The findings address long standing concerns on whether preschool education programmes should emphasise academic achievement or social and emotional development.

"Fostering academic achievement in preschoolers need not come at the expense of healthy emotional development," said Duane Alexander, director of Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), which funded the study.

Researchers compared the progress of students who received a traditional 'Head Start' curriculum to those who received a curriculum with enhancements in the areas of social and emotional learning and pre-reading skills.

The new programme is known as REDI (Research-Based, Developmentally Informed) 'Head Start' programme. The researchers developed the REDI curriculum by combining a programme that fosters social and emotional development (Preschool PATHS) with curriculum components that promote language development and pre-reading skills.

Like traditional preschool programmes, the REDI programme emphasises such pre-reading skills as learning the alphabet, and learning to manipulate the sounds that letters represent.

Earlier research has shown that children with such skills are more successful at learning to read than are children who lack them, according to a Penn State release.

The REDI programme also allows ample time for teachers to read interactively with children, asking them questions and encouraging their active involvement in story telling, which builds the vocabulary and language skills needed for later school success.

The weeklong (July 25 to 31) festival will see some of the best Indian and award-winning international films and all four screens at PVR will screen sessions specifically designed towards the 8-12 age group.

Keeping in tune with the aim of promoting "Entertainment with a Purpose", the WorldKids International Film Festival will introduce the present generation to different cultures and languages through the medium of cinema. It will showcase a diverse selection of films from all over the globe, thus exposing children to value-based entertainment.

The festival will showcase internationally acclaimed films including "An Inconvenient Truth" (US), "Summer with the Ghosts" (Canada), "Viva Cuba" (France/Cuba) and "Red like the Sky" (Italy).

The interactive educational software called 'Abracadabra' is designed to help struggling school students aged five to eight years learn basic literacy skills to equip them for the future.

The tool has just undergone a 10-week trial that has been described as a success.

Following several complaints about TV serials like `Boogie Woogie` and `Chak De Bache` showing young ones dancing and singing, the National Commission For Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) sent a letter to Labour Secretary Sudha Pillai to enquire whether the `work` the children do comes under child labour.

In her two-page letter Monday, NCPCR member Sandhya Bajaj said: "We have come to know that there are so many programmes telecast on TV like `Chak De Bache`, `Boogie Woogie` etc. in which children of small age are playing roles.

`Children are too small to do such jobs. No doubt, they may be talented, maybe that some children might do their work proudly, others are little more than slaves,` she said.

She said the panel felt that `children are missing out on education and time to play. A child who spends even part of the day working instead of going to school remains uneducated, it attracts (the law of) child labour.`

As per the law, employing a child under the age of 14 is a crime.

Bajaj also asked the labour secretary to examine how many hours the children work daily in the entertainment sector, their renumeration and what is the imapct on children participating in high-profile competitions in terms of stress, school attendance in and continuing education.

`We also want to know whether the children are exposed to child abuse of any kind or their rights are being violated,` Bajaj told reporters.

The labour secretary has been directed to file a report in 15 days.

`We are planning to visit one of the studios where such talent hunt shows are shot. We will see the kind of environment they provide to the children, who are asked to dance or sing songs that are vulgar. Why children of such young age are exposed to adult things?` Bajaj asked.

She said the panel would also ask its officials to visit such studios independently to provide them with detailed information.

`We will also verify facts on remuneration, the hours the children work, the environment they are exposed to and how it is impacting the children. We will visit the studios after our officials submit a report. We are taking this very seriously,` Bajaj added.

Consider a 12-year-old child making the monthly budget for the entire family, or a 10-year-old preparing a plan for conserving water. These are some of the tasks students have to do during the two-month break.

Class VI students of St. Mary's School have been told to take down the electronic meter reading for an entire month and find out which gadget consumes most power. "We have told the parents of Class VII and VIII students to plan the family budget and record each expense in the tables and sheets provided to them. This is part of their practical training in life," said Madhu Sharma, in charge of St Mary's Middle School, Safdarjung Enclave.

The physical environment of the house has a direct impact on the moral disposition of a child. Young children inherit their values from their parents. It is difficult to be amiable when one's family life is wrecked and one stop stealing from a toy shop when one has not enjoyed toys.

One's moral nature is formed very early in life. The institution of education allows access of all children to school. Therefore both home and school are important factors in developing one's moral character. Some schools have extra periods termed as moral science while others use the term value education to inculcate moral values into the young minds. Way back in school my teacher told stories from the Bible and Aesop's Fables to teach us moral values.

Socialisation induces an individual to adhere to the rules of society and allows him to play the roles prescribed to him. Moral consciousness is analogous to what one has learnt. Schools not only teach children to become useful members of society, but also shape their moral character and educate them on the dictates of morality.

In order to mould a child's moral nature and allow it to operate in a desired way, cooperation of the home and the school is needed. The Parent's Teacher Association (PTA) is the most important channel and teachers have to don on the coat of parents and the school becomes the family. For young children, there can be direct moral teaching. The teacher becomes the mentor. Examples of honesty, perseverance, generosity, responsibility, loyalty are given in order to prepare the students with a particular moral ethos and also to sustain it.

As the child grows and enters his teens he adopts the common youth culture with its bizarre clothing and long hair. The moral science teacher has to take all this in her stride. She has to show, sensitivity towards the children in their age of `storm and stress.' Value education depends a lot on the attitude of the teacher. Now the teacher does not have to resort to long boring speeches, rather open classroom discussions are the way.

Ranjit Singh Sandhu, a progressive gentleman farmer and an alumnus of Bishop Cotton School, Shimla reminiscences his founding years at this elite boarding school, where the remnants of Victorian moral values a still to be found. In the dining hall, the young students were not allowed to talk during meals and all those who did had to own up on their own. This inculcated the quality of accepting one's mistakes and instilled the courage of conviction.

"We are getting a lot of applications from parents whose children are only three years old. Before this, we had been taking in students who were four by September 30. But now, we are getting students who are three by March 2007. We have kept these applications aside and asked the Directorate of Education to give it to us in writing that we can take these kids in. We feel three-plus is a more suitable age,'' says Madhulika Sen, Principal of Tagore International School.

Hoopes, refreshingly, does not try to hide his opinions and pretend to be neutral: his biases are evident from the start. How, he wonders, do Americans reconcile their democratic political system with the managerial system of the typical corporation, which is not democratic at all? In his telling, management as practised in America started with slave-owners and their overseers; slavery could, in a ghastly way, be regarded as the ultimate in top-down management. But in the 1840s, in the north-east, factories faced a new problem: how to lure and keep industrial workers willing to punch a time clock. From this Hoopes traces the division of management theory into two broad schools: topdown, which emphasises the power of the manager and concentrates on convincing (or forcing) workers to do what they don't want to do, and bottom-up, in which managers believe that the workers are the ones with the control and the best a manager can do is persuade them.

``Every child is unique and capable of learning and developing in divergent ways and at a different rate. Too many children with disabilities have fallen victims to a rigid education system which is not able to meet their individual needs. In order to respond to the needs of each learner, we need to develop appropriate practices and culturally responsive learning environment using child-centred rather than curriculum-centred approach,'' said Anita Julka, reader, department of education of groups with special needs, NCERT, who prepared the manual.

Suggesting a variety of methods on how to deal with kids with different levels of learning disabilities, the manual explains the different approaches one can use while dealing with a child having problems like restlessness, lack in co-ordination or communication, poor spelling or comprehension abilities, difficulties in social interaction and mobility and having sensory impairments among others. ``It is important to detect the problem in the child and then work accordingly. A teacher need to be fully oriented to deal with children with different needs afresh,'' added Julka.

A Stuttering, which affects about 5 per cent of the youngsters, is best treated at the pre-school stage. It usually begins when a child is 3-4 years old. Boys are three times more likely to suffer from the problem.

I am no medico, but I do know that stuttering can be a frustrating and often misunderstood disability. The strange thing about it is that sometimes a person can be perfectly fluent one day, and be very disfluent the next. Doctors are now saying that it is caused by a neurological reason, not because we're nervous, or scared. Slowing down and thinking before we talk doesn’t always help.

However, the good news is that scientists at the University of Sydney, Australia, have recently developed and evaluated an early intervention called the Lidcombe programme (named after a suburb in Sydney), to treat the problem. This behavioural programme is administered by the parent with guidance from a speech pathologist. The result can be measured on a 10-point scale. Once the stuttering has disappeared or vastly diminished, the second stage of the programme which is aimed at maintaining the improvement for a year begins.

Do consult a good speech therapist anyway.