joining in and help them see that this work is part of their duty. A student who never joins in social work cannot put the skills and knowledge learnt at school to use in society, so these students should be involved again and again.

Keeping in mind the students' grade and age, a school can involve them in work like this outside school:

• (a) joining community development work such as building or repairing paths and roads, drinking water systems, sanitation, community halls, temples, churches, monasteries and mosques
• (b) joining the social work of organisations set up in the community
• (c) organising through local child clubs and children's groups and working actively for children's welfare
• (d) helping to protect public places and historical objects in the community
• (e) planting trees on empty land around the school and looking after them
• (f) running campaigns against harmful social practices and superstitions in society
• (g) taking part in the social and cultural programmes of the community
• (h) joining and helping with the many other activities that take place in society

To build knowledge and skills beyond the textbook, and to show students how their community really lives, a school should involve them in the fairs, festivals and celebrations of the community. Today almost every community organises fairs and festivals to promote its local art, skills, products and culture. The school should take students, according to their age, to such events held within easy reach.

Every festival celebrated in our country has its own importance. The school should let students take part in programmes held on these occasions and arrange for them to talk with the people who celebrate them:

• the Dashain fair
• Holi celebrations
• Lhosar programmes
• Ubhauli and Udhauli
• Eid
• Christmas programmes

From this, students come to understand the importance of festivals other than their own, and they grow into the habit of respecting them. A student whose family celebrates only Dashain, for instance, may join a friend's family at a Lhosar programme, learn what it means, and begin to honour it as warmly as a festival from home.

Each community holds its own fairs and festivals to show what is special about its place. These events usually put local culture on display and give priority to selling local products. At a district farming and tourism fair, for example, students might see local handicrafts, handwoven cloth, pickles and local dances. Taking part in such a fair grows their love and goodwill towards their own traditions, products and culture.

Technology is the main foundation of quality education. Without knowing and using technology, students cannot receive a quality education. Yet the technology and equipment in a school may not be enough for students to build their knowledge and skills. So from time to time, as students need it, the school should give them chances to go outside and observe how technology and tools are used and why they matter.

Students should have enough chances to see and use things such as:

• science equipment and how it is used
• computers and projectors
• phones and smartphones
• the internet
• mathematics materials and how they are used
• other useful tools

Because a school may not have enough of these, it should work together with organisations, universities and other bodies that have an interest in education. Through this, students gain a clear understanding of how technology is used, why it matters and how useful it is. When such work is put on show, the school should give students the chance to observe it, experience it and use it themselves. For example, when a nearby campus holds a science exhibition, the school can take its class 10 students there to look at microscopes, a computer lab and model robots, and to try them out.

Every community has social organisations, large and small, that are active in social work. The government registers them under the law and allows them to do social work, and they are free to carry out that work independently.

There are also organisations formed at the local level to work for the good of society, and active young people often set up groups of their own. Such organisations may be based on an ethnic group, a class, a social cause, an occupation, a religion and so on. They help the community with work such as:

• cleanliness and sanitation
• social awareness
• blood donation
• sports
• cultural programmes
• help for people hit by natural disasters

However they were formed, these organisations run programmes in society all year round. The school should give students the chance to join those programmes or to watch them closely. When a youth club holds a blood donation camp, for example, class 10 students can help by registering donors and handing out water and snacks. This builds social feeling in students, shows them why organisation matters, and makes them feel their own share of responsibility to society.

Education and society share a warm relationship in which each helps the other. Children play an important part in building an aware and developed society. By sharing the knowledge, experience and skills they gain at school, children can do a great deal to change society. They can spread the message in their families and communities that superstition, bad habits and the use of harmful substances damage human life.

Every child is dear to their family. That is why children can be so effective in changing a family member's bad habits. A loved child's request, or gentle pressure, can change the way family members behave. For example, a girl who learnt at school that smoking harms the lungs asked her grandfather lovingly every day to give up cigarettes, and within a few months he did. If every child did this kind of thing in their own home, the community and society as a whole could change a great deal.

Children do not have to act alone. Groups of children and child clubs, working in an organised way, can oppose harmful customs and traditions in society and bring about change. Some areas where children can play an important part are:

• getting an area declared an open defecation free zone
• keeping homes and yards clean
• building healthy habits
• giving first aid
• stopping domestic violence

The table puts the four kinds of outside co-curricular activity side by side, with what students do in each and the main thing they gain. All four share one goal: the all-round development of the student.