One hundred and sixty-eight thousand children in Jammu and Kashmir, between the ages of ten and seventeen, are caught up in drug use. 

That figure comes from recent estimates, and it should stop any parent, teacher, or administrator cold. 

These are not troubled teenagers drifting at the margins of school life. Many sit in classrooms five days a week, filling in answer sheets, moving through a system built to measure almost nothing about how they are actually coping.

India has written some of the most thoughtful education policy on the planet. The National Policy on Education, drafted in 1986 and revised in 1992, promised schooling that built character alongside knowledge. 

The National Curriculum Framework of 2005 said the same thing in different words. 

The National Education Policy of 2020 went further still, and its Section 4.35 states plainly that assessment exists to track a learner’s growth over cognitive, emotional, and physical development rather than simply to hand out ranks. 

The National Curriculum Framework for School Education, released in 2023, built entire curricular goals around empathy, self-awareness, and the ability to read one’s own emotions. 

On the page, this is a system designed to raise capable human beings,........

© Kashmir Observer