NEW CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK



The National Curriculum Framework (NCF) India document and the new syllabus can be accessed at the website ncert.nic.in

 Prof. Krishna Kumar is the Director of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). In his distinguished career, he has also been Professor of Education at the University of Delhi and Head of the Central Institute of Education (1988-91), besides having been a UGC National Lecturer and a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow. His literary contribution include Raj, Samaj aur Shiksha; Vichaar ka Dar; School ki Hindi; Learning from Conflict ; What is Worth Teaching ; The Child’s Language and the Teacher; The Social Character of Learning ; and Prejudice and Pride: School Histories of freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan. A columnist and a short story writer in Hindi, Professor Kumar also writes for children.

email: directorncert@     

            krishank.ncert@nic.in 

Making education reforms more meaningful

By Krishna Kumar

Nearly two decades after the National Policy on Education was approved by

Parliament, the school-going child's life continues to be afflicted by rote

methods and the chronic fear of doing badly in examination.

FEW CAN distinguish between the terms `curriculum' and `syllabus.' The

tendency to view both in the context of examinations is rampant. For

teachers, the prescribed textbook serves as the de facto curriculum. As for

the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), hardly anyone outside the limited

world of professional pedagogues and planners can recall what role the

National Policy on Education (1986) intended to assign to this invention. It

was designed to bring systemic coherence and parity in quality standards

across the country. It is widely misconceived as an instrument of uniformity;

in reality, it was meant to serve as a reminder of core national values and

priorities around which diversity and flexibility in curriculum and syllabus

could be structured to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding system.

The 1986 policy stressed the need to make education child-centred. Nearly

two decades after the policy was approved by Parliament, the school-going

child's life continues to be afflicted by rote methods and the chronic fear of

doing badly in examination. Yes, there are plenty of people who feel

unmoved by this reality. But R.K. Narayan did succeed in touching the

nation's heart when he made his maiden speech in the Rajya Sabha in 1991,

inspiring the Ministry of Human Resource Development to set up a committee

under Professor Yash Pal to prescribe remedies. Its 1993 report gathered

dust while the problem got increasingly worse. One terrible symptom is the

increasing number of children who contemplate or actually commit suicide

during examination time.

The 1986 policy assumed that India would universalise elementary education

before the end of the century. That did not happen. Today, as high a

proportion as 53 per cent of our children are eliminated by the system before

Class 8. That terrible figure should drown the nation in embarrassment,

triggering emergency measures, but we all have got used to it. When I

mentioned the number at a recent TV show on the National Curriculum

Framework, no one responded, as if it was irrelevant to the discussion. Most

of the show time was spent on allegations about the lack of participation in

the NCF revision process. Not many could recall that the National Council of

Educational Research and Training (NCERT) had set up a large steering

committee, chaired by Professor Yash Pal, and as many as 21 National Focus

Groups. It also invited public opinion through advertisements in 28 national

and regional dailies, organised regional seminars, and meetings for

consultation with the States and rural teachers. And now the document is

with CABE (Central Advisory Board of Education), where the previous NCF

was never discussed.

This recent history of eight months of intensive nation-wide deliberation

among professionals and other stakeholders appears to have been drowned

by weightier subjects such as Ambani's inheritance, Jinnah's role in Partition,

and the difficulties in tracking black buck shooters. Suicide by farmers

arouses no one's interest. So why should we be surprised that Gokhale's

move to make primary education free and compulsory evokes no awkward

memory or enthusiasm 94 years later? The children that Gokhale's legacy

asks us to worry about are poor and mostly rural. Their high dropout rate, as

it is officially called, is a key symptom of the system's inability to reform

itself. If an intrinsic urge for reform is a measure of systemic quality — as a

recent UNESCO report suggests — then we deserve to be rated poorly.

Indeed, resistance to reform is so high that you are forced to wonder why

the system attracts any criticism at all.

The new NCF discusses quality in terms of the resources available for

infrastructural needs, professional training of teachers, and provision for

monitoring. It relates quality to the experiences provided to children to

enable them to construct knowledge. This approach calls for the recognition

of children's creativity and motivation to learn. The belief that every child has

a personality and a unique potential is fundamental to the development of a

democratic system of schooling.

Four decades have passed since the Kothari Commission recommended a

common school system. That vision is a shambles today and cannot be

resurrected magically in the middle of sharp socio-economic contradictions.

What is possible and important is to initiate long-range reforms, starting with

steps to improve systemic efficiency and accountability.

The new NCF focusses attention on two sets of challenges for reform:

pedagogic and systemic. The first set includes rational designing of syllabi

and textbooks, teacher training and examination procedures. The second set

calls for more resources for school infrastructure, and a change in roles and

power relations from the ground level upwards. Both sets of reforms have

been appreciated for long, and in stray pockets — usually with NGO

involvement — have been successfully tried out. Numerous innovative

projects have established that school functioning can be improved with

community involvement. NCF recommends that the approach used in such

experiments be mainstreamed. Among pedagogic reforms, an important one

recommended is the involvement of school teachers in the preparation of

textbooks, not merely in reviewing them after they are written.

The most urgently needed pedagogic reforms are those related to teacher

training and examinations. Institutional structures available for these two

sectors need to be strengthened, which means that the National Council for

Teacher Education and the various examination boards need to be given

considerable academic support. NCF proposes delinking competitive entrance

tests from school-leaving examinations. A nodal agency is suggested for the

former so that children are saved from the ordeal of endless entrance tests

and to discourage coaching. In Tamil Nadu, the Government has already

taken an important step towards reducing the role of coaching in children's

lives. Hopefully this step will lead to greater consensus on ways to select the

most creative, rather than the most expensively coached, for professional

courses.

In the context of examinations taken at the end of Classes X and XII, the

NCF suggests many radical remedies for reducing stress and importance of

rote memory and speed. As for work-related knowledge and skills, the NCF

asks us to recognise out-of-school agencies capable of providing `work

benches', using local resource persons and practitioners of heritage crafts.

The new NCF also recommends art in different forms to be made a necessary

part of children's education. NCF 2005 is firmly grounded in the

Constitutional vision of India as an egalitarian and secular society, committed

to self-transformation towards social justice in all its dimensions, covering

gender and caste disparities.

In the grip of negativity

Today, the entire system of education is in the grip of negative and cynical

feelings. The dignity of teaching has been violated, provision for health and

education in villages has reached minimalist levels. At least one State has

declared career teachers a `dying cadre'; contractual appointments are being

made in other States as well, and training has been turned into a transparent

ritual. Civil society seems determined to ignore the health and education of

rural children. Voices like those of Jean Dreze and P. Sainath are far too few

to make an impact. Professor Yash Pal's idea that we should cultivate a child inspired, and not merely a child-centred, approach deserves political

attention across ideological boundaries. There are plenty of cynics who say

nothing much can be done, that all the ideas recommended in the new

document have been discussed earlier, that the system is far too complex

and sick to be reformed, and so on and so forth. Then there are people who

associate quality with private initiative and have no faith in the state's ability

to sustain a long-term reform effort.

Add one more section — which smells politics in everything — and you get a

panoramic view of the crowd which does not want to believe that NCF 2005

might mark a beginning of something positive. As Professor Yash Pal says in

his foreword to the NCF, India's educational adversity is self-imposed, and it

can be overcome if we learn to appreciate children's own capacities. Once

that message begins to sink, a lot of things will show signs of change.

(The writer is Director, National Council of Educational Research and Training.)



Democracy without democrats?

KRISHNA KUMAR

[pic]

There never was much room for free – that is, fearless – speech and moral choices in the district towns. Between the collector and the police superintendent, the two prime symbols of the law-and-order state, the power to monitor life in the basti stayed finely tuned to the perspective of the local notables. That fine tuning has loosened a little as a result of the local notables getting somewhat diversified. The loosening, however, has brought no relief to the limited tribe of the so-called local intelligentsia who yearn to exercise their right to free speech and association.

An unprecedented increase in the number of guns of every variety over the last two decades or so has made the district towns altogether unsuitable for the practice of enlightened enquiry into matters relevant to public welfare. Both administrative and political life in the district, at least in northern India, are steeped in corruption and civic disorder patronized by the powerful. None of the instruments of civil society have strength to subject either power or authority to any kind of public scrutiny.

It sounds melodramatic and totally unacademic to say this, but the truth is that someone who lives in a district headquarter and does not appreciate the stringent limits within which the constitutional guarantees of free speech may be enjoyed, pays by getting roughed up or killed. Why many more are not killed is because life in a district town quickly socialises you to apply good sense. The stringent limits within which fearless speech can be practiced are the four walls of your home.

 Modern communication should have changed this picture for the better, and it has, so far as the exercise of brute force during elections is concerned. The possibility of sending a message to the chief election commissioner by phone or fax has curbed the earlier enthusiasm with which polling booths were captured. However, when the elections are over, the technology of speedy communication ceases to matter, for no one knows who in Bhopal or Delhi would bother.

The only institution which routinely uses communication technology is the local press, but it is hardly an institution in any serious sense. The local man who acts as correspondent to a regional or national daily is chronically under pressure to abandon every controversial matter after touching it once. In any case, there is no news in civic disorder, for it is a daily cycle. From a girl getting kidnapped to selection of teachers on bribe, no information is weightier than the subsidised newsprint that carries it to the saturated reader who does not even hope, anymore, that the collector or the chief minister will read it and bother. As for the locally published newspapers – there are literally thousands of them – they are much too dependent on the mercy of the local notables to enjoy or provide what we may call a liberal space.

 District India has to stage a massacre, an epidemic, or a successful blockade of inter-regional transport to figure in the liberal space that our country has been lucky to have at the national level. Several historical struggles and breakthroughs are responsible for the creation and maintenance of this space, and we have every reason to be proud of it, especially if we look around for parallels. It is not just Pakistan and Iran that one thinks of as being less lucky than us, but the richer countries of South East Asia too, which subsist on narrowly defined civic freedoms even as they boast of more open economies.

I feel similarly sorry for those who compare China with India and pronounce China has done better. I suppose civic freedom is a possession one appreciates only when one begins to see the danger of loosing it. This is why I secretly feel happy when I hear people saying with anxiety that the liberal space is shrinking. I almost feel like saying, ‘I’m glad it is, for now you can notice what we had.’ I also feel like saying, ‘Are you surprised?’ Of course I say no such thing and be mistaken for a cynic.

As a true metropolitan, unlike a migrant from the hinterland which I am, you are supposed to say, ‘Isn’t that terrible.’ The usual point of reference is one or the other news, such as the attack on that remarkably dull film, Fire, or the digging up of the Kotla cricket pitch. ‘How objectionable!’ you are supposed to exclaim, and get on with more substantial issues like why Murli Manohar Joshi does not want to win the hearts of college teachers or how The Hindu is now the only Delhi paper you can read.

It is indeed alarming how trivial an issue we make of the rapid erosion of the freedom of intellectual and moral choices, speech and association. Why I am not surprised by the erosion itself is on account of four trends that I have been aware of for some time now. The first of these is the only one to have surfaced in the recent past, especially since the display of unreluctant patronage of globalisation policies by the Rao-Singh regime. The other three trends have been around for much longer, though two of them were not as perceptible earlier as they are now. The fourth one is still quite invisible because it stays hidden in every child’s schoolbag which is quite a treasure of national security secrets in our country.

 But let me start with the first reason which I wish to call the commoditization of the media. It is distinct from commercialisation which is a part of life, monetized life at any rate. Commoditization, on the other hand, is new and sinister, an aspect of neo-colonialism inasmuch as it denies us the right to choose and apply our minds.

The slogan of globalisation symbolizes a new incarnation of the European psyche, this time under American command. The incarnation has two faces. One is the intellectually and ethically tired face, showing that the white man now wishes to drop his burden, more out of a desire to enjoy his own life fully with his two boxes, tv and pc, than out of any moral realisation of odium in the burden or a recognition of the futility of carrying it. The other is the face with sophisticated aggression, conveying the right of property over all sorts of resources that can be bought and ideas that can be sold for money. This second face is cruder than the plunderers of the age of mercantile colonialism might have had, or so it appears to us who had not imagined that the West, with its great universities and museums, could come to this, again.

The degree of consensus there is about globalisation having become man’s destiny now, from company managers to human rights groups in the West, is quite amazing, though it is in keeping with the European world’s compulsion to invent something to get euphoric about every couple of decades. What this consensus means for us is a denial of choice in everything, including globalisation itself. We are being told that this time there is no getting away with selective absorption, that everything comes with everything else, that we must sit back and be happy that we can at least manipulate the mouse in our right hand.

Commoditization of the media is a component of this latest round of the West’s chronic obsession with new toys and slogans on one hand, and of a distinct move by a handful of corporate interests towards consolidation of their dominance on the other. Our media managers and state media bureaucrats cannot contain their excitement. They now see their primary role in acting like conduits for advertising. As CNN does day and night, most of our newspapers and glossies are using bits of news to sell advertising. They are using precious newsprint to promote every object there is in the dung heap – from cigarettes to junk food, from systems of music our walls have no substance to contain inside buildings to cars our cities have no space to park or drive with safety. Both news and views are treated as commodities in these publications; therefore, a debate on public health or destruction of the environment must compete for space with Coca-Cola and car advertisements. A large section of the press now regards sustained debate on issues of public importance as being marginal to its main business which is to push the induction of Indian elites into global consumerism.

 

 

One might have seen this as a matter of choice on the part of our media owners and bureaucrats had it not been obvious that global media and communication barons have been specifically after us. On the other hand, I wish I could say that our people have been forced into submission, to reprint or adapt junk writing from the American or British press and trivia from the fashion industry. Unfortunately, neither version of what happened is adequate. An ethos existed which made commoditization of the media acceptable. That ethos made elaborate debates or enquiry look boring. Once that ethos started to grow, few seemed to have the strength to resist it.

Post-Rajiv political happenings played their role (some might say, post-Indira); economic forces supportive of the change had been active since the mid-seventies. By the beginning of the current decade, political consensus had been established that colonialist modernism was the only choice left for us to follow. I believe this consensus had its basis in the loss of popular mandate suffered by all national-level parties, but that is a different issue. For the construction of the ethos which made commoditization of the media acceptable, we must turn to the next two reasons which, in addition to their ethos-building role, were directly responsible as well for the shrinking of the liberal space.

When Salman Rushdie wrote in The New Yorker’s special issue on free India’s golden jubilee that he reads no Indian language well enough to read its literature, but, never mind, he knew that nothing worthwhile had been written in any of these languages in recent times, he was saying something I could have associated with some of my colleagues and friends whose reading for news and pleasure is confined to English. It is just nice that they lack Rushdie’s arrogance.

Growing up in an Indian city without having any substantial exposure to the literature of the region to which the city belongs was a familiar feature of the public school student’s personality, but the walls dividing the English-educated intelligentsia and its vernacular counterpart have got thicker and taller of late. The vernacular media have virtually no place in the institutions serving the English educated intellectual elite who depend on English both for receiving news and for responding to it. They have no direct access to the articulation of the public mind which takes place in the vernacular media and literature. Of course there are famous exceptions, but they are exceptions.

 

 

The gap between English and the vernacular is perhaps wider in the Hindi heartland than elsewhere, but it exists in other parts of India in varying measures. It is related to the trend towards divisiveness we see in other contexts too, but it has special significance because of its function in shaping the flow of information. I recall the sudden despair into which a number of English-dependent social analysts were thrown by the events that preceded and followed the Ayodhya disaster. I generally find it a waste of time to look at an English newspaper to find out what is happening in Uttar Pradesh. On the other side of the language wall, I miss the generation of Rajendra Mathur, Raghuvir Sahay, Agyeya and S.C. Dube, who wrote in Hindi with a vast and confident awareness of what was being written in English. Liberal press and scholarship in Hindi stand greatly impoverished by the absence of such people. On the other hand, the lack of direct and habitual access to the vernacular world limits both the knowledge and the sensibility that the commentators writing in English can put to use in their professionally and socially significant tasks.

 

 

The wall that divides the intelligentsia is symbolic of the divisions that have been growing in the larger urban middle class, irrespective of where it resides. Its upper layers, which include those with power and status as well as the upwardly mobile, have lost all but ritual links with the vernacular world to which they once belonged. This is evident from their orbits of awareness, interests, reading, child-rearing, and objects of desire. The areas where they reside in cities have hardly any trace of the local literary milieu.

If you were to make a foolish query at Teksons in Delhi’s South Extension market for Krishna Sobti’s Dilo Daanish, you would be looked at with contempt and not just surprise, unless you were a foreigner who did not know that bookshops in Delhi are not like the ones in Rome which mostly stock books in Italian. Down at the district level, you can guess who gets the few copies of the English original of India Today. The collector and some of his colleagues are sometimes the only ones who keep in touch with the English media.

If they also keep an eye on the local and regional vernacular press, it is mainly to equip themselves with the knowledge of ground reality which they are literally supposed to control as custodians of law and order. For status-maintenance and mental nourishment they depend on the English media which inevitably provides them the lexicon of current civil dialogue. This lexicon is rather distant from the world of their ‘grassroots’ subordinates, such as members of the panchayat, primary school teachers, health workers, and unemployed youth acting as volunteers in a state programme. These subordinates inhabit a purely vernacular world which generates, off the numerous cutting edges of development, a lexicon of its own. The collector and his colleagues inevitably have a hollow ring in their utterances when they address these armies of development. Many civil servants are nowadays writing about their ‘grassroots’ experiences in journals like the EPW, and there too the hollow ring dogs their words. They lack the language capable of sizing up the corruption, the fear, and the silent violence that surround the sundry initiatives taken by the state to get closer to the people. The interface between the authorities and the state’s own modest instruments of serving the people messes up the little liberal space there is in district headquarters. And we are not even talking about the guns and the goons monitoring the financial flows for welfare.

 

 

Let me turn to the third and the fourth reasons, both of which have to do with the general erosion of educational values. Especially relevant to my present theme is the decline of higher education and the use of school education for ideological propaganda. Active political misuse of provincial universities is now an old story. But it gives us a framework which is still relevant for looking at the systemic neglect of post-secondary education. Apart from motivated misuse by politicians, higher education has also suffered the spread of poor quality primary and secondary education.

The thin layer of free and somewhat informed dialogue that the college teacher and students had sustained in places which had no bookshops, vanished during the Emergency of the mid-seventies; it never materialised again. Radical budget cuts of the eighties made a vital contribution to the dismantling of the college ethos, particularly by affecting library supplies. Today, a working library is a preserve of privileged universities; others must do with the oral tradition and baazar notes. During a recent visit I realised with dismay that an old, highly respected institution like Allahabad’s Ewing Christian College was not even expected to have a decent library.

India’s higher education establishment, oversized though it was in relation to the sea of illiteracy surrounding it, had produced since its inception in colonial days a great body of men and women who acted as conflict-managers in a diversified and segmented society. As lawyers, civil servants, teachers, journalists and members of voluntary groupings, they oiled the wheels and gears of our difficult democracy during its formative phases with their skills of civil disagreement and representation of positions. Financially depleted and poorly governed, higher education still produces any number of qualified young adults, but these skills have become rarer. And now, under The World Bank’s persuasion, an argument has gained ground that India needs literacy and elementary education more urgently than it needs serious higher education.

  Pernicious as it is, this argument ignores the social history of our democracy. Of course our universities have a lot to answer for in the stagnated frames of knowledge they continue to maintain. Nor can we say that as institutions they have rendered meaningful service to the recent processes of social change. But their presence in a society with so much fighting has been a stabilising and nurturing influence. One can say that democracy does not depend on them, for the norms and procedures of democracy have struck deeper roots. However, democracy without democrats to defend it will always remain fragile. It may not die, but it will waste a lot of energy in survival alone. It may not die also because democracy has proved the most convenient form of governance for India, but its survival as a form of governance is not enough to make it a way of life.

 Finally, the use of school education for promoting mindless acceptance of the stated. Who is behind it, I wonder, but it is happening all the time. Most probably no one in particular is behind it; our schools are merely transmitting what is supposed to be a dominant ideology. It is the same ideology that Aakaashvani and Doordarshan transmit in a more concrete sense.

Some important features of this ideology can help us recognize it, and they are as follows. The government knows best. It is following the best possible choices, especially in the context of India’s development and security. Development generally means making India look like a copy of the West. If some part of a city begins to look faintly like a western city, it can be seen and used as a symbol of development. Similarly, if agriculture gets firmly plugged into industries that produce chemical fertilisers, pesticides and harvesters, this too is a sign of development. Poverty, the ideology says, is related to the outlook of the poor, their lifestyle, commitment to traditions and superstitions. Generally, the poor, rural folk are to blame for their own condition.

This brief sketch should suffice to indicate the contours of the propaganda that schools are making all the time. It is not so much in the success or failure in this job that the problem lies; rather, it lies in their ignoring the other job, that of enabling children to make sense of the India that is unfolding. In that systematically ignored India, it is the rural masses who determine the outcome of elections; they resist and campaign against the unfair policies and one-sided initiatives of the state, thereby acting as correctives to state policy; they force development and modernisation to take a specifically Indian shape. Our schools fail to present to the young an India which is an exciting place to live and work. On the contrary, they put across an image of India where only statesmen, civil servants, and scientists who act like civil servants matter. I recall the biography of a Nobel laureate Indian scientist which emphasised, for the benefit of elementary-level children, the fact of his being so brilliant that a commissioner of income tax decided to choose him as a son-in-law.

We can read deeper meanings – class hegemony and sinister foreshadows – in the school curriculum and the textbooks produced by the NCERT and the state bureaus. What is more important for now is to notice that the system is not designed to make children think. The approved policy of packing the maximum number of facts in the minimum space also gives a valid excuse to textbook-manufacturing bodies to leave no clues or room that might allow a young reader to stop and wonder about something.

The implied reader of these textbooks is someone who finds the world too cumbersome a place to make sense of; so it is best to leave it to the state to manage. Can we call such a reader a ‘good citizen’? Such readers will undoubtedly be loyal to authorities, but they can hardly be trusted as guardians of our turbulent democracy. If the liberal space has shrunk on issue after issue, good citizens of this kind and the system which produced them must take some responsibility.



Guarding the school gates

Left response to NCERT’s draft national curriculum framework is disturbing

HARSH SETHI

Today, as students, my children face the same learning experiences as me 20 years ago. Everywhere around the world new methods of teaching and evaluation are being practiced, but our children continue to just copy exercises from the board, mug them up and reproduce them in the exam. Children now have access to more information channels, yet more and more subjects and contents are added to the school bag...

Sounds familiar? This is Neeta Mohla, a Mumbai-based teacher and mother, one of the many who was interested enough to write to the NCERT in response to the draft National Curriculum Framework for School Education (2005) document. Many, and not just those involved in preparing the draft — soon to be debated in the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) — felt relieved that the experts had finally made a serious effort to take on board the concerns

of parents, teachers and children about how classroom practices are transacted and textbooks prepared, taught and read. Clearly, the relief was misplaced. The error in not paying sufficient attention to the new guardians of public interest — not the now discredited ideologues of the Sangh Parivar but those of the Left — is likely to prove costly. The recent collection, ‘Debating

Education’ brought out by SAHMAT (August 2005) makes for instructive and disturbing reading.

Leading from the front is senior historian Irfan Habib. He charges the policy document of “evading real issues and making room for obscurantism”. In foregrounding ‘learning without burden’ and ‘child-centred education’, he writes that the draft completely sidesteps the concern of ommunalisation of education under the erstwhile NDA regime, in particular of social science and

history. As proof, he bemoans that, “one fails to find any admonition that no religious song be recited or sung at the morning assembly.” Shades of the Saraswati Vandana controversy? Why, he goes on, is there no attempt to completely rubbish any notion of religious, spiritual, transcendental or value education?

If the demand was only for a radical secularisation of public space, in particular schools, it may have been possible to engage in a debate with these critics. But, as Habib and associates, all worthy notables, allege, this is only the thin end of the wedge. Instead of “tailoring the entire exercise in terms of the requirement of national development and supremacy of rationality and the scientific spirit”, the document gives primacy to the “individual development of the child”. They (the drafters) seem to believe “that children come to school with an innate wisdom of their own which it is the business of the school to reinforce and nourish.”

Evidently the effort to foreground local and experiential knowledge, decentre the privileging of NCERT books, and encourage the production and use of a multiplicity of texts by different agencies so as to celebrate and accommodate the country’s diversity is, according to this Left view, a dangerous and regressive trend. “In any case a grave danger lurks behind the glorification of primitive beliefs contrasted to scientific concepts, and in indulging in it one would open the gates to all kinds of superstition infiltrating school education.” Why, we might be folded with a glorification of sati! The tirade does not end here. Everything child education pedagogues have

valued and fought for — how to lighten the textbook and place greater emphasis on the role of the teacher and classroom interaction, encourage analysis and problem-solving as against memorisation of facts by making the texts open-ended, incorporate the local environment and traditions in the classroom to both encourage school-society interchange and reduce the

obsessive reliance on the textbook as the primary source of knowledge and, above all, look for and experiment with a plurality of paths and methods so as to include the widest diversity of children and experiences as a resource base — are seen as recanting from the true path: secular, rational and national.

What is one to make of such a critique which questions the very presuppositions of the National Curriculum Framework exercise, characterizes it as evasion, and worse, and asserts that it, if approved, will dumb down and destroy our school education? In other times, it may have been possible to ignore it. But, in today’s charged times where both discourse and policy have to

contend with “politically correct posturing” (and what can be more correct than secularism and nationalism?), these charges, coming as they do from a credible source, can well seal the fate of this otherwise worthwhile exercise. It is instructive that a recent CABE expert group has already recommended that every school textbook be vetted by an expert group before being permitted

entry in schools. Equally, the draft bill on Free and Compulsory Education, currently under preparation, goes on to define what is a proper school and teacher. No shoddy pretenders like the education guarantee or Shiksha Karmi schools for our worthies!

There are indeed many significant issues that need debate in the NCF document and no one, least of all those who have participated in the exercise, can lay claim to truth and infallibility. But, seeking to ram through a national system of education with a centrally defined and prepared curriculum and textbooks encoding “correct knowledge and orientation” by delegitimising, if not

squeezing out, all other alternative pathways — public, private, communitarian — is surely not the answer. One can only hope that the general assembly of the CABE scheduled to meet in early September does not fall prey to such reasoning. Surely there is life beyond the project of BJP bashing?

The writer is associate editor, Seminar

The problem

THE occasion for this issue of Seminar is the publication of a document called ‘National Curriculum Framework’. The publishers, NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) calls it a ‘discussion document’, suggesting thereby that the responses elicited by it will be used to produce a final version. Such an intention raises hopes, apart from indicating faith in participatory democracy. By the same token, it carries the burden of responsibility. A document designed to arouse a national debate must show that it has been written with consideration. This one, on the contrary, announces that it was written in a hurry. The preface refers to ‘certain compelling circumstances’ which meant that ‘it could not afford the luxury of taking a very long time in its preparation’ (sic).

The reason why taking sufficient time, so that an announcement of this kind would not be necessary, looked like a ‘luxury’ is said to be ‘obvious’, namely that ‘it would have further delayed the much needed renewal of syllabi and the new generation of textbooks.’ We are not told what the ‘compelling circumstances’ are, but we can make a guess by reading on. After giving the ‘obvious’ reason for the hurry, the pre-face says: ‘It may be made absolutely clear here that as far as some basic philosophy and guidelines are concerned, we are still guided by and also committed to the policy formulations made in the NPE (National Policy of Education), 1986 and its review in the year 1992.’ The three segments of this quotation which have been italicized give us a basis to guess what the ‘compelling circumstances’ might be. In all probability they were created by the pressure of the new government at the centre.

The new government, or at least the party forming the biggest part in the patchwork alliance, feels uncomfortable with some of the basic ideals expressed in the Indian Constitution. It has an ideological problem with the cultural underpinnings of the nation state which emerged from the anti-colonial struggle. In brief, to use Sunil Khilnani’s title, its ‘idea of India’ is different. That, indeed, is one of the main reasons why this party has such a profound interest in education, unlike other political parties, including the left parties, who treat education as an expensive and tiring chore. Education invokes images of the future; it also promises control of the future. A party which aims to remodel the India built during and after the freedom struggle, and whose ideological ancestry lies in a fundamental contestation for hegemony, not just the power to govern, understandably wants to move quickly towards redirecting education, particularly its curriculum. Speed is crucial because the political mandate this party has received is tenuous and may prove brief. As a ready-to-use tool of the government, the NCERT has no choice but to hurry up.

At the same time, NCERT must allay fears that the very mention of curriculum renewal under a BJP-led government raises in the public mind, given the record of Uttar Pradesh (see Seminar 400), Gujarat and the thousands of schools run under the umbrella of the so-called Sangh parivar. The NCERT also has a professional conscience to appease. Set up in the early sixties, it carries the stamp of Nehru’s commitment to modernity and secularism. Given these external and internal compulsions, it makes sense why the present document must make ‘absolutely clear’ that it is ‘still’ guided by and ‘also committed to’ the basic philosophy enunciated in the mid-eighties when the Congress was in power.

The need for this historical awareness notwithstanding, we must ask what that ‘basic philosophy’ of the mid-eighties document on education policy was to which this present document makes such a loud, approving reference. The NPE did name all the values one associates with the Constitution, but to say that it had a philosophy is both an exaggeration and an example of memory loss. The NPE document assembled all manner of statements to cover the violation of integrity committed during its inception. Few today might remember that the Rajiv government had initiated the debate on education policy by releasing a document called ‘The Challenge of Education’. Before the debate could mature, this document was suppressed. Its candour and professional directness were not acceptable to all in the government. The eventual NPE document failed to address a vast number of issues and facts which were listed for debate in the previous document. Barring a few statements of intent, such as the creation of a separate cadre of civil servants for education and a national testing service – neither of these intentions have been pursued so far – the NPE presented little that was either professional or relevant to the salient ills of the system.

Why the NCERT should refer to the NPE while justifying the present exercise of curriculum renewal may be politically clear, but the attribution of a philosophy to the NPE may have a narrower professional explanation as well. Philosophy of education is one subject that the NCERT has consistently neglected in the nearly four decades of its existence. Indeed, the Council has actively discouraged philosophical reflection on education by institutional mechanisms such as the wholesale adoption of behaviourist psychology as its primary orbit of research and publication. In the early years, sociology had some place in the Council’s sphere of activities; later on, that too disappeared. Intellectual or reflective activity that might put a break on the obsessive urge to dip every aspect of education in behaviourist solutions was shunned. The MLL (Minimum Levels of Learning) approach, fashioned out in the early nineties, was the ultimate achievement of this urge. It set to rest any desire or inspiration there might be among curriculum designers to refer to the ideas and legacy of teacher-philosophers like Tagore, Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo and Krishnamurti.

For the NCERT to claim that its National Curriculum Framework stands committed to the philosophy of the NPE and another document that followed it only shows that the Council has forgotten what it means to have a philosophy to be guided by. Repeated contradictions and the chaos of arguments and theories, not to mention the weight of platitudes one finds throughout this new document, bear testimony to this suspicion. The nine quotations of Gandhi used in the document tell the same story, in addition to indicating the advantage Gandhi’s name offers as a cover for political hypocrisy. As a professional body, the least that the NCERT might have done was to acknowledge that Gandhi’ educational ideals are intertwined with his social ideals, and that – apart from the backlog of our neglect of Gandhi – makes it extremely difficult to draw upon his ideas in any practical and honest sense in a social ethos marked by competitive consumerism.

There is little sign indeed in this document that the Council wants us to notice the professional challenges it faces in the task of modernising curriculum designing and pedagogy, let alone share these challenges. Throughout the document one confronts remarkable verbosity and smugness. The lack of context is also sharp. One finds no reflection of the India where children must beg or toil to supplement the family’s income, and where a meagre mid-day meal has been known to make a bigger impact on attendance than any reform in curriculum or teaching. Equally, the document pays little attention to the wealthier Indian where the IIT’s name is freely used by coaching shops to earn large sums of money in exchange for skills to excel in the IIT entrance test.

Even the blatant correlation between family income and success in examinations does not figure as a debate-worthy point in this discussion document, though it has a section on ‘evaluation’. Indeed, by pathetic strategies like avoiding the term ‘examination’ in the title of this section, the NCERT indicates its continued adherence to the practice of staying above the day-to-day reality of the system rather than engaging with it. Neither the tools nor the mood to engage with reality are in evidence in this document. Its lack of discourse of engagement, apart from its refusal to prioritise the numerous tasks involved in curriculum renewal in an unreformed system of education, are perhaps the two most important reasons why this document looks so mediocre. The quality of production does little to hide its mediocrity, and perhaps we should be thankful for that. In these respects, and not just its alleged philosophy, it is like the 1986 NPE. This continuity would bear a misappropriation of the poet’s metaphor: governments may come and go, but the neglect of education remains.

We may be stung and pained by such an unabashed national display of callousness towards children, but we have no choice in taking the occasion of this document’s appearance seriously. Hence this issue of Seminar.

 

KRISHNA KUMAR

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|NCF DEBATE |

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|1. On A Recent Critique of the Draft National Curriculum |

|     By: Dr. Yash Pal  |

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|2. To Accommodate the Curious Mind |

|    By: Nivediata Menon  |

|    (Telegarph: 25 August, 2005)  |

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|3.  Guarding the School Gates |

|    By: Harsh Sethi .  |

|    (Indian Express: 27 July, 2005)         |

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|4. Shaikshik vimarsh ki apni zameen |

|    Raghvendra Prapanna |

|    (Hindustan: July 7, 2005) |

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|5. History Textbooks: the need to move forward    |

|    By: Sumit Sarkar |

|    (The Hindu : July 6, 2005) |

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|6. Making education reforms more meaningful |

|   By: Krishna Kumar |

|   (The Hindu : July 2, 2005) |

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|7. For a new Paradigm |

|    By: K. Ramachandran |

|    (The Hindu : July 1, 2005) |

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EW CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK

A few chapters short

The new National Curriculum Framework has put the child firmly at the centre of its proposals. But critics point out that it has overlooked many problems, such as the lack of infrastructure, inadequate teacher training, and continuing social biases. Some provisions have also been attacked as obscurantist. Deepa A reports.

07 December 2005 - Textbooks and tests have long been the two words that defined the Indian education system, but now the National Curriculum Framework 2005 is doing its utmost to change that perception. The 124-page document, prepared by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), emphasises the words learning without burden and child-centred education repeatedly. Its volley of suggestions, already reflected in the new NCERT syllabus for classes one to twelve, includes cutting down on the number of textbooks, making assessment methods flexible, and promoting more inclusive learning.

More dramatically, it makes a case for doing away with stereotypes based on gender and caste. Perhaps the spirit of the document (the NCF and the new syllabus can be accessed at the website ncert.nic.in) is reflected in the many examples for innovative teaching suggestions that pepper its pages. For instance, one illustration titled Talking Pictures, recommends: "Show the class a picture of a household with various members of the family performing various tasks. The difference is the father is cooking, the mother fixing the light bulb, the daughter returning from school on a bicycle, and the son milking the cow ... the grandfather is sewing on a button and the grandmother is doing the accounts. Ask the children to talk about the picture ... Do they think that there is any work that these people should not be doing? Why? Involve them in a discussion on dignity of work, equality and gender ..."

By breaking away from established notions and prevalent teaching practices, the framework has laid the ground for making learning a more exciting experience. As NCERT Director Krishna Kumar explains, the NCF is "sensitive" to the needs of children and understands that the ultimate goal of education is to "motivate". And even its critics agree that this NCF takes a step forward by recognising the importance of the child in the school education system. The new NCERT syllabus shows a "marked departure from earlier ones", according to Kumar.

[pic]

Illustration: Farzana Cooper

A new beginning

A fresh look at syllabi is certainly required in many states in the country, where changes in curricula sometimes occur only every 10 years. "Central boards of education, such as the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) and the ICSE (Indian School Certificate Examinations), revise textbooks more frequently. States are more conservative, and revisions of curriculum happen slowly," says Kulbhushan Kushal, regional director of the DAV Group of educational institutions in Maharashtra and Gujarat. While modifications are expected to take place according to new education policies, it is only CBSE schools, and states such as Uttaranchal and Jharkhand that immediately follow the NCERT syllabus.

The need for change is accepted widely. "Discussions have centred around the relevance of the present education system - there is a feeling among teachers, parents and children that the system is irrelevant," says V. Madhusudan, additional project coordinator, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Hyderabad. According to Krishna Kumar, the Goa government has been the first to write to NCERT expressing a desire to adopt and implement the new national framework. "We have to start taking decisions (based on the NCF), and identify resources (to implement it). It is today or never," he says. But the new framework is still being debated in many states in the country.

Educating the educator

The framework suggests that students should be able to "connect knowledge to life outside school" and "ensure that learning is shifted away from rote methods". It recommends that teachers should encourage children not just to answer questions but also to frame questions themselves, and "plan lessons so that children are challenged to think and not simply repeat what is told to them." By stressing on these methods, the framework emphasises not just the role of the child, but also that of the teacher.

Its path-breaking suggestions notwithstanding, there are questions about the extent to which the framework can be translated into reality. When many schools have no infrastructure to speak of, when teachers are hired on contract to teach for a few hours daily, will it be possible to make the child the centre of learning, as the framework whole-heartedly recommends? Critics point out that the NCF does not adequately consider the teacher training processes that need to precede the classroom reforms it preaches. The framework does have a section on Teacher Education for Curriculum Renewal, which, among other things, admits that, "Attempts at curricular reform have not been adequately supported by teacher education. Large-scale recruitment of para-teachers has diluted the identity of the teacher as a professional." Also acknowledging that "any curriculum renewal effort needs to be supported with well thought-out (sic) and systematic programme of in-service education ...", the framework suggests strategies for organising teacher training programmes.

Yet, though the framework has taken a positive step by recognising the importance of teachers, it "could have taken a clearer view and made a series of policy recommendations on the subject," says Poonam Batra, professor in Delhi University's Department of Education, who has written a paper on the subject for the Economic and Political Weekly. "If education is empowerment, then it cannot talk only of students' empowerment. It should include teachers' empowerment," she adds. A redesigned curriculum will not be imparted through textbooks alone - the teacher will be the one conveying it to students; and, however well a textbook is written, it should have clear "pedagogic methods", says Batra. As she writes in her piece, "In the present form the NCF 2005 does not take a clear position on the current state of teacher education, the dying cadre of the trained elementary government schoolteacher and the increasing reliance of many state governments on a fast growing cadre of para teachers."

The framework should also have made clear the kind of interventions required to implement it fully, says Batra. In particular, the NCF does not offer suggestions on how experiences and voices excluded from the classroom till now can be brought in. It is wrong to assume - as the NCF does - that teachers will be far removed from their own socio-political context, where biases and discrimination against people, based on their backgrounds, exist, she adds. "Teacher education is an isolated process not linked to other departments," she says, "as a result, academic debates on equity and gender seldom enter the insular world of teaching educators."

Shailendra Kumar Sharma, senior programme coordinator of Pratham, a non-governmental organisation that works on education issues, says that interactions with teachers reveal that they are not ready to implement the changes suggested by the framework. "Is adequate support being provided to teachers to effect this paradigm shift?" he wonders. There is cynicism among teachers, especially in government schools, and besides, there's a considerable amount of divide between teachers and children from the marginalised sections of society, he adds. Teachers sometimes simply don't understand, or do not care to understand, where the child is coming from, says Sharma.

Krishna Kumar, on the other hand, says that the National Council for Teacher Education, a statutory body that lays down guidelines for regulating teachers' education in the country, has welcomed NCF 2005. The council has agreed to reorganise Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) programmes on the basis of NCF, he adds. The NCERT is also looking at conducting brief in-service programmes and release audio and video programmes to supplement its framework.

Reality bites

The NCF has devoted a chapter to School and Classroom Environment, mentioning that "not enough attention is paid to the importance of (sic) physical environment for learning". It says that classrooms are overcrowded and unattractive, despite the fact that children want to be in a colourful, friendly and playful space. The framework suggests ways to make school buildings and classrooms attractive, and says that heads of school and block functionaries should focus on ensuring that at least minimum infrastructural requirements are met. It also mentions that the ideal number of students in a class should be around 30.

The NCF has, however, shown a marked reluctance to ask the government to ensure better standards in its schools, many of which are crumbling and lack everything from teachers to toilets. It is also silent on how schools dealing with such basic infrastructural problems, with just a couple of teachers for 500-odd students or so, can implement its suggestions. Anil Sadgopal, member of the National Steering Committee that framed the curriculum, points out, "No curriculum reforms will be meaningful without systemic reforms in the school system." The NCF does not present a clear view on the government's role and has, instead, opted to say what the government wants to hear, he adds.

More concrete policy changes need to be initiated to implement the suggestions made by NCF, says Madhusudhan. Writing in the Social Scientist's issue on 'Debating Education', historian Irfan Habib points out that "almost every proposal it (the NCF 2005) makes is only practical - if at all! - for elite schools. Its insistence on "individualised attention" to be given to all children, or multiplicity of subject choices, or two levels (standard/higher) of teaching, are all possible only for highly privileged schools. In other respects too the proposals in NCF-2005 would disadvantage the poor."

Call for clarity

Some of the framework's proposals have evoked despair, and even anger. Two of these, in particular - the glorification of 'local knowledge', and a proposal to do away with examinations as the chief assessment tools, have come in for severe criticism. Drawing a halo around "local knowledge" could lead to obscurantist ideas, fears Rajan Prasad of Sahmat. The NCF states, "The child's community and local environment form the primary context in which learning takes place, and in which knowledge acquires its significance ... In this document, we emphasise the significance of contextualising education: of situating learning in a child's context." Children should be encouraged to learn from communities and knowledgeable individuals who are a storehouse of information on India's environment, says the framework. The only caveat mentioned here is that "all forms of local knowledge must be mediated through Constitutional values and principles."

In a note critiquing the processes, Teesta Setalvad, editor of Communalism Combat, points out that the overemphasis on "diffused local knowledge" could be "dangerous". " ... If implemented in the current form, the NCF 2005 would be a continued invitation to dubious, hugely-funded non-governmental organisations to continue to operate freely in the area of mass education and even draw government funds where politically sympathetic regimes exist," she writes. The document itself is not cohesive, and merely talking of equity as a token gesture is not sufficient, says Setalvad. "There is inequity of caste in our system, but liberals resist from admitting it," she adds.

The plan to dilute the role of examinations has produced sneers as well. The framework "attempts to remind teachers that assessment techniques have to be evolved to recognise children's success, rather than find ways to fail them," says the NCERT director. Those are the very points that critics like Habib question, fearing that educators will be coerced into regarding even non-performing students as successful by some yardstick. As he writes in his piece, How to evade real issues and make room for obscurantism, "The one way, however defective in actual practice, that may still be employed to keep a check on actual content of teaching in schools, is the system of examinations. NCF-2005 is, however, intent on reducing these to mere farcical exercises."

No verdict yet

The bottom-line question for such proposed reforms is 'will it work?' Indeed, can one expect the NCF to work magic in schools where even a blackboard is a scarce commodity? Krishna Kumar points to roles that have to be played by others, saying, "The NCF recognises that a complex set of factors is necessary for educational reforms - and civil society is a major factor." The way governments act will depend on civil society and the societal pressure on them to perform, he adds. The NCF, approved in September by the Central Advisory Board on Education in September, presents just one "aspect of educational reforms", he says. When economic reforms are still continuing after 14 years, educational reforms would clearly take much longer, he explains. "The document shows the direction ... at best, it can be a starting point," he adds.

The framework's positive attributes, the director points out, include the fact that it acknowledges the child's primacy and does not impose a straight-jacketed, narrow notion on children. Krishna Kumar claims that the new teaching methods will also contribute to stemming the current drop-out rate - as many as 53 percent of the children drop out by the time they reach class eight now. "It is the biased nature of the present curriculum against girls and marginalised groups that's partly responsible for making present-day education an alienating experience," he says. ⊕

Deepa A

07 Dec 2005

Deepa A is a New Delhi-based journalist. This article is the third in India Together's multi-part series, "Lens on Education", and is funded through support from the Indian American Education Foundation (), a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to supporting the education of children with disabilities in India. IAEF additionally works to educate mainstream America about the Indian American community and its heritage.

URL for this article:



TAKING STOCK OF A TABOO

Sex education still off the charts

Students must feel comfortable seeking counselling on sex-related issues. Each of their questions, no matter how private, needs to be answered. Experts argue that openness in conversation would decrease frustrations and aggressions linked to sexuality amongst youth, says Parul Sharma.

Education policy | HIV/AIDS

December 2005

NEW CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK

A few chapters short

The new National Curriculum Framework has put the child firmly at the centre of its proposals. But critics point out that it has overlooked many problems, such as the lack of infrastructure, inadequate teacher training, and continuing social biases. Some provisions have also been attacked as obscurantist. Deepa A reports.

December 2005

SCHOOL CURRICULA

India's unchecked textbooks racket

The dimensions of the open, continuous and unchecked textbooks publishing rackets have recently come to light following the defeat of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government in the general election held last year. Srinidhi Raghavendra reports.

February 2005

OPINION

Classes everywhere, not a stop to think

Many teenagers in Mumbai are spending their evenings on the "untiring toil" of tuitions, trying to learn what their teachers should have been teaching them in junior college but are not. This is a system that unthinkingly takes away kids' leisure time, says Dilip D'Souza.

Dilip D'Souza | Education | Maharashtra

December 2004

EDUCATION POLICY

Vital reform agenda for education

Leaders write prescriptions for a renaissance

Education Policy

December 2004

BETTER TEXTBOOKS

Her mind, her country

Gender sensitivity in curricula.

Children | Women | Delhi

October 2004

FALLING STANDARDS

Science education on a slippery path

Low rating for India's best shatters assumptions.

Education policy

October 2004

For a new paradigm

K. Ramachandran

THE TAMIL Nadu Government decided this month to do away with a proven

system — the Professional Courses Entrance Examinations. The affected

students knocked at the doors of the Madras High Court, and it found the

decision to be unacceptable in law. The matter has now gone before the

Supreme Court.

But some of the social and academic questions involved are being neither

raised nor debated. Politics that has held centrestage in every aspect of life

in Tamil Nadu, including in films and the entertainment industry, has now

encroached into the academic space. Academic decisions are being taken in

the name of representing certain sections. Arbitrary changes are being

sought to be effected without even a semblance of academic inputs. The

biggest stakeholders, the students, feel left out.

The common entrance test (CET) system for admissions to professional

courses was introduced in 1984. That was the point of time when higher

education was formally opened for private players. A need arose to infuse

transparency in the admissions process, at least with regard to the

government quota seats in unaided professional education institutions.

The CET system evolved over time and got its present structure in the early

1990s. Admissions to courses in medical, paramedical, engineering,

veterinary and agriculture and allied sciences are based on a combination of

marks obtained in the higher secondary examinations and the CET. The

proportion was 4:1. Then it came down to 2:1. The methodology in Tamil

Nadu of combining the marks obtained in the qualifying examination and the

CET is widely seen as an ideal one. The Plus Two, or higher secondary,

examination evaluates a student's knowledge of the syllabus content. The

CET, by means of its objective methodology, tests a student's problemsolving

capability, speed, memory and understanding of the fundamentals in

science and mathematics.

While scrapping the CET system the Tamil Nadu Government gave a reason:

that it put rural students at a disadvantage. Urban students, it was stated,

had the advantage of getting coached in tuition centres.

However, rural Tamil Nadu's biggest provider of higher secondary education

is public-funded — institutions run by the Government and the local bodies.

Privately funded schools account for only a third of the entire higher

secondary system. These are urban-based.

If the rural students feel deprived, the blame must go to the Government

and local body schools in the hinterland. Some of the so-called rural schools

are also institutions that levy high levels of fees. Their students are from the

elite sections, coming from all parts of the State to study Class XI and XII.

By no means can they be called rural students.

Social differences in access to education, as in other domains of life, are a

reality in Tamil Nadu. The surest means of bringing in equity here would be

to infuse more money into the government schooling system.

The CET system brought in equity and parity. It remains the only gateway

that can evaluate a student's ability and aptitude objectively, compared with

several other methods. When the system is removed, students from other

streams, especially those run by the all-India boards, feel disadvantaged.

But the State has a counter-argument. The national level CETs are based on

the CBSE syllabus. This proves a disadvantage to students from the State

Board stream seeking to enter the Indian Institutes of Technology or the

National Institutes of Technology. A majority of the aspirants to higher

education cannot compete with a minority that gets trained in premier

academic institutions to enter the IITs. When an entire nation turns its back

on a majority coming from humbler backgrounds, what is wrong in the State

reciprocating the gesture? This is one line of thinking among different

political parties in Tamil Nadu.

But is there not a way out of this competitive chauvinism — State vs Centre;

Urban vs Rural? Or the Elite vs the Humble?

A possible solution

Experts and academicians show the way: build on the strengths of the CET and simply

add it to the higher secondary examination system. Out of the 200 marks given for each

subject in the Class XII examinations, questions that carry 100 marks can be in CET

style: make these objective-type. The rest of the theory papers could be in the existing

subjective or descriptive style. So an examiner can evaluate a student's knowledge, on

the one hand, and the crucial life skills, on the other, all in one examination.

How do we build a consensus on this? Political parties need to remove themselves from

the scene and let the academics decide on a scientific methodology that is enduring.

Perhaps, a committee can thrash out the details. It can produce a report in the next three

months so that a new and reformed examination system could be put in place at least

from the next academic year. It can make life simpler for the poor urban learner, who

now has no support from any quarter.

|Signs of reform |

| |

|Kamala Balachandran |

|Taking a cue from the film Iqbal, the NCERT has decided to introduce sign language to students of Std III. |

|  |

| |

It is common knowledge that young people often imitate the styles and mannerisms of characters from box office movies. However, the idea of educators drawing inspiration from commercial cinema seems quite far-fetched! But that unlikely connection has been made with the NCERT taking a cue from the Subhash Ghai’s 2005-release movie, Iqbal. To quote the exact words of Professor Krishna Kumar, Chairman, NCERT, “Iqbal has not only inspired us but it has also explained what we want to achieve, so simply!"

Nagesh Kukunoor’s latest directorial venture Iqbal, is a gritty tale about the rise of an underdog. The movie tells the story of a deaf-mute boy who harbours a dream of making to the Indian cricket team as a pace bowler. The protagonist’s sprightly ten-year old sister, Khadija has total faith in her brother’s talents. She speaks not only for her brother but also to him in his language. Director Krishna Kumar said the example of Khadija who plays a crucial role in her brother's life because she knows sign language, prompted the NCERT to take a step wherein sign language will be introduced to children of standard III, right across the country. Besides, NCERT has also, for the first time, introduced a poem written in Braille script for Class VI students of Hindi. A chapter on Helen Keller, the deaf and blind American woman who became a role model for millions of people, will also be added. Though the idea was already in the pipeline, “the movie has strengthened the belief,” said Professor Krishna Kumar.

The National Council for Educational Research and Training was established to provide a framework within which teachers and schools could choose and plan experiences that they think children should have.

|[pic] |

Equality

An important guiding principle of the NCERT is to maintain equality of all children and uphold the value of every child. It also aims to ensure that learning atmosphere is such that all children experience the dignity and confidence to learn. A direct corollary to this commitment is that children with disabilities be given inclusive education. That is, they should be allowed to join the mainstream school and not excluded from the normal atmosphere of a generalist school. For when segregated in specialist schools, these children remain hidden from the eyes of the community. Ignorant of the ways in which the disabled cope with their handicap, the society’s stigmatising attitudes and negative value dispositions stay out dated and hardened. This in turn, pushes the disabled into remaining second-class citizens.

Another important guiding principle of NCERT is to “remove prejudices and complexes (in the children’s minds) transmitted through the social environment and accident of birth.” Hence, parallel to including the disabled children into the main stream, educators feel, it is necessary to sensitise the normal children to the needs and problems of the disabled.

Inclusive education

The introduction of sign language and Braille is a part of NCERT’s approach towards such an inclusive, integrated education. Experts are convinced that when normal children learn to communicate with a hearing impaired child in sign language, the latter’s integration into the school environment will be total.

"As a parent of a deaf child I was terrified when I first saw sign language. But if you teach children what it looks like at a young age, then by the time they are 25 they will think of it as normal," says Arun Rao, Director, Deaf Way.

The new idea of NCERT is simple and yet so potent that it could revolutionise the way the next generation of children look at a disabled person. It is extremely heartening to know that we have an original idea that promises to humanise the face of education.



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