Role of co-curricular activities in a student’s life

Vijay GarG
Co-curricular activities exist at all levels of education, from 4th-6th, junior high/middle school, high school, college and university education. These activities are compulsory in some institutions while in others it's voluntary. Where these are compulsory all school students must participate them alongside the standard study curriculum. At higher levels of education student participation generally, include academic points in lieu of the efforts put by a student in a particular activity. These are held outside standard curriculum hours and the activities partaken depend on the nature of the institute and occasion. Catholic convent schools have generally had Christmas celebration as a major part of the co-curricular activities due to Catholic significance. While some schools are more inclined towards annual function. Some give significance to both.
Today these activities have become more profound than ever before. Most of the institutes highlight them as a crucial advertising factor in their prospectus or advertisements in order to attract parent-students attention. Though not all of these activities may pursue with great enthusiasm these are however popular and leave a lifelong lasting experience for most. These activities are not examined in the same way that the academic curriculum is, and because most of them take place outside lessons, such activities have less status in education than the main curriculum. However, they are often held to be very important to the wider education of young men and women. Co-curricular activities form the core of students' life. Many schools and colleges have different units like clubs or houses in which all the students have been divided into four houses. Each house has a house Master & staff of the school to guide the students for various internal competitions.
Types of Co-Curricular Activities
Morning Assembly Programmes
Inter-House Competitions
House Meetings
English Recitation
Hindi Calligraphy
English Calligraphy
On the Spot Drawing & Painting Competition   
Group Singing
Hindi Elocution
English Elocution
Solo Singing/Rhymes
Quiz Competitions
Moot Courts
Rangoli Competitions
Individual Talent Show
Guest talk / Slide Show
Fancy Dress
Antakshyari
Various Activity Clubs
NCC - National Cadet Corps
School Band
Scout Association
Girl Guides
Performing Arts
School Choirs
Foot Drills
Annual Functions
National Sporting Competitions
Youth Festivals
NSS
Difference between Co-curricular and Extra-Curricular Activities
Co-curricular activities are also referred as 'Extra-curricular' activities. Grammatically speaking there is a difference between the two. Extra-curricular is self-explanatory, i.e. Activity which is extra or additional to curricular but is more leisure-oriented than learning oriented. Extra-curricular activities are mostly conducted after school hours. They generally don’t complement academic studies. However, some of the activities overlap each other; some extra-curricular activities can also be co-curricular and vice versa. Depending upon the institute's certain activities are considered co-curricular while for some it is extra-curricular. Therefore, in the academic sphere, there isn’t any clear consensus as to which is what? Thus, the gap between the two is negligible in the academic sense.
Why many Students, Parents and other Hate Co-Curricular Activities?
One of the major reasons that such activities are hated because, in many institutes, these are compulsory. Students feel that should have the right to choose whether they wish to pursue them, rather than forcing them to give equal importance to something they do not wish to do. They find handling both, academic and co-curricular activities very demanding and as such, they lose interest in them.
Also making Co-curricular activity compulsory takes the fun out of it. (to be contd)