Mangaluru: The education and culture department of Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) has decided that henceforth, ‘Indian Constitution’ would be part of the curriculum and be taught as a mandatory subject in all the schools in the country being run by Catholic churches, from standards 1st to 10th.

To enable the schools to teach the contents mentioned in the preamble of the constitution, a nine-page handbook was released on Wednesday July 11th.

Over 75,000 educational institutions in the country are run by Catholic churches with combined student strength of six to seven crore. The students would inculcate a a sense of genuine patriotism, national integration and love for their country if they were taught about the introduction, values, and principles of the constitution, expressed the CBCI.

“Every citizen should be familiar with the constitution. It is a good development that facilities are being provided in the school to create awareness among the students at a very young age in this regard. Arrangements would be made to teach about Indian Constitution in all the educational institutions falling under our diocese,” said Rev. Dr. Aloysius Paul D’Souza, Mangaluru diocese bishop.

It has been decided to teach the Constitution in four phases.

Phase 1: 85 words in the preamble of the constitution would have to be learnt by the students by heart. Extempore contests would be held and marks would be awarded.

Phase 2: importance of the preamble would be explained, and group discussions, quizzes, essay competitions, poster competitions etc would be held.

Phase 3: A skit titled, ‘We the citizens of India’ would be staged.

Phase 4: Assisting the students to properly assimilate the meanings of words like sovereign, socialistic, democracy, secular, republic and other terminologies.