Breathe: The Forgotten Classroom Skill
Breathe: The Forgotten Classroom Skill
#Breathe. The first thing a baby learns. 👼🏻🍼 The one occasion when not breathing might actually earn you a tight smack—and no one protests!
Breathing is so basic, so primal, yet so overlooked. Except when it isn’t.
I stumbled upon this incredible book, When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon facing terminal cancer. Through his journey, he attempts to answer the existential question: What makes life worth living? Heavy stuff, right? Yet it got me thinking about something as simple and profound as breathing—both literal and metaphorical—in our classrooms and lives. 😷
Growing up in Kolkata (and later, in Port Blair), I daydreamed of spending more time on beaches than benches 🌴🐚. But alas, life had other plans. The benches won. I grew up, but the child within me stubbornly refused to follow suit. Out of that refusal came a dream—the dream of sparrows.
Today, our kids face a unique challenge. Forget finding life’s meaning; they’re struggling to find breathable air. With #Delhi’s Air Quality Index (#AQI) regularly hitting “apocalyptic,” it’s not just #lungs that are under attack—fragile young minds are too. And while a layer of #N95 might shield the body, the fear of what we’re inhaling lingers. 😷
Here’s a reality check: #OnlineSchooling is no longer just an abbreviation; it’s an adaptation. If 15 million children step into classrooms next year, how many will struggle to mask their coughs as much as their fears?
If we opened up an online schooling option—even for the 1% who genuinely need it—we’d be giving these kids more than an education. We’d be giving them a chance to breathe, quite literally.
For the rest of us, we hope a world, where Gurudev Tagore’s not just “mind without fear”, but lungs too!
