Camp where students think on a different level

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 23

Picture this: A group of students in high school are carefully listening to what the resource person has to say about how the mobile networks were controlling and managing the lives of youngsters by giving out the slogans like “Karlo duniya muthi mein”. The students agree to it completely. They are so much into the topic that they are unaware of any activity happening outside.

All they have is pen and paper in their hands and they jot down the important stuff which they feel is worth noting. This scenario is at a different kind of a summer camp being organised by the Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall Committee in Jalandhar where nearly 125 students from Punjab are participating.

Karl Marx, Russian Revolution, killing of journalists like Gauri Lankesh, penetration of the Internet into real lives, brain drain etc are the topics which are not taught during routine lectures, but discussed at length for two days at the Chetna summer camp here. This was what students who have come from almost every district of Punjab said today.

Students who are in high school to those pursuing PhD are part of this ongoing Chetna summer camp that was started on June 22 and will end on June 24.

A Class XI student from Bathinda, Navdeep said she was attending the camp for the first time and she really found it worth attending after coming here.

“I have been studious all my life, but what I have learned here is something which is totally new and the examples that are given by resource persons and experts here are so relatable that it makes the points understandable more easily,” she said. Sangeeta Rani from Bathinda, who is doing MSc in physics, was clear that the kind of lessons she had got here were totally different. This is a different experience: studying science and getting to know things which are related to society but are unconnected. “Classes mein ye sab koi nahee sikhata jo yaha do din mein pata chala.” (No one teaches such things in classes which we have learnt here in two days) Simarjeet Kaur, who is in BCom final year, said she had attended the camp last year too. “I still remember the documentary they showed on Russian Revolution. It was only after that I had decided that whatever be the reason, I was not going to skip the camp,” she said.

Hardeep Kaur, who is pursuing masters in Punjabi from Faridkot, said the young generation should definitely join such camps.

“We have a responsibility towards society and such camps inculcate positive and revolutionary feelings in us and it feels great to be here,” she said. Some students also said that such camps were the need of the hour as participants got to know that these mobile network companies had actually taken their “Jaan muthi mein” and how this trap was taking them far from history, heritage and moral values.