Enhancing school education to counter some everyday problems

From the various discussions on Praja we observe everyday problems such as
- Corruption
- Traffic congestion and chaos
- Unorganized & uncontrolled urban growth
- Complete lack of civic sense and amenities
- Pollution (land, air and noise pollution) and it's affects on health

I feel that one of the approaches of countering the above problems should be by making an impact on impressionable minds..the citizens of tommorrow..by introducing them to such issues and involve them in problem solving by introducing some enhancements in their current curriculum. We see hundreds of subjects being studied but nothing that to a large extent introduces students to high priority daily life issues like above which are hindering the overall quality of life & growth of the city/state/country.

It is not enough to introduce this as a subject and then learning by rote from a textbook for an exam. Perhaps this needs to be done:-

- introduce these problems through case studies and joint problem analysis with active participation and coordination between the students and teacher.
- videos,photos & other material from successful countries can be shown & examined to discuss how other countries do things differently. Many folks (I was one of them) who have never been outside the country don't know a different world exists out there that thinks and does things differently till they go, see & experience things. This is simply because we are used to doing things one way and we will continue to do so.
- group discussions can be held where teams of students present their ideas/projects where corruption can be reduce/tackled; or perhaps they can come up with a design for a neighbourhood with some urban planning principles in terms of good roads, sidewalks & adequate amenities thereby explaining the advantages of having good urban planning.
- road traffic rules and regulations can be studied in the form of videos and students quizzed on them. Videos and photos of how other countrie's drivers behave and follow rules can be shown.

What has been stated above is just a general direction and not the only way of doing it. Educational experts can come up with a suitable mandatory subject in a curriculum with appropriate content.