In Haryana, mandatory sit-ups for school students to boost brain power

ROHTAK: Delhi is boosting academic standards in its government schools by improving infrastructure and equipping classrooms with projectors and multi-media boards, but a government school in Haryana, run by the Board of School Education Haryana in Bhiwani, has decided to ‘boost’ brain power of its students by making daily sit-ups compulsory for them.
Describing it as ‘super Yoga for brain,’ board secretary Rajeev Parshad told TOI that the students of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan School in Bhiwani would take part in a pilot project on daily sit-ups from July 8, the first day back at school after their summer vacation.
The students of the board-run school will have to mandatorily do 14 sit-ups every day to ‘sharpen their brain and to improve memory.’ The students would be divided into two groups — control group and experimental group.
Invoking Yoga, Parshad said earlier teachers used to punish students by making them do sit-ups but after corporal punishment was banned, this exercise also was also forgotten. “When other countries can use this technique to boost brain power of their students, why can’t it be done in our own country?”
If the project is successful, the exercise of daily 14 sit-ups would be recommended to the state education department for implementation in other schools under the Haryana government, he added.
Parshad insisted it should not be taken as punishment but as a form of daily exercise — students would be doing sit-ups with crossed arms and hands holding earlobes to activate acupressure points.
The school, according to Parshad, has been roped in by the National Brain Research Centre, Gurgaon and Haryana Yog Parishad, under whose supervision, the process would be conducted scientifically. The daily ‘sit-ups’ be monitored periodically.
Notably, 43% students in 2019 failed in Haryana government schools and 48% students in 2018 had flunked their classes similarly. The Haryana education department also has an acute shortage of teachers for both primary and secondary classes.