TERROR IN THE CLASSROOM:

Terrorism has brought violence into the classroom. How should principals in India  prepare their students? Dr. Shekhar Seshadri, Professor of child and adolescence psychiatry at NIMHANS, and Madhu Smriti Shukla, theatre educator and writer, explore the potential for a school program that will enable children to mentally cope with violence in the environment.

• “Inadequacy of discourse at homes and schools result in children lacking skills necessary to transact day to day realities in real life.”
• The child begins to perceive the world as an essentially hostile place, where anyone can aggress and violate. This world view can have a dual impact

• Theatre - can become a very important medium of learning
• Brainstorming – is a technique in which any issue can be explored in the movements through ideas, suggestions, momentary images, phrases, word
• Process group learning/forum – a simple role play is enacted and the facilitator asks the groups several questions such as the nature of the problem, the sequence of events observed by the group, feelings evoked by the character or situations, why the scene mattered to the audience,