'3-Idiots' fame 'Rancho's school' encourages children to discover local art, daily home innovations

Going back to roots, learning about local art and culture, at-home fancy dress competitions and innovations to make daily life easy are among the assignments for students at the '3-Idiots' fame 'Rancho's school' during the COVID-19 lockdown as all of them do not have access to Internet in hilly terrains of Leh. With schools being closed due to lockdown in order to contain coronavirus spread, Druk Padma Karpo School is conducting some classes using smart phones but it plans to repeat that syllabus when regular classroom learning resumes as not many students have access to Internet.

"We cannot conduct proper online classes like being done in many parts of the country. Some of our students stay in very hilly terrains where there is no Internet or even calling facility at times, so whatever we are covering on classes through smartphones, we will repeat that once regular classroom teaching resumes, Therefore, we are focusing on non-academic activities more which students can do as per their own pace," school principal Mingur Agmo said.

"We have given assignments to students about how they can explore local art and culture during the lockdown. Students have been asked to learn a local art which is losing its popularity now, write essays about the culture, food, maintain scrap books, learn local language, among other activities," she added.

Students have also been asked to come up with innovations which make daily life easy and also make masks to distribute them among the needy. "We conducted an at-home fancy dress competition with theme of My Ladkah my culture'. Students were asked to dress up in traditional dresses and share pictures with us whenever they have access to Internet. And the entries are still pouring in.

Similarly, we are also conducting a virtual talent hunt, said school teacher Rajeev Nirup."Students have come up with different innovations like baskets which can be hanged outside the house for newspaper man to drop in it to avoid direct contact, touch free sanitiser dispensers and more things which make daily life easy," he added. The 19-year-old school shot to fame after it featured in the Aamir Khan-starrer '3 Idiots'.

The wall of a building on its campus was featured in the closing of the film in which one of the characters, Chatur, tries to urinate on but gets an electric shock as two kids dangle a wire with a bulb from the first floor. While the 'iconic idiotic wall' -- part of a building which was damaged in the 2010 flash floods still remains on the campus, the first floor, earlier made of bricks, has been replaced with wooden structures typically used in Ladakh. In 2018, the school decided to relocate the "Rancho's wall" which became a photo spot for tourists to ensure students don't get distracted due to inflow of visitors.

Universities and schools across the country have been closed and exams postponed since March 16 when the Centre announced a countrywide classroom shutdown as one of the measures to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. Later, a 21-day nationwide lockdown was announced on March 24, which came into effect the next day. It has now been extended till May 31.