Smoking a child's future

Smoking a child’s future
Smoking has been an obsession with most of us. It carries with itself such grave consequences as can hardly be imagined. Smoking is known to be detrimental to the social, mental and physical well-being of smokers as well as all those associated with the smoker. This is also called involuntary or secondhand smoking. Smoking a cigarette or a cigar could be as detrimental to someone’s health as to a non-smoker. Passive smoking is known to have detrimental effects as respiratory disorders, pulmonary disorders, and even stomach ailments. The smoke exhaled or inhaled by a smoker contains more than 400 substances that have harmful effects on the user as well as those in contact with smokers. Smoke from cigarettes is believed to have carcinogenic effects on the individual in particular, and the society as a whole. Some of the carcinogens active for passive smokers could be enumerated as benzene; 1, 3-butadiene; benzo[a]pyrene; 4-(methyinitrosamino)-1-(pyridyl)-1-butanone.

All these chemicals could prove to be detrimental to the health of adults as well as children because people of all ages come in contact with a smoker’s smoke in one form or the other. It is known to be equally harmful for toddlers, infants, teenagers and even adolescents. Everyone inhales cigarette smoke in one form or the other. It makes a very little difference if one opens the windows of the room for ventilation for smoke to find its way out. An adequate quantity of smoke always remains in the room to harm family members including children. Children from households that have smokers are more likely to fall ill than children from households that don’t have smokers. Passive smoking, in a way, affects the development of children besides their school attendance in schools in developed, developing and underdeveloped countries. Everyone falls prey to the demon of passive smoking regardless of his or her age, gender or class. Society is affected in a lot of ways by smokers.

Smoking by pregnant and nursing mothers could prove to be detrimental to the babies. In all cases of studies conducted, the offspring is found to be lighter and shorter than the ones who have parents who don’t smoke. Incidents of placental abortion, prenatal mortality and premature labour are found to be more in case of mothers who smoke. Smoking of the mother may also cause congenital damage to the respiratory system of infants. Smoking parents are known to have children with reduced potency of the immune system.

Children are the most likely to suffer from the harms inflicted by the dragon of passive smoking, to say nothing of the effects of active smoking. They are at a developing stage of their lives, it is their proper development that should be the main concern of those posing to be guardians of the society.

Smoking before children presents an ideal culture where smoking is glorified. This way, children are more likely to take up smoking themselves. This could take the form of showing actors and actresses smoking in theatres or movies. Children look upon these protagonists as role models and fall prey to smoking themselves. This could explain the government’s efforts at prohibiting the display of smoking and smokers in the media. The media attracts the innocent and vulnerable minds of children with a more potent force than the adults exposed to these shows. While the media aims at the presentation of a symbolic message through all its paraphernalia, the media intends to convey a negative image of the protagonists shown to be smoking, but in their innocence, children take the message at its face value. They absorb the message as it is shown.

Children fail to see the negative aspects associated with the glorification associated with the media and what the protagonists are shown to be doing. This brings about the need to initiate the change within the self if we want to bring about a change in the society. change can never be abrupt and subtle, it has to be gradual and slow. This would involve an accurate measurement of the extent of passive smoking one indulges in.

Incidents of pneumonia and bronchitis in children were found to be higher in cases where parents smoked cigarettes regularly. These effects of smoking are not related to birth weight or the soci-economic class of the parents. The only factor that pointed towards the situation was the smoking habit of the parents.


Measurement of the extent of passive smoking an individual has been exposed to is possible by measuring the levels of nicotine and cotinine in the body. Cotinine is held as a more reliable marker as compared to nicotine as it has a relatively longer half-life as compared to nicotine. The levels could be measured quite conveniently in blood, urine or saliva.

The problem could assume graver consequences if one is continuously and regularly exposed to the smoke of cigarettes. Passive smokers are four times more likely to contract heart and lung ailments as compared to those who are not exposed to cigarette smoke. Active smoking is even more frightening and has even more devastating effects on the health of smokers. There are several governmental and non-governmental organisations offering their services and counseling to smokers who wish to quit smoking.

The campaign should assume global merits and a global recognition because it proposes to bring about a change in the whole world. The campaign is supposed to bring about a revolution for children. It is expected to ameliorate the plight of children afflicted by smokers. These children don’t smoke themselves, but they are the victims of passive smoking.

Drugs, children and education

Drugs, children and the world
Addiction to drugs is not a common phenomenon, but it remains a malaise afflicting the society with graver consequences than could hardly be imagined. Though drug abuse remains something to be whispered in social circles, yet many of the elite might find themselves in its grips. This doesn’t mean that drug and substance abuse has left the underprivileged untouched. The gentry from the lower social class find themselves afflicted by so many nuances of everyday life that they have to resort to pleasure-giving things as drugs to get over the serenity of their lives. In its quest for a united and peaceful society, City Montessori School(CMS) has been exerting every effort to rid the society of the menace by virtue of the tool capable of changing the world, education. regular studies and analyses of instances of drug abuse have shown a relation between social class and instances of drug abuse.

There does seem to be a proportionate relation between the social class and substance abuse resorted to. The relationship could probably be explained in a way that the well-off are able to hide their delinquency in a better manner than those not as well-off. Socio-economic status of drug addicts gives a definite pattern of substance abuse among drug addicts in the society.

Drug addicts begin the addiction as a form of escape from the contemporary problems they see around themselves. Drugs do provide a momentary and temporary relief from problems of everyday life, the psychotropic drugs alter the mood of the user. They could be the best way to emerge from the monotony of life, but the consequences posed by their withdrawl are quite severe. Moreover, those suffering from an addiction are prone to suffer from many other problems resulting from the addiction. They face reduced chances of socio-economic amelioration.

Another point of consequence is that people from lower socio economic status are found to suffer from an increased number of disorders resulting from addiction to drugs and alcohol. In other words, they are more prone to the detrimental effects of alcohol and drugs as compared to those with a higher socio-economic status. The greater number of people from the lower social class makes them more vulnerable to the detrimental effects of drug abuse.

Drug abuse is initiated when children try out drugs to whet their curiosity. They are pushed towards them by the peer group and the satisfaction and gratification derived from its use by the group. They are perceived as a tool to gain a release from problems faced in everyday life. Cocaine, ecstasy pills, marijuana, illicit prescription drugs and psychedelic mushrooms are only some of the drugs college students all over the world use to get rid of the tensions daily life brings into their lives. But the genesis of all this lies in the very beginning of life, it lies in the school.

Children at school are at a very tender and delicate stage of their lives. They are like the tender stems of saplings that could be made to grow in any direction they find themselves in. Schools should impart education capable of preventing students from falling into the death trap of drugs in the first place. Schools should provide an educational model capable of imbibing the students with confidence and strength enough to counter the difficulties posed by the world, and they should be able to do so without resorting to drugs. The problem begins to take a definite shape when drugs are seen as an option to get out of the tyrannies and ironies of life.

The problems brought before us by life should be taken as challenges. The outlook towards these problems needs to be changed. The change could be initiated by initiating a change in the pattern of education imparted to children. Proper education could bring about the desired metamorphosis in the society. Children need proper social and psychological conditioning that is capable of pushing the urge to consume drugs to be happy to the foreground. Drug abuse becomes dangerous because it breaks the barriers between the reality and myth. Drug abusers float into the realms of their dreams. The realisation that this is merely an illusion creates a sense of discontentment and dissatisfaction. The realisation takes some time to settle down in the intellect of the drug abuser.

The problem with drug abuse is that the reality injects a feeling of satisfaction with the reality, whatever it may be. The reality can never be perceived as an ideal if one looks for progress. Progress is possible only if one perceives the present as an imperfect realisation of one’s ideals. Progress is possible if we look at today as another ordinary day granted to us so that we could make the tomorrow better than today. Consumption of drugs brings with itself the problem that it makes today and the present moment appear to be better than any other moment of our lives. Education should be aimed at improving the future lives of students without hampering their present. This is what education imparted at CMS aims at.

Students at CMS are injected with a dose of education capable of making their tomorrow a beautiful world. The beauty of the world could be comprehended completely by looking at the world as an entity full of disruption and destruction, because this is what is capable of bringing out the best in individuals. The problems of the whole world serve the purpose behind education---they bring out different entities in the world together.

All about education

Education has gone a long way in making us who and what we are, but its goals and avenues need to be redefined. The goal of education has become the production of people able to earn a living, and be successful in life. The definition of success needs a redefinition. Education should be directed to the upliftment of the people who are not educated. Education needs to be defined in such a manner that it capable of bringing about a metamorphosis in individuals in particular, and the society in general.

There is a huge difference between education and literacy. A large proportion of the public today is literate by virtue of the several avenues of learning open to the layman, but very few are able to comprehend the difference between education and literacy. Education brings with itself many things that are not visible to the eyes of the layman. It is a lot to do with culture and the process of acculturisation.

The ascent from a being literate to being educated is punctuated by several steps whereby the individual is exposed to realities that are at times not easily absorbed into the intellect. As a literate child becomes educated, he is made to actively partake in the process of development of his community, and to his own proper development. Education is what brings out the hidden potential of individuals that could have been latent and forgotten had it not been for education.

This is where the importance of schools comes in. schools become the harbours where ships of peace and harmony are anchored. This is how the school forms an important and inseparable part of the society. This is how schools play an important role in the acculturation of the society. Education brings a sense of tolerance within the individual. It shows the way to succeed in life. Education adds values to the nuances of everyday life. The goals set out by education can never be achieved till it is liberated from the grips of commercialization.

Education needs to be freed from the grips of business. The educational sector is as much an arena of investment as anything else. About $40 billion are being invested in the educational sector every year for the purpose of creating individuals able enough to make pots of gold. A lot of grey matter is wasted in simply the pursuit of money. Brain drain resulting from the attraction towards IT and management and other fields should be brought to an end. For this, the educational sector needs to be made worthy of being praised and admired. This goal could be accomplished when teachers and students are known to have a definite goal besides amassment of material wealth.

Teachers and students ought to emerge as contributors to the process of peace in the world. The school atmosphere needs to be modified to this effect. The school curriculum needs to be modeled on the pattern to produce the effect. It should be an adequate mixture of human education that would involve mutual cooperation and team work. Mutual co operation and understanding foster trust and confidence, but at the same time, they also give rise to conflicts and strife among individuals. After all, no society can exist without conflict. Conflict is an essential part of all the drama that is staged in the world. Drama often gives rise to conflicts and tension. There are always ways to deal successfully with this conflict and tension. Students must be taught about the principles of law and justice in the whole world as there are bound to be conflicts arising out of the mutual distrust between men and women.

The mistrust and misunderstanding needs to be resolved and need to be countered with forces of trust and understanding. These are the feelings that would make up the human education that should be given to every child as a part of his education. Children need to learn to trust each other and give adequate amount of understanding to each other. This way they could develop into healthy asocial individuals contributing to the society in particular and the world in general.

Students at CMS are inculcated with the concept of holistic education aimed at an overall development of the child. This way, they partake in a lot of hobbies while at the same time focusing on their academic pursuits too. The goal of education as imparted in other schools has become the production of people able to earn a living, this needs to be redefined. Education should be directed to the upliftment of the majority who are not educated. But the ability to read and write can never be equated with the merits of education.

There is a huge difference between education and literacy. A large proportion of the public today is literate by virtue of the several avenues of learning open to the layman, but very few are able to comprehend the difference between education and literacy. Education brings with itself many things that are not visible to the eye of the layman. It is a lot to do with culture and the process of acculturisation.

The ascent from a being literate to being educated is punctuated by several steps whereby the individual is exposed to realities that are at times not easily absorbed into the intellect. As a literate child becomes educated, he is made to actively partake in the process of development of his community, and to his own proper development. Education is what brings out the hidden potential of individuals that could have been latent and forgotten had it not been for education.

This is where the importance of schools comes in. schools become the harbours where ships of peace and harmony are anchored. Education brings a sense of tolerance within the individual. It shows the way to succeed in life. Success can never be alienated from the merits of education. It is education that makes successful people what they are, and it is education that defines their success.

This way, the entire outlook towards success in the world would have to be redefined. The parameters defining success would have to be redefined. Success needs to be defined in terms of satisfaction that could be obtained through adequate education of children. These children would grow up as citizens of the world and they could be brought up to be worthy world citizens if they are given adequate education of the world around themselves. This would arm them with skills and competence to conquer and overcome all obstacles that might come their way. Children need to be made wary of the obstacles that could come in the way. Material education aimed at refining the parameters along which success is measured needs to be imparted. Material education should be capable of preparing them for a healthy future.

Thinking of the future seems to put children in a time machine that propels us to the heavens. These abstract things push us into realms of the unknown, they identify us with God. This brings in the need for a meaningful education that would circumvent all the religions of the world. The All Religion Prayer at CMS is a unique and distinctive feature that sets the institution apart from others in the whole world.

Religion and education are what make a man he really is. While education shows him or her a rational world with all the manifestations of good and evil, religion pushes the individual into an ideal world where only the virtuous and good exist. It depends on the person’s upbringing as to which way he or she is pulled and attracted.

The individual needs guidance at every step of life for proper direction. A proper direction needs to be given to a person’s life from the very day he or she is born. An individual’s home and school are the most important elements in teaching the values of the society to the individual. They are the gates to the society. They are the ones that make an individual give his best to the society, and they also ensure that the individual get the best back from society.

The best that an individual can get from society is respect and tolerance. This would be the direct consequence of the polarity he or she chooses for his life. The direction in which his or her life is headed for should be set out in a clear way. What is needed is a compass that can point out the appropriate direction for the individual. This is exactly what religion and education are aimed at. Religion and education should be given to children or the whole of humanity in the appropriate proportion. This would ensure peace and harmony in the world at large because religion and religious tenets have been found to be at the heart of all contentions.

These religious tenets need to be clarified. They need to be brought before the masses ignorant of the significance of these tenets. Education of these tenets needs to be given right from the days one begins one’s education. This could be the ideal way of inoculating mutual love and harmony for different religions and cultures.

All the cultures of the world are different and unique, but they are all aimed at fulfilling the same purpose of making us happy. It is happiness that all of us strive for, all of us want to be happy, whatever we do, we do to be happy, the sieves of education and religion are supposed to filter out the best that our lives can give us to make us happy. Good education can show the individual the correct way to achieve happiness, this is where schools play an important role.

The role of the school cannot be confined to the provision of proper religious education. it is required to supplement it with an appropriate dosage of material education that is capable of making the child able enough to wade through the world and its exigencies. Schools in general are not supposed to provide anything other than material education.

CMS emerges as the only institution capable of providing an adequate mixture of all the three kinds of education

Sunday, August 29

The basement of CMS Gomti Nagar Campus welcomed 122 students from 14 campuses of the City Montessori School(CMS) for the 2nd session of World Unity Sunday Seminar on August 29 organised by the World Unity Education Department(WUED). The interactive session began at 9.40 am when Ms Priyanka Bharadwaj, Chief Coordinator, Sunday Seminar, instructed campus coordinators to ensure that the participants settled down after recording their attendance with Ms Sangeeta Negi, Assistant Coordinator, Sunday Seminar. The struggle for being among the appellants before the legal luminaries in the 11th International Conference of Chief Justices of the World for peace in the whole world began with the coordinators introducing themselves.


Sunday Seminar sessions are organized to initiate the change in everyone to make them world citizens. Some students from CMS Gomti Nagar Campus were invited on stage to discuss an issues of importance before the audience. Shivani Singh, Class VIII-A, Sapna Tiwari, VI-G, Deepika Pandey, VIII-A, Ananya Swaroop, VIII-A, Neha Mishra, VIII-B, were unanimous in their reasoning that the root of child labour lies in poverty and lack of education. Dr Jagdish Gandhi, Founder-Manager, CMS, has been making concerted efforts towards this goal through the institution, CMS. All of us should contribute to the efforts by giving our best in the direction.

The joy of giving is brought forth through activities like Sunday Giveaway, where participants bring old and used articles to share with their mates. One of the students described how he had drawn cartoons during an uninteresting class. All students accepted that the caricature should be erased after the initial efforts. The forthcoming sessions of Sunday Seminar would organize Sunday Giveaway where participants would share the goods with the poor. This is the idea that can bring about the change that is required. Things need to be changed, but the idea needs to be worked on.

The heavy discussion called for the refreshment break. Since the refreshments were unlimited, there was a mad rush for the snacks, but sadly, the time wasn’t unlimited. Food has been an irresistible commodity, but samosas and pan-cakes had to be put aside or the countdown for the presentation, Law of Seed.

The short story had the message that one has to put in continuous efforts to grow as an individual. It is not necessary that all our efforts would bear fruit; it is important to keep trying to succeed. A comprehension of this law instills confidence and patience in us. We ought to treat our goals as our friends, and failures as stepping stones to our goals. Each failure confronts us with two propositions:
• Change the world
• Change our thinking
It is always easier to change our thinking.

Some videos were shown by Mr Rishi Khanna, Technical Lead, WUED. The video highlighted children affected adversely by war and disturbance in the world. About $1.464 trillion are spent on war every year by the world. Natural disasters as flood were shown to create havoc in the masses. The United Nations Organisation was formed in 1945 to redress the needs of nations, but it failed miserably in its efforts because of the five veto powers it has. It is time to meditate deeply on the problem and form a world government with no veto powers. Students from CMS Rajendra Nagar Campus were invited to give some feedback on them: Aiwaral and Jahnavi, Rajendra Nagar Campus-I and Anubhav Shervani and Medhavi Asthana, Rajendra Nagar Campus-III came up on stage to give some feedback on the movie.

A motivational film by Mr Roopesh Vishwakarma, Graphic Designer, WUED, stressing on the powers of unity followed. The film depicted a race between a few handicapped children for the finishing line. One of the children fell down, and the children united in escorting him to the finishing line, which they all touched together. A lot could be achieved by uniting efforts. An applause from the participants celebrated the victory.

Following this, two groups of 8 students were invited on stage to share a true incident where they sacrificed something for someone, or where they helped someone in need. A student elaborated on how she had sacrificed her studies, etcetra for making her family members comfortable when her parents were away, while someone had once helped a blind woman cross the street. Students from CMS Rajendra Nagar Campus and CMS Gomti Nagar Campus elaborated on how they had helped someone with money, how they had taken someone to the hospital or when they had given blankets to the poor. These are little acts that motivate us to do good and be good.

The session finally came to an end with some promises made. The attendees were made to promise to share their experiences of the Sunday Seminar with their friends, and to wipe off all cartoons and caricatures they may have drawn on school furniture.

(Report compiled by Mr Faisal Zafar Ansari, Creative Writer, WUED)

Brave children

Brave children
Children always get inspiration from superheroes the society puts before them to do things that are unbelievable. Adults are inspired to do the same when they see children being rewarded. It is remarkable how the media plays a constructive role in inculcating the virtues of bravery in children through its paraphernalia. The government of India awards bravery in children by awarding the National Bravery Award for Indian Children. This is given to Indian children for meritorious acts of bravery against all odds.

The award is given basically to inspire others to do similar deeds of bravery. Bravery involves doing what one isn't expected to do. Children aren't expected to save a friend from drowning, Ranu saved her drowning brother along with his friend. She was rewarded for her act of bravery with Republic Day Award on January 24, 2010 along with 21 other children from various states across India for being brave. There were several others awarded for several reasons. Some of them could be enumerated as Gujarat’s Narendra Singh Solanki who rescued his father from the clutches of an alligator with the help of his brother. Mizoram’s Lalrammawia rescued a boy trapped inside a garage which was surrounded by a swarm of wasps. Lalramamawia’s presence of mind saved the boy as he set the doormat of the garage on fire by pouring kerosene oil to drive away the wasps.

These are only a few of the children who acted against their will and their natural abilities. Being brave involved a lot of determination on the part of these children to overcome their will and natural fear. A conscious effort on the part of one’s will power is required to overcome physical pain, hardship or even threat to death. Being brave is thus everyone’s piece of cake. All of us could be brave, any of us could be brave. We only need to overcome the coward within us forcing us not to do these things.

The lessons that life teaches us

Life teaches us lessons of unity through all different kinds of metaphors, but we overlook such subtle influence our lives. We come across so many instances of unity in our lives, but they pass by unnoticed in the absence of filters to capture the essence of unity. CMS Broader Education Model is an attempt on the part of the institution to probe into the realities of life, to discover the filters that capture the beauty of unity. It is of paramount importance for us to understand the concept of unity in its completeness, this is what makes life live.


Life is a bit beyond what is perceived by our senses. It becomes beautiful when we realise the immense potential behind unity. Life would become all the more beautiful if only we recognised the dominance and presence of these filters that capture unity in our lives. The recognition of the filters assumes such importance that this seems to be the very basic reason for our creation by The Creator.

The Creator created the entire humanity like a single unblemished piece of fabric. He created differences within the single yarn of humanity so that we might distinguish between ourselves and recognise each other as different and distinct individuals. The differences we have are because of the different races of mankind that evolved over the millenniums of our existence. All the races had their own genetic pool, and a mixture gave rise to the differences.

The differences have assumed such enormous proportions that the contemporary world has run asunder on the principles of unity that The Creator wished us to assimilate. It was a beautiful world that He visualised when He created us. It was of a united world that would look the same from all sides.

The world does not have sides. It remains the oblong shaped mass that it was when it was created millions of years ago. Our world is different from all other worlds that were created at about the same time. The difference lies in the dominance and presence of unity on Earth.

Unity is what The Creator stands for. The greatest exigency of the contemporary time is the recognition of the many forces that push unity into our lives. These forces pump happiness into our lives. We need to recognise the filters that capture the breezes of happiness that brush past us like a whiff of fresh air because we spend a major portion of our lives in search of happiness. What we fail to realise is that happiness lies in the source of unity, The Creator. Happiness could be achieved if we inched closer to the source of unity, The Creator. The movement could be essential for the very sustenance of life on Earth.

In its essence, life gives us what our hearts desire. Our hearts want to flutter amidst the rainbow of life. Life borrows its colours from the rainbow, and the rainbow sustains itself by virtue of the colours that flow out of life. The identification of the colours of life with the colours of the rainbow becomes essential for beauty to prevail in the world. The myriad colours of life are what makes the world beautiful. All of us want to be happy, and happiness could be possible only if we turn towards unity. In a way, it becomes our heart-felt wish to be happy, and be united. If our hearts desire to be united, we would have to inch closer to The Creator whose glory sustains all life on Earth. It is only the mind that becomes the source of conflicts and all the dissonance in the world. We need to forge a stronger bond with the human, material, and divine beings that we really are. This could always be done by initiating the CMS broader model of education in all schools all over the world. CMS aims at an overall development of the child.

Children are the soul of the world. CMS broader education model is something that prepares a child for all kinds of challenges that he comes across in life.

This model of education includes the education that a child ought to get and the education that schools all over the world provide. It makes every child an agent of profound social transformation. Every child holds in itself the potential and ability to change the world by initiating a change within itself. The change needs to be initiated and instigated. The broader model of education provided by CMS is an effort to initiate the change within each child.

All children are innocent and pure. They are like the books ready to be written into. These books could be inscribed with any kind of text or material. The material instilled within children would give them the potential to change, the kind of material depends on the environment provided by the school and the home. This way, the child is at the heart of all changes that occur in the world. The potential to change the world is what lies in all children of the world. This potential needs to be tapped. This is what the broader education model at CMS is aimed at. Such an education prepares the child for the world at large.

The world at large is fraught with challenges and novelties of all kinds. The child needs to be armed with all kinds of knowledge in order to emerge successfully from the struggle of life. Every child is treated with the greatest care in CMS because CMS perceives every child as God’s agent of social transformation. The social transformation is what all kinds of education aim for. This is what CMS stands for.

CMS stands for the express desire to transform the society towards a united world. the school must initiate the change within the children, and the children will push the change in the society. A change is needed to bring peace in the world. children are needed to bring peace in the world. CMS broader education model is needed to ensure peace in the world.

Peace in the world becomes so important that CMS organises 31 International Educational Events to promote unity, peace and harmony. The institution organises Children’s International Film Festival every year. Entry to the films screened is free of cost. CMS Educational Films Division produces and collects inspiring and educational films from all over the world. in continuation of its efforts to provide education to all under the Broader Education Model, CMS runs two FM Educational radio stations on 90.4 MHz from CMS Gomtinagar and Kanpur Road Campuses.