Students picking up 'gutka 'lessons at school!

If you thought children pick up bad habits only from their peers, think again. Nineteen-year-old Gurunath Prasad, who is suffering from chronic submucous fibrosis, a pre-cancerous condition, says he picked up the habit of chewing gutka 10 years ago from his teachers and school clerks.

“Our male teachers would chew gutka even in class,” says Prasad. “Looking at them, we started chewing paan masala and later graduated to gutka. Sometimes, the school peons would sell gutka sachets inside the premises at a cheaper rate.”

Prasad adds that as a child, he was attracted to gutka as he felt it made a person look tough. “I regret that no one warned us about its harmful effects,” he says.

Unfortunately, even today, teachers and the non-teaching staff, such as school clerks, set a bad precedent by chewing gutka in front of students in many public schools.

“Most of the teachers in public schools come from rural Maharashtra and a majority of them already pick up the habit from home or get addicted once they move to the city,” says Arundhati Chavan, principal of Swayam Siddhi College of Education. “Aping the teachers, students also get addicted. If teachers themselves chew gutka, how can students understand that it is dangerous to do so?”

Chavan adds that there is an especially high incidence of gutka chewing in teacher training institutes. “We catch several students chewing gutka in such colleges. Recently, we took strict action against them and sent them for counselling,” says Chavan, adding that in the Diploma in Education or Bachelors in Education syllabus, ill-effects of substances such as gutka is only a small module and that anti-gutka campaigns need to target such teachers.

According to Prashant Reddij, head of the Maharashtra permanently unaided schools action committee, this phenomenon is not restricted only to public schools, but is also prevalent in private unaided schools.

“In unaided schools, the non-teaching staff is to be blamed. Peons and clerks come from a lower income background and are often chewing such substances in front of students,” Reddij said.

Experts say such a behaviour can be curbed only if teachers and the non-teaching staff are penalised for possessing gutka.

“A supervisor needs to be appointed to keep an eye on the staff. If they are found to be comsuming gutka or other tobacco products on the school premises, strict action like termination or suspension from service must be taken against them,” suggests Jayant Jain, president of Forum For Fairness in Education.