A Study on Learners’ Attitude Towards the Introduction of Life-Style Education in Purba Medinipur District of West Bengal

The main purpose of the study is to identify the attitude of learners towards the introduction of Life-style education at secondary stage. The survey method of descriptive research has been followed. For identifying the attitude, one attitude scale (for learners), followed by Likert's method summating ratings [3] , has been developed and standardized. The standardized scale for students’ is administered on random sample of 250 students in different schools (rural & urban areas) in Purba Medinipur district. Analysis of raw data, obtained through the scale, is done by use of descrip- tive statistics (i.e. mean & SD) and inferential statistics (i.e. z test). Lastly an attempt has been done whether the outcomes corroborate the hypotheses as assumed in the study.


INTRODUCTION
Every society there has social and cultural factors (beliefs, myths, superstitions). These factors vary with each society according to its traditional and cultural views. Sex education or life-style education is not an exceptional one. People of our society believe life-style education to be ominous. They think that it may damage the good qualities of their children. They are unaware about the impending danger of the children's adolescent period which is very sensitive and emotional and cannot be prevented without any proper education. So, the problem is based mainly on the opinion about the life-style education. Actually life-style education -in our secondary board's views -is not the education that is only related to sexual topic; it is related to psychology, health, attitude towards society and life also. The need for sexuality education in schools was well documented at the five-day Asian Sexology Conference held in December 1994 in New Delhi, with emphasis on reproductive health education issues throughout India and Asia. A draft proposal for a National Sexual Health Program was submitted to the Ministry of Health. The results of the few existing studies on AIDS knowledge and the current spread of HIV highlight the need for understanding behavior, attitudes, and knowledge of Indians regarding human sexuality and AIDS before comprehensive national planning can start.
It is being realized by West Bengal Board of secondary Education that school children's should not be kept aloof from and unaware of the various dimensions of sex and sexuality in the present context. That is why they recently introduce Life-style education at secondary level. But still now there are some social problem relating proper implementation of lifestyle education. Therefore, in most parts of the W.B. there is a great need for survey related to life-style education to know the reflection of a society. Hence, the present study is an attempt to find out the attitude of learners' towards the introduction of life-style education.

REvIEW Of ThE RELATED LITERATURE:
Porter [4] (1993) surveyed 153 English-speaking adults in Calcutta regarding their knowledge and attitudes about AIDS. The group was select in the sense that 60% had attended college, and 87% of the men and 99% of the women had heard about AIDS. Misconceptions existed, and both men and women lacked specific knowledge about AIDS. Mere awareness of the disease is not a precursor to an understanding about modes of transmission and symptoms of the disease. Even though 93% of the sample was aware of AIDS, they were ignorant about its symptoms, and prejudices against people with AIDS were omnipresent.
George, K. V. [2] (1991) made a survey on "Demographic studies in sex education and population education. His study revealed that a) while the social problems experienced by boys and girls were similar but the physical, physiological and psychological problems were different, b) friends appeared to be the primary source of information concerning sex, c) parents were found to be the least preferred, adolescents had a good number of superstitions beliefs about sex.
Bhadrayu, V. V. [1] (1989) made a survey on "Study of the impact of self-instructional material on sex education on adjustment, neuroticism and attitude towards high school student". He found that self-instructional materials on sex education had a positive effect on neuroticism of both rural and urban girls of standard X and XII. There was no significant effect of the interactions between treatment and sex on adjustment, neuroticism and attitude towards sex for rural areas.
Rao, S. R. [5] (1987) also made a study on the attitude of parents and teachers from rural and urban areas towards population education. He found that teachers and parents differed in their attitude towards population education. However, there was no significant difference between female and male teachers. A significant difference in attitude of rural and urban parents and teachers was also noticed.
The above mentioned studies it was apparent that sufficient work has been done in the field of sex education. But in all the above studies, no clear attempt had been made to focus on attitude of academic community towards the introduction of life-style education at secondary stage. It is hoped that the findings of this investigation will have some significance indications to the curriculum maker of life-style education.
Objectives of the study: 1. To identify the attitude of the learners towards the introduction of life-style education at secondary level. 2. To find out whether or not boys differ significantly from girls in respect of their attitude towards the introduction of life-style education at secondary level 3. To find out whether or not urban learners differ significantly from rural learners in respect of their attitude towards the introduction of life-style education at secondary level hypotheses: 0 h 1 : There is no positive attitude of learners towards the introduction of life-style education at secondary level. 0 h 2 : Urban boys do not differ significantly from urban girls in respect of their attitude towards the introduction of life-

ReseaRch PaPeR
style education at secondary level (dimension-wise). 0 h 3 : Rural boys do not differ significantly from rural girls in respect of their attitude towards the introduction of lifestyle education at secondary level (dimension-wise). 0 h 4 : Urban boys do not differ significantly from rural boys in respect of their attitude towards the introduction of lifestyle education at secondary level (dimension-wise). 0 h 5 : Urban girls do not differ significantly from rural girls in respect of their attitude towards the introduction of lifestyle education at secondary level (dimension-wise).

Design of the Study: Population
Learners at the secondary stage reading in class IX in the secondary schools recognized by the Board of Secondary Education located in the district of purba medinipur in the state of West Bengal formed the population of the present study. The population may broadly be classified on the basis of their sex (boys and girls) and location i.e. rural and urban.

Sample and Sampling
The investigator first prepared a list of urban (Municipalities) and rural (grampanchayets) areas in Purba Medinipur district. Initially, two municipalities were selected at random out of 5 municipal areas and 12 grampanchayets were selected at random out of 223 grampachyets. Then investigator prepared list of secondary schools in selected urban and rural areas of Purba Medinipur district. Then the researcher selected 9 secondary schools (in urban) and 24 schools situated at rural area through random sampling for tri-out (2 schools in urban areas and 3 schools in rural areas), standardization (4 schools in urban areas and 16 schools in rural areas) and final application (3 schools in urban areas and 5 schools in rural areas). In the second phase, the researcher selected class IX of those schools for sampling of students. In this phase, 245 students of class IX were selected at random from the schools (followed each stratum like boys and girls and, rural and urban) for tri-out. In third phase, 1137 students of class IX were selected in same way for standardization of attitude scale from 16 schools in rural areas and 4 schools in urban areas. In last phase i.e. in final stage, 250 students of class IX were selected in same way from 5 schools in rural areas and 3 schools in urban areas (two schools in Panskura Municipality & one school in Contai Municipal area).

Tools of the Study
As the investigator could not locate any appropriate tool for the purpose of the study on Indian population in general and for sample of the present investigation in particular, it was found necessary to develop a tool for identifying attitude. An attitude scale for learners to measure the attitude towards the introduction of Life-style education was developed on three point scale, allotting 3 to agree, 2 to undecided and 1 for disagree for favourable statement & reverse for unfavourable statement and standardized by the investigator himself. There are five dimensions on which scale was developed.

Methodology
Survey methodology has been adopted for this study. The survey method gathers data from a relative large number of cases at a particular time.

Statistical Analysis:
The data collected through the application of the attitude scale, were tabulated, analyzed and interpreted in the light of objectives of study. In order to test the null hypotheses, the dimension-wise raw scores were converted into percentage scores and the dimension-wise Mean and Standard Deviation were computed from those percentage scores and presented in the following Table 1:  findings: 1. It was found that learners showed more favourable attitude towards life-style education. The learner's attitude in dimension social & cultural gets highest score, which means that they found social and cultural aspect of lifestyle education more important and necessary for them. Of course the learners showed positive attitude towards other four dimensions that shows they are in favour of introduction of life-style education at secondary stage. 2. It was found that the urban boys do not differ significantly from the urban girls in respect to their degree or amount of attitude in the dimensions physical, social & cultural and curriculum & methodology respectively. This is quite normal and natural due to the fact that they are being grown up in same environment, following same curriculum. In dimensions, mental and moral, urban boys differ significantly from urban girls in respect of their attitude at both levels. This may happens due to sex difference. 3. It was found that the rural boys do not differ significantly from the rural girls in respect to their attitude in all the dimensions. This is quite normal and natural since they follow the same curriculum and belong to same board. 4. It was found that the urban boys do not differ significantly from the rural boys in respect to their degree or amount of attitude. It is quite normal and natural since they follow the same curriculum and belong to same board. 5. It was found that the urban girls do not differ significantly from the rural girls in respect to their degree or amount of attitude except in one dimension viz. curriculum & methodology at 5% level. It may be interpreted that curriculum & methodology do not effect equally in all areas.

Conclusion:
Although the study indicates the favourable attitude of learner towards introduction of life-style education at secondary stage, students raise some aspects -there is no text book and examination on this subject, no weightage are given in promotion to the next higher class. So, the school administration including teachers has no interest to implement the subject in the class room. Also students hesitate on discussion with the teacher. The students are not motivated to learn and participate in this programme. Every school allots one or two periods in a week for life-style education, but in most of the schools, there is no discussion about this subject in the class room. For successful implementation of life-style education at secondary stage, some positive measures should be taken by secondary board of WB