Kids grow veggies on school campus in Villupuram village

VILLUPURAM: Students of a government high school at Thengiyanatham village near Chinnasalem here are giving a productive angle to the concept of extra curricular activity in education institutions, by growing vegetables on a piece of land on the school premises.

Around 244 students including girls study in the school and among them, 120 are in English medium, while others are in Tamil medium. “We have one acre land on the school premises and we had not been using that for anything. So, I got an idea of motivating the students to do farming in the land,” said K Kamaraj, the head master of the school.

He said that they earmarked 25 cent land for the project and executed it with the support of agriculture subject teacher R Sundaram. During the free hours, farming was taught to all the students, with the help of local farmers, he said.

“After three months of effort, students harvested 400 kilograms of onion, cultivated by them. They also cultivated tomatoes, ladies finger, broad beans and greens which were used for the free noon meal,” R Sundaram told Express.

He said Kallakuruchi district education officer, Karthika, visited the school to see the  initiative of the students. The officer praised both the students and teachers involved in the work and distributed one kilogram of onions per head to all the students as compliment for their effort. Before that, as part of the plastic ban awareness drive, the head master instructed them to bring cloth bags to collect the onions.
“Although I am from a farming family, I had little knowledge about the process. But, now I have learnt the entire process of growing vegetables,” said K Tamilarasi, a class 10 student. Her classmate, S Mohanraj, said the activity refreshed their minds, helping them concentrate more on studies during class hours.

R S Gomaghi, another student involved in the initiative, said that, earlier, she did not know how vegetables were grown, but after participating in the farming in the school, she became aware of the kind of chemicals that were used in vegetables available in market. “We cultivated the vegetables ourselves and also learnt the technique,” she said. The head master, Kamaraj, said that the kind of approach the school adopted to teach the students farming was an eye opener for others as the activities helped the students understand how their food was cultivated. That also created a sense of responsibility in them towards food consumption, he added.