In a bizarre new initiative on the country's favourite subject, UG Engineering students will now have to tend plants, learn how to regulate their breathing and keep themselves fit during a three-week boot camp. The All India Council for Technical Education has recently approved the programme which aims at sensitisation and establishing a friendly environment before the course commences.
In what is a rare, novel initiative in a field known for its suicides, gruelling syllabus and stress, the induction programme will begin three weeks before their course, at 6.am sharp. The programme is largely focusing on sensitising students, allowing them to explore both academic as well as other activities but largely to break them from the stereotype drilled into them by society and family.
What is most unique, however, is that the students will have to participate in creative arts, gardening, yoga and mild exercises to keep them fresh and invigorated. A daily timetable of sorts has been prepared with an hour for yoga and up to four-hours of creative arts and universal human values. In simple terms, students will be encouraged, in a rare first, to explore and think through dialogue and group activities instead of through rote and formulas.
Academic activities, group discussions and faculty-student bonding sessions are in the works to get the ball rolling. The move might not come as a surprise in a country where Yoga is considered the Indian's purest way for fresh air and Engineering is the diet prescribed to many a youngster since middle school. Group discussions will be conducted between 20 students and a mentor while the universal human values course could later turn permanent.
The Universal Values Course is a result of a series of experiments at educational institutes that started as an elecive course in the late 80s and 90s from IIT Delhi and IIT Kanpur. The programme will, hopefully, give our country engineers who by breathing clean and staying green may change the course of their lives.
