Police chief Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti with students and principal (far left) of Shaw Public School

Value education is moving from textbooks to real life and a school in Behala is showing the way.

Shaw Public School on Fakir Para Road is responding to these troubled times by trying to inculcate a sense of tolerance among students. “It is easy to respond to incidents like the Mumbai attacks with anger and hatred, but more violence is not the solution,” said principal Anjana Saha.

“Classroom lectures on honesty and integrity won’t help much. Students need to be taught about tolerance and equality with specific examples and through discussions with police personnel, fire fighters and other members of society,” she said.

The school plans to get the message across to kids through patience-building exercises, dance therapy and by organising police patrol weeks.

Educationist Barry O’ Brien, who is part of the school’s management board, is all for the new approach.

“Value education needs to move beyond just a weekly class and become more relevant in everyday life,” he said.

“At the end of the academic year in April, we will evaluate the success of the programme. We also plan to suggest such a format to the ICSE, CBSE and West Bengal boards,” O’ Brien said. He added that the school was planning to sensitise parents so that they didn’t blame a particular community for attacks, show intolerance or misbehave with policemen, passing on a negative message to kids.

As part of the new programme, principal Saha has drafted letters to K. Unnikrishnan, the father of NSG Major Sandip Unnikrishnan, who was killed during the Mumbai siege, and Kavita Karkare, the wife of slain ATS chief Hemant Karkare, which have been signed by students, parents, teachers and other employees of the school.

The letters were handed over to police chief Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti at Lalbazar and Ian Myers, the principal of Frank Anthony Public School, in his office on Wednesday.

“We wanted to express our solidarity with the martyrs’ families. We also wanted to educate the kids about the police and the role they played in our lives,” said Saha.