Curriculum Development
Non-Scholae Sed Vitaeus Docemus - teach not for school, but for life.
Impart value-based education with
an inquiring attitude. Why maths? Why
languages? Why craft? Why drawing?
Why social studies? The students should
be apprised of why the subject is important. Non-Scholae Sed Vitaeus Docemus - teach
not for school, but for life.
• Education must be skill-oriented,
task-oriented and activity-based, so that
'theory' is the foundation and evaluation
is the 'finish' or 'finesse' of the product.
• Inputs of man, machines, material,
money and matter (5 M's) should be
well-balanced, liberal and easily available
for the 'process' of education to be an
exchange, to await an 'out-put' which
is an ethical human-being, clear in moral
values, just in practice, fair in play, concerned
in social service and radical for
change.
• The subjects of study should include,
together with Art, Craft, Music, Computer,
Physical education, one sport Yoga
for healthy living, technical work (same
for both sexes) - needlecraft, photography,
agriculture, fond preservation, first
aid. Though these are listed, in the present
curriculum, how many avail of it. If so,
how? What is the outcome? Who oversees
it?
These subjects are not for examination
but for skill-development. Only completion
should be the target, not marks or
grades so that the cancer of tuition-corruption,
will not spread!
Shailaja Mulay is a Mumbai-based teacher - counsellor and education consultant. AARATI -- Rectifying Pitfalls, Shailaja Mulay, Humanscape, 01/01/1998, /eldoc/n00_/01jan98HUS2.pdf
In his recent collection of four
lectures on education, titled What
is Worth Teaching?, educationist
Krishna Kumar.. deals with what he refers to
as the "problem of curriculum."
He attributes the inadequacy and
narrowness of curriculum deliberation
in India to the fact that it has
not, in fact, been treated as an act
of deliberation and, further, that it
has, by and large, excluded teachers
from the process.
According to him, "Curriculum deliberation is a social dialogue — the wider its reach, the stronger its_ grasp of the social conditions in which education is to function. The only way to expand the reach of curriculum deliberation is to include teachers in it...and this is where the problem of curriculum encounters its greatest challenge in the culture of education in India. "In this culture, the teacher is a subordinate officer. He himself becomes a slave of textbooks and has no opportunity to be original.
... Debunking the oft-heard justification
for the absurdly overloaded
school curriculum, which generates
a fatal sense of helplessness and
frustration in teachers, students and
parents alike, Kumar states clearly
that "the problem of volume of
content at any grade level does not
originate in the so-called 'explosion
of knowledge'...It originates
in the archaic notion of curriculum
as a bag of facts and in
the equally archaic view of teaching
as a successful delivery of
known facts."
"Unless we shed these notions
and accept more modern, humanist
concepts of curriculum and teaching,"
he warns, "we are going to
remain stuck as teachers with impossibly
large syllabus and fat textbooks
to cover...
"This process of mistaken action and legitimation of action can stop only if we recognise that curriculum planning involves a selection of knowledge, and teaching involves the process of creating a classroom ethos in which children want to pursue inquiry. - Curriculam for the Classroom, Ammu Joseph, Deccan Herald, 5/09/93, 05sep93dch1.htm
National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE)
Make students, not monks: NCERT
FROM MONOBINA GUPTA
New Delhi, Jan 18:The National
Council of Educational Research
and Training (NCERT) has
attacked the government for promoting
obscurantism in the
name of value education.
The "spiritual" organisations
nominated by the government
for this task will only erode the
scientific temper of education,
the NCERT has alleged.
"The government's recommendations
on value education seem
to be based on the model adopted
by the Satya Sai Baba institute of
higher learning," the council has
observed.
But this critique of the government's
report on value orientation of education has been dubbed
"too harsh" by senior officials
in the human resources development
ministry.
The standing committee on
value education, headed by Mr
D. Swaminadhan, has allocated
Rs 200 crores for five organisations
to promote value-based education.
These organisations are
Ramakrishna Mission (Mysore)
Jain Vishwa Bharati (Rajasthan), Gujarat Vidyapeeth,
Avinashlingam deemed
university (Coimbatore) and the
Regional College (Bhubaneswar).
The government's choice of
organisations has led to fears
that obscurantist ideas are likely
to be fortified.
So far, these organisations
have lectured students
on spiritualism, which is passed
off as value-orientation.
"The spiritual, didactic
approach of these organisations
goes against the government's
professed stand on inculcating a
scientific temper among students,"
said a senior NCERT
official.
The lumpsum set aside for
value education has also led to a
scramble among some voluntary
organisations which have
approached the standing committee
for a grant. Among them the
latest is the Vidya Bharati Foundation,
constituted with the
"blessings of the Jagadguru."
"We as managers have to develop
character and character comes
from saadhana," says the organisation's
brochure.
The NCERT feels that such
applications should be summarily
rejected, as they are completely
unfit for promoting value
education.
But the government has an entirely
different notion. The standing
committee members feel that
the application of the Vidya Bharati
Foundation should be
seriously considered.
The government's recommendation
for a "short, serene"
10-minute session on value education
in schools has also come
under sharp criticism from the
NCERT, which argues that value
education, if treated as an autonomous
subject, would be reduced
to mere preaching, which is
not the objective.
So far the standing committee
has met six times, even though
the only concrete outcome has
been a plan of action on value
orientation in schools. And despite
the NCERT's active intervention,
this plan aims at integrating
the committee's idea of
value education into the
curriculum.
ED1 CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT NCERT THE TELEGRAPH (CALCUTTA) 19 JAN 1995 N20
HRD MINISTRY PROPOSES NINE-YEAR TIME-OUT FOR SCHOOL STUDENTS.
The Times of India News Service
NEW DELHI: The new National
Curriculum Framework for School
Education (NCFSE) says no student
should be declared as having
passed or failed until the secondary
stage. Examinations before Class X
must be replaced by school-based
"continuous and comprehensive"
evaluation.
At the higher secondary stage,
the courses will be organised in
four semesters using the credit system.
Evaluation of the first three
semesters will be the responsibility
of schools, while the fourth semester
examination will be conducted
by the boards.
"The performance of students in
school-based exams will be graded
on a nine-point scale, using absolute
grading and grading by directly
converting marks into
grades."
The new curriculum
framework was released by Union
HRD minister Murli Manohar
Joshi on Tuesday.
This new ten-year framework,
prepared by a group headed by National
Council of Educational Research
and Training director J.S. Rajput, will replace
the present one developed
in 1988.
It is likely to come
into force from the
2002-2003 academic
session. Mr Rajput
said the new framework
was being sent
to all state governments.
"And since
they have already been consulted
while framing the draft, it should be
accepted," he said.
The new framework document
says there is "widespread disparity"
in the standards of
exams conducted
by the 34 boards
of secondary and
higher secondary
education in the
country.
"This has led to
a multiplicity of
entrance tests
conducted by professional
institutions in areas like
engineering, medicine and management,"
it said. This, in turn, had
caused stress and strain among
both students and parents, besides
giving rise to malpractices and
wasteful expenditure.Consequently,
a national-level body to ensure
uniformity in standards was desperately
required.
Other major recommendations
are:
• Ensure availability of pre-school
education to all children and prohibit
formal teaching and testing of
different subjects at this level.
• Stick to the basic policy of the
three-language formula, with "emphasis
on teaching Hindi as the official
language of India and Sanskrit
as the language of traditional wisdom
and culture of the country"
• Integrate science and technology
up to the secondary stage.
• Provide a strong vocational
stream for "enhancing employability
and entrepreneurship at the
higher secondary stage".
• Use of different methods of
grading scholastic and co-scholastic
areas of learning.
•Provide wide flexibility and freedom
in the choice of subjects
among the courses to be offered at
the higher secondary stage.
HRD
MINISTRY PROPOSES NINE-YEAR TIME-OUT
FOR SCHOOL STUDENTS. Times of India,
15/11/2000, /eldoc/n22_/15nov00toi1.pdf
Killing the school curriculum
SHALINI ADVANI
THE Supreme Court will
shortly take up a PIL filed
against the implementation
of the controversial new secondary
school curriculum. The NCERT has
been charged by the petitioners with
seeking to saffronise education and
the Court's last order restrained the
NCERT from releasing its textbooks
for History and Hindi. Following
closely as this does the
notice
to the NCERT on the distortion
of education, we have a situation in
which various institutions of the state
are questioning the bonafides of the
government to provide suitable education
to all its citizens.
The issue of what should go into a
curriculum has long confronted societies
across the world. Conflicts
over curriculum content are in fact
conflicts over wider questions of
power, since they involve ways of organising
that vast universe of possible
knowledge.
India has had a tradition
of selecting curricula to 'teach' nationalism to children. Nationalism
was a consciously articulated aim
when the NCERT was set up and a
1986 report specifically investigated
textbooks for their success in promoting
national integration.
It is this which is complacently
being repeated by the present government's
educationists. J.S. Rajput,
head of NCERT has suggested that
the earlier curriculum was simply a
product of the
Congress era. Such
an argument suggests
that secular
liberals who are
objecting to the
NCERT's moves
are merely peeved
at their version of
truth being manoeuvred
out.
NCERT also cites
irate Jats, Sikhs,
Jains, all of whom
ostensibly hail the
amendments, as proof that Hindutva
nationalism is more inclusive
than before.
But even if all education is ultimately
ideological, not all selection is
the same. There is politics of selection
which enables minds to become
either open and questioning
or suspicious and complacent. For
all their didacticism, the old textbooks
emphasised an inclusive nation.
The nationalism being introduced
today seeks not to unite but
to divide. It plays upon our anxiety
over the social, political and economic
changes taking place by
evoking a glorious lost past of
Hindu supremacy.
It is a dreadful irony that a government
that seeks to 'modernise'
India by celebrating IT advances,
globalisation and nuclear weapons
as essentials of
modem life, uses
education not to
help our children
shape a new world
but to regret our
fall from a mythical
old one. The
National Curriculum
Framework
states that we have
"discontinuities in
the living process"
because "influenced
by the alien
(my emphasis) technological ethos,
the parents and the educational institutions
emphasise the acquisition
of high grade techno-informative
knowledge alone." It is a fear of
modernity and the social problems it
brings that is sought to be addressed
by emphasising Sanskrit or introducing
"value education".
That the Hindutva agenda to
construct a new national identity is
destructive hardly needs to be re stated — Gujarat is only the most
visible example of it. But the fact
that this newness quite lacks any
modern educational practice, any
contemporary pedagogic ideas to
equip children for a swiftly changing
world, is sometimes lost. The
new curriculum does not introduce
a new approach to Maths, long seen
as a bogey,.does not make English
textbooks any livelier for those who
have no background in it but wish
to learn it desperately. It retains a
dry approach to the sciences. There
are no cross-curricular approaches
to subjects.
Although it is well-established
that teacher input is essential for
restructuring syllabi, there was no
trialling and only a very limited discussion
on the new textbooks.
There was no consensus building on how education can balance equity with quality, no measures to reduce the class division which our education sytematises. Nationwide, although the failure rate of all students who take the 10th board examination is an incredible 50 per cent, there is no radical solution offered to set this right. There is, however, a detailed plan to enhance the study of Vedic India! The truth is that education should be in the forefront of the government's reform agenda, but not like this. What is required is a national commitment to raise basic educational standards. A saffronised curriculum cannot obscure the fact that a government that makes its ideology the lynchpin of its education reform is both irresponsible and tragically out of date.
- Killing the school curriculum, Shalini Advani, Indian Express, /eldoc/n22_/29jul02ie1.pdf
Another course in CBSE syllabus: defence studies
DEFENCE studies, now being taught at graduate levels in select
institutes,
will be available to school children, thanks to the
Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). Director (Academics) G.
Balasubramanian said this course would be introduced in the academic
session
beginning 2002. The idea was being deliberated in the Human Resource
Development
(HRD) ministry for the past two years, and the CBI made took the
decision
six months ago. The National Cadet Corps, CBSE and the HRD ministry of
HRD are working on the project, said Balasubramanian. The CBSE was in
the
process of 50 schools like those of the Army and the CRPF. "Schools
where
there is already a faculty for NCC will be given priority," he said.
When
asked who their target audience was, he said: "Primarily the NDA and
other
armed forces enthusiasts". According to the Directorate Training of
NCC,
they would like the course to be introduced "across the board" instead
of only in Defence schools. "It would not only inspire children
but
also ensure more time spent on it if it became a CBSE
course,"
said a senior official. He also said they hoped it would increase
the number of students opting for the armed forces.- Another course in CBSE syllabus:
Defence
studies, SUNETRA CHOUDHURY, Indian Express, 24/01/2001,
/eldoc/n22_/24jan01ie1.pdf
Government /reforms /curriculum devt
- Scindia makes his pitch for a syllabus of some content, KEITH FLORY, Statesman, 24/06/1995, /eldoc/n00_/24jun95s1.pdf
ANDHRA PRADESH / SUBJECT-WISE PANELS TO
BE SET UP: MINISTER
The State Government will revise the school syllabus from next year
for which purpose subject-wise syllabus review committees will be
formed,
the Primary Education Minister, Mr. Kadiam Srihari, said on Saturday.
Regular
teacher training programmes from primary to high schools for the staff
to update their skills were also on the anvil. The step is to create
awareness
among teachers about social problems, as afterall the teachers also had
a social obligation, the Minister said, inaugurating a two-day
conference
of teachers of Telangana region owing allegiance to the Andhra Pradesh
Teachers Federation (APTF). - School
syllabus revision next year,
The Hindu,
17/12/2000, /eldoc/n22_/17dec00h1.pdf
Learning from the ancients
Our educational system must recapture the spirit of the past... In the guru-shishya parampara both the teacher and the disciple lived together, sharing a love and respect akin to that between a father and a son. The method of teaching was predominantly oral and individual. 'Hearing, contemplation and practice' — these were its main features.
There were few books and everything was learnt by rote. The conviction was: "If knowledge was in books, it is like money lent to others." Each teacher housed as many as 15 or 20 students at a time. The matter covered at each sitting was limited to what the pupil could easily absorb in that period. Each lesson had to be learnt thoroughly before the student could move on to the next one. Sometimes older students were required to teach younger ones. Nalanda was one of the most famous seats of learning in the old world....this university had at least 10,000 students. The principal school was in the centre, surrounded by nine other mighty structures. There were separate buildings for the residence of Buddhist monks. The Ratna-dadhi was a vast, nine-storeyed building, accommodating the biggest library in the country at the time. The attitude towards learning at this university can be gauged from the example of the famous doctor Jeevaka, who had been a student there for seven years, specialising in medicine. His clientele included the nobility and an emperor, and his fee was a figure of not less than eight digits. Yet years after he had left the university he still felt that he was lacking in adequate knowledge of medicine The ancient system of education was idealistic by our standards. The pupil lived with his master in his retreat, and was bound by a rigid code of discipline. His conduct was judged by the highest moral standards.
In the beginning of the 19th century, the British government surveyed the indigenous system and reorganised it to suit their needs. In 1854, the Wood's Despatch permitted the establishment of the universities of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta..- Learning from the ancients, SHAMSUDDIN, Times of India, 09/04/1995, /eldoc/n00_/09apr95toi1.pdf
Primary Failure
Sterile Textbooks Are To Blame
STUDY carried out as part of the
literacy campaign in Kerala's
Malappuram district revealed that
more than 45 per cent of the children
finishing primary education could
not write five simple Malayalam
words correctly. The study showed
that there was a serious problem of
illiteracy in schools. Such a conclusion
is hardly surprising in view of
the fact that the quality of primary
education has failed to keep up with
its expansion. That this should be
true of Kerala might surprise some
people because Kerala's budgetary
provision for primary education is
among the highest in the country.
During a recent visit to Kerala I got
the opportunity to peep into a few
school classrooms. They were as
lacklustre and bare as they might be
anywhere else. The only notable fact
was that children looked wellnourished.
Apparently, Kerala's
achievement in public health is not
matched by improvement in the
quality of education.
Private tuition starts early, and cramming is what learning means to many children and their teachers. If Kerala shows anything, it is that universalisation of schooling has nothing to do with the quality of the child's educational experience.
Recent Studies
Two other recent studies have
shown that the performance of primary
education in other parts of the
country is similar or worse. In Maharashtra,
Maxine Berntsen conducted
a survey of Grade III children to
assess their mastery over basic skills.
In her report, entitled 'Collapse at the
Foundation,' she notes that more
than 50 per cent of the children had
not mastered the skills appropriate
for Grade I. Another study of this
kind was carried out by Neerja
Sharma in Agra and Lucknow districts
of Uttar Pradesh. Now surely
no one expects to be told that U.P.'s
children are receiving good primary
education, but the findings of this
study exceed one's worst suspicions.
A representative sample of Grade
V children attending government prirnary
schools was tested for curriculum-
related skills in Hindi, environmental
studies and arithmetic.
Scores reflecting a mastery level performance
were achieved by slightly
over two per cent of the children in
Hindi, less than one per cent in
environmental studies, and less than
six per cent in arithmetic.
Such findings may come as a dose
of black humour to those who want
to believe that India is ready to enter
the global market system at the terms
set by western countries. Such people
may look for quick and easy solutions,
like the one applied in Malappuram
as a follow-up of the shocking
survey.
An after-school programme,
guided by a teacher's manual which
suggests simple and joyful activities
By KRISHNA KUMAR
structured around the life of an
imaginary boy called Manikuttan,
proved magically successful. But the
likelihood that Manikuttan-centred
pedagogy can be put to use in the
curriculum of ordinary schools on a
routine basis is very slim.
It is typical of our system to
relegate such simple ideas to nonformal
education or to restrict their
use to remedial work. The citadel of
primary education in its formal sense
is treated as being too sacrosanct and
serious to be polluted by activities
that might permit children to reconstruct
their day-to-day experiences.
Daily Routine
Textbooks form the axis around
which our primary schools structure
their daily inflexible routine. Typically,
the prescribed texts are steeped
in an adult-centred view of the world
in which the child has no space of his
or her own. Language textbooks,
which are used for teaching children
how to read, are no different in this
matter from the ones used for teaching
mathematics and science or social
science. Whatever the topic, the presentation
is designed to ensure that
children will not relate to the information
given, but view it as some
truth that has no special relevance for
their life.
Even everyday concerns like common
ailments, let alone topics like
degradation of the natural environment,
are made to look like distant
issues The noted Hindi litterateur,
Premchand, had noticed some 80
years ago that children could recall a
lesson about personal hygiene word
by word but didn't mind keeping
their nails dirty!
Poor-quality textbooks could perhaps
be countered to a certain extent
by teachers, but in our system they do
not feel free to depart from the
prescribed matter and the perspective
embedded in it. And the strongest
paralysing effect is exercised by the
examination system which focuses
on verbal accuracy rather than conceptual
clarity or on the ability to
apply an idea imaginatively. So the
textbook ends up making children
incapable of relating to their milieu in
an informed and inspired manner. At
the primary school level, many of
them do learn to read, but read
without meaning, let alone interest.
They parrot the inane text to impress
the teacher. And they learn to write,
but cannot write to convey.
One might well wonder why our
textbook-producing organisations do
not do a better job. It certainly
cannot be for lack of examples, for
there are a number of excellent examples
of textbooks produced by voluntary
and private organisations. One
doesn't need to recall an old classic
like Minoo Masani's Our India or the
textbooks written by the late David
Horsburgh. Organisations such as
Eklavya and Digantar have over the
recent years brought out a number of
texts which respect the child's perspective.
A remarkable text about
health problems has been recently
produced by a Bombay-based group
called Colloquium India. It presents
information and analysis with the
help of stories which are neither
contrived nor patronising. Although
these texts have been written for
specific clienteles in localised settings,
they have the capacity to engage
learners any where in a process of
inquiry.
It is ironical that only the schools
that cater to the elite are free to
choose text materials available in the
market. State- run schools force their
teachers \o adhere to the one text
prescribed for each subject.
Liberalisation
has not made much of an
impact on the system of education as
far as government schools are concerned.
The stock argument used in
favour of a rigid, centralised system
is that it is good for the maintenance
of national unity. Moreover, uniformity
of standards is confused with
uniformity of textbooks.
Tendency Growing
The tendency towards centralised
control on pedagogical materials has
been growing over the years. Thus,
far-flung regions now prescribe textbooks
produced in Delhi. Children
and teachers cannot find any symbolic
clues in such texts that might
help them relate to the content. In a
study of Ladakh, for instance, Helena
Norberg-Hodge says that Ladakhi
children read textbooks "written by
people who have never set foot in
Ladakh, who know nothing about
growing barley at 12,000 feet or about
making houses out of sun-dried
bricks".
Choice and autonomy, exercised in
the context of a broad, normative
framework, are the obvious remedy
for the problem. This precisely was
the thrust of Gandhi's proposal for
basic education which Vinoba Bhave
once expressed in a cryptic statement
that the curriculum at Paunar cannot
be the same as at Wardha (which is
a few kilometres away) because there
is a river at Paunar and none at
Wardha. The point was that education
must build on life that surrounds
the child, not on some distant model
or ideal of life.
This idea is consistent with the
core of the modernist philosophy of
education. Yet, despite the backing of
such tall names like Gandhi and
Tagore, it has been spurned by our
highest institutions which are ostensibly
committed to the modernisation
of education. A report
recently published by the ministry of
human resource development, which
supports local autonomy and voluntary
initiatives in curriculum planning,
is currently being opposed by
the vested interests in these institutions.
THE TIMES OF INDIA (BOMBAY)
21 MAR 1994
N20 ED1
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
EDUCATION PHILOSOPHIES / ALTERNATIVE THOUGHT
FALLING STANDARDS
Teacher-Student Alienation
By KAMALA BANERJEE
,THE STATESMAN (DELHI)
16 JAN 1992
N20
WE lament falling standards in education, these days. But we also hear of very modern syllabus, well-equipped laboratories and libraries, and computerized teaching aids. These were mostly unheard of in the past. Why, then, are the standards not rising? Alienation of teachers from students is responsible to a great extent for the deterioration. The student-teacher ratio in most schools is posing insurmountable problems. At home too, the gap between children and parents is ever widening. If education has to fulfil its purpose, we must take students' opinions into consideration. They have been subjected to mindless experiments. The few superficial changes have been utterly futile. Students are no guineapigs.
SYLLABUS
An elaborate syllabus does not
enlighten students but only
suffocates them. The difficulties
are never sorted out at the roots.
Syllabus at the different stages —
primary, secondary, higher secondary
and college — do not reflect
an orderly development. It
is in abrupt precipice after the
secondary level. The majority
lack the strength and maturity to
take the load at the higher level.
Practically every year the Higher
Secondary results demoralize
thousands of young people.
Many who scored well at the
Madhyamik level often fail to
cope with the too heavy Higher
Secondary syllabus.
The students are highly critical
of the choice of examiners. Inordinate
delay in publication of results
also damages their career.
Even when the results are published
in time, so many of them
remain "incomplete" that the exercise
is not of much use. Such'
callousness on the authorities'
part shows that education is not
being looked after by morally responsible
people.
The syllabus is never framed
keeping in mind the practical
needs of students.
Is it not unrealistic
to drop an important
language totally at the primary
level? Stress on the mother
tongue as the medium of instruction
should never come in the
way of gaining elementary
knowledge of English. Learning
this international language does
not overburden the child. On the
contrary, it prepares him for the
later stage where knowledge of
English is indispensable. Students
from the financially weaker
sections generally drop out of
school very early in life. They are
being deprived of their only
chance of learning English by
excluding it from the primary
syllabus. Many meritorious students
have difficulty in following
class lectures in English medium
colleges. They have
been exposed to English only at
high school and this has not prepared
them adequately. These
students often suffer from an inferiority
complex and fail to impress
in interviews for no fault of
theirs. If work education can be
made compulsory for all at the
secondary level, there can be no
reason for not reintroducing English
at the primary level.
The present system of only
written examinations rarely tests
the originality of a student. He or
she can do well without knowing
the basic concepts. Stereotyped
questions encourage cramming
of notes. There is hardly any
close scrutiny of texts.
Indeed,
shops refuse to sell textbooks
without notebooks. At the beginning
of each semester students
too ask teachers to recommend
notes available in the market.
Needless to say, the stress
should be on regular attendance.
Students should have the right
to demand clarifications
whenever necessary, but they
must write out answers individually
and get them checked before
examinations. This means a lot
of hard work and most students
may not like it. Nonetheless,
even if a small fraction can be
inspired to think originally and
express their views, the mission
will not be futile.
All students are not fortunate
enough to have very good
teachers in their schools. It is
only normal for them to seek
help from more competent
teachers outside class hours.
Teachers often engage in scholarly
pursuits at the cost of teaching.
In many institutions, such
STUDENTS today have no
say in the preparation of
syllabus and choice of examiners,
though they suffer
most from wrong decisions in
these matters. Kamala Banerjee,
a teacher, argues that the
root cause of the problem lies
in the lack of opportunities
for students to relate "living
things to facts on pages of
textbooks".
people serve as showpieces
while students suffer. An erudite
person is not always an effective
teacher. The appointing authorities
look only for academic
qualifications. How often is a
teacher assessed on the basis of
his or her classroom performance?
How often do the authorities
demand a feedback
from students? As in every other
profession, the teacher must be
made accountable.
A teacher must come down to
the level of students. When this
happens, they will stop staying
away from classes.
It is a great
challenge before a teacher to
identify the psychological needs
of a student who regularly absents
himself and to bring him
back. Immense patience and
sympathy are required. Are
teachers willing to shoulder the
burden? .
It was Tagore who first
realized that students had been
divorced from nature. But, with
rapid industrialization, urbanization
and mushrooming of educational
institutions, the separation
becomes more pronounced.
Geography, history and nature
study can leave an indelible
mark on a child's mind if they
are not taught inside classroom.
It should be mandatory for
teachers to give students firsthand
experience of these subjects.
Then they will correlate living
things with facts on the
pages of textbooks. Money will
not be a constraint, if the will to
get things moving is not lacking.
Politicians have played havoc
with students, causing irreparable
psychological damage. The
student world was set ablaze by
the decision to implement the
Mandal Commission report. It is
magnanimous to provide for the
deprived minority, but to deprive
the majority in the process is
not social justice. Today's students
work very hard for their
achievements, which prove
futile when some politicians subordinate
everything to votes.
Textbooks by foreign authors
have almost disappeared from
Indian shops. The Government
does not realize the seriousness
of problems. Students are deprived
of the latest information
and that leads to insufficient
knowledge. This is not to disparage
Indian authors. The fact remains
that books cannot be equated
with consumer goods. It is
improper to restrict their imports
abruptly without providing
alternative material from Indian
publishers.
Adequate funds are not available
for education.
Government
machinery moves very slowly.
Big institutions often return unused
funds. Education has notbeen
given its due priority. It has
been tagged to the Human Resource
Development Ministry
without a separate Minister in
charge.
All the State boards in India
are not standardized. Consequently,
when students move
from one State to another, particularly
after the plus-two level,
many find things too difficult to
tackle. In this respect English
again turns out to be the deciding
factor. It is the medium of
higher education, particularly in
medicine and engineering.
Politicians and educationists
seem to overlook this important
fact when they relegate English
at the plus-two level. Whatever
be the State language, many students
have to move out and, for
them, a working knowledge of
English is essential.
INVOLVED
Parents these days are too involved
in, and too concerned
over, their children's education.
Yet Very often they tend to forget
to satisfy an important
psychological need of their
offspring. How frequently do
children and parents sit together
and talk? That alone convinces
children that they have a true
friend in their parents, which
eases their tension and raises
their spirits. Many students disapprove
of working mothers, for
they have little time and energy
left for the children at home.
Once sons and daughters are in a
professional institution, parents
sit back and relax. But that is the
time for them to lend greater
moral support to their children.
Communication must continue.
Youth is a period of vitality
and also of loneliness. Parents
should counter this by encouraging
sons and daughters to take
up hobbies. They should not prevent
children from participating
in co-curricular activities in the
name of competitive examinations.
'Vedic'
inspiration
for Ignou students
CHANCHAL PAL CHAUHAN
STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI, Feb. 2. —
How many people know that the human
rights movement in India dates as far back as the Rig Veda. Or
that Ashoka in his 13th rock edict had laid down that "one who
does wrong should be forgiven as far as it is possible to forgive
him." This is part of the syllabus of the Indira Gandhi National
Open University's certificate programme in human rights which
began earlier this month.
According to the university's human rights director, Professor
Pandav Nayak, the target audience for the course is primary
school teachers, education department employees and NGOs.
Speaking to The Statesman, Prof. Nayak said that the ministry
of law and justice had recommended the course to all its regional
directors. "This is a foundation course and we will introduce
specialised courses soon," he said.
The course has been designed keeping in mind the guidelines
issued by the United Nations on human rights. The eligibility
criteria is a senior secondary degree. The course should ideally be
completed in six months though thanks to Ignou's flexibility,
students' can take up to two years to complete it.
In addition to the obvious — telling people what rights they are
entitled to, the course also covers many parameters.
One part of the course focuses on the status of human rights in
ancient and medieval India. For example, the course tells you
that there are two statements in the Rig Veda which "contain
vital clues to any inquiry into the nature of truth and justice to
be pursued by anyone."
However, "there is one problem with the Vedic texts. Being
Brahminical in nature, they do not represent and speak for everybody,
mainly the lower castes and groups."
It points out that an "important philosophical contribution" to
human rights development evolved with Buddhism, in a story
which the Buddha narrated to his disciples.
The story pertains to the Buddha rescuing a swan injured by his
cousin Devadutta
. The latter claimed that the "prey belongs to the person who
shoots it," while the Buddha demanded the swan saying that he
wanted to care for it till its wounds healed.
The course material, prepared by Prof. Pandav Nayak and an
expert committee points out that with Jainism came the first
acknowledgement of right to life as a human right.
THE STATESMAN 03 FEB 2001 N30 ED1 Curriculum development 25 JUN 2005
Making learning a process of
discovery for the child
Look Around, written by a Chandigarh-based educationist, shows how
some
textbooks can make learning a happy experience, says Parminder kaur
Bakshi
WE IN India place a lot
of emphasis on formal
education. While Indians
abroad are known to aspire
for higher education, the
illiteracy rate of our country is
offset by the fact that India supplies
the rest of the world with
hordes of doctors, engineers
and other trained personnel.
But in this mindless race for
qualifications do we really
know whether the education
being provided is relevant? To
a great extent the meaning of
education has changed from
the notion of personal fulfilment
to a more functional, job
oriented learning. The present
education system neither
fosters individual growth and
development nor is it systematically
linked to industrial
occupations.
It is ridiculous that children
in schools should face intense
competition and we should
measure their intelligence solely
by the percentages they
receive in their board examinations.
What we fail to take
account of is both the content
and method of teaching. Are
the texts appropriate?
Does the
teaching approach bring out
the best in the pupils?
In this dull scene of laborious
school books, there is an exciting
newcomer called Look
Around, written by Sheetal
Sharma. Look Around is a singing
and dancing text book on
environment studies for five to
six-year-old children. The book
is designed on a learnercentered
approach. It is written
from a child's perspective
and it is full of activity and fun.
The author's experience and
knowledge that have gone into
the book are interesting. Sheetal
Sharma says that she
remembers being rebuked as a
child and felt bad about it.
Those memories left a strong
impression on her. The motivation
behind the book is simple
—to make the child feel
good.
Look Around is a radically different
from most text books for
children because the underlying
principle of the book is to
make learning simple, easy
and a process of discovery so
that children feel that they
have indeed achieved something
rather than feel defeated or
terrorised by it.
Starting from the 'contents'
to the last page, Look Around is
full of exciting illustrations.
The book uses very little text
and educates through pictures
and activities. It communicates
directly with the child and carries
instructions for the teachers
on how to make each lesson
more interesting and informative
for their pupils.
Beneath its childish veneer,
the book challenges the stale
ideas about education and
offers a fresh approach to
teaching and learning.
By using examples from well
known stories or the daily environment,
the book introduce
the child to various concepts of
food, clothing, shelter, transport
and and other related
areas. The result is that there is
nothing abstract or superfluous
and a child will relate to
every bit of the book.
Look Around also uses a different
method of assessment by
asking the pupils to test themselves.
Moreover, it resists the
translation of assessment into
marks. Look Around appeals to
the child's imagination and
creativity and allows for the
varying abilities of children.
Sheetal Sharma is the Director
of the DAV Institute of Correspondence
Education. Prior to
that she was a teacher and
then a principal of a DAV
School in Chandigarh. She has
also been involved with
children's welfare
organizations.
While working for the publication
department of DAV
where she had to review school
text books which were cluttered
with irrelevant information
and were indeed oppressive
and burdensome to children, it
was clear what was really missing
from text books.
She has used that insight to
make learning an integral
aspect of the instinctive and
curious minds of the children.
In a world where the rat race
of the times and the stress of
modernity is creating immense
conflicts for school going
children, Look Around is a tiny
step forward in making education
relevant and exciting.
THE PIONEER (DELHI) 25 FEB 1993 N20 CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
Pencil power
Illiterate women from rural areas were
taught to express their feelings through
cartoons! SHRUBA MUKHERJEE
reports on cartoon workshops held
to empower such women
Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand
and Mizoram, Sharma seeks to
help them in proving their thinking
prowess and expressing their
feelings through comic characters.
But why cartoons? Cartoons
and comics have the potential to
be used as an effective means of
social communication and may
be employed as powerful tools for
sensitising the masses to a cause,
or mobilising public opinion on
an issue. Comics are fun,
thought-provoking and have an
intrinsic energy of their own,
having the power to stimulate,
provoke and urge one to action.
They can also become effective
weapons in the hands of creative
artists with a social bent of
mind, if they chooses to use
them to provoke mass action.
Inspiration towards 'social
cartooning' came from World
Comics which lent its innovative
'HY are you people
crying foul for
Cauvery water?
Even if the entire water flows
through Tamil Nadu, dalits like
me are not going to get a drop of
it."
This is not an anti-Tamil
Nadu propaganda, but the statement
of a dalit woman in a Tamil
village, pouring her heart out in
a cartoon drawn by her. She is
one of those hundreds of rural
illiterate women who are being
taught to wield the power of pencil
to focus on their forgotten
rights and untapped might.
The project, initiated by a
young cartoonist Sharad
Sharma and supported by a
Finnish organisation called
'World Comics', is aimed at
empowering rural women by
teaching them the art of cartooning.
Through week-long workshops
conducted in the villages
of Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan,
"Pencil power
Shrubha Mukherjee
comic formats and technical
inputs for the cartoon camps.
World Comics has done some
pioneering work in this area by
organising numerous special
workshops to popularise social
cartooning in third world countries.
These workshops, intended
to train communities, particularly
those without much means,
to articulate themselves through
the medium of cartoon, have had
reasonable success in many
countries of Latin America and
Africa. In these countries, village
people are creating comics
that focus on local issues and
serve to mobilise opinion on the
issues that concern them.
Explaining how he went
about teaching cartoons to
women, Sharma said he began
with simple illustrations - a few
straight lines on paper which
took shape into a small hut. Step
by step, participants were then
taught to add on a horizon, a simple
background, a tree and a few
birds in the sky.
The next session was also
with lines viz, a large rectangle,
two legs and some embellishments.
Then Sharma took up the
task of drawing a character.
Using straight lines and a bend
here, a curve there, a "3" for an
ear, a face in profile of a man was
now ready.
Faces and expressions were
the next items the participants
learnt. Three, four, five circles
positioned properly give us a
face. And then add in an upturned
or a down-turned lip to
make the face either smile or
scowl. It was shown to the participants
how to add dialogues to a
character and make it clear if
he/she was talking aloud, whispering
or thinking. The different
balloons were drawn out with
the faces, and the concepts were
explained to the participants.
While conducting workshops,
particularly in tribal villages,
one major problem faced by
Sharma was illiteracy. "For
instance, 80 per cent of the participants
in the far-flung regions
of MP like Jhabua, Dhar and
Khandwa, have never held a pencil
in their hands. How to initiate
them into sketching? Moreover,
since 90 per cent participation
was tribal, there was language
problem also," says Sharma.
But he tried to solve the problem
by using more visuals which
were self-explanatory and thus
there was no need of writing on
panels. He tried to utilise the
skills of tribal women in putting
rangoli in their thatched huts.
"It was the participants who
decided on the subjects and a
great deal of variety could be
noticed in issues picked up by
women coming from different
states.
While women from
Rajasthan or Tamil Nadu
focused more on issues concerning
water, those from Jharkhand
picked up social evils like burning
of women branded as witches,
and tribal participants
brought out issues like forest
resources and eviction," says
Sharma.
"Even women in Bikaner,
Rajasthan, created cartoons on
politically sensitive subjects like
booth-capturing. But we generally
do not take up controversial
issues as that might hurt local
political sentiments and we
might be asked to close down the
camps," he said.
Thus, the issue of child marriage
was never taken up in the
camps in Rajasthan.
While the follow up camps,
organised once every three
months, reflect a certain
improvement in awareness levels,
the cartooning camps do provide
a great service to the 'silent
majority' of population by giving
them an opportunity to
speak out their mind.
ED1 Education of girls 08/07/05
IS THERE a relationship
between the kind of history
and polities being taught at
undergraduate levels and the
fact that students seem to have
become backbone of
fundamentalist movements?
This question will be raised in
the near future as people
become aware of
uncomfortable trends in these
institutions all over the country.
India has a literacy level of 52
per cent. Of these, not all reach
undergraduate level, but of
those that do, a considerable
number learn history and
politics. As social scientists
search for answers for the
failure of college syllabi in
creating a tolerant Indian
identity, it is not comforting to
know that areas of inquiry are
limited.
"A good education system
should instil vinay and
sanskara in its students," says
Dr J V Naik, head of the
department of history,
University of Bombay.
Prof E B Sakhalkar, chairman
of the board of studies in
politics, which prepares
undergraduate and
post-graduate syllabi for
colleges affiliated to Bombay
university, says: "Ninety per
cent of students seem to be
proud of what happened at
Ayodhya on December 6 and
many have participated in the
subsequent events.
But if you
reason with them, many can be
led to regret their activities."
Apparently, reasoning has its
limitations. A lady lecturer, who
teaches in a central Bombay
college, said it was unfair to
blame the college syllabus for
these limitations. "I meet
students four times a week for
45 minute lectures, and in that
time if I convince even a few of
their irrationality on the
subject, I doubt whether they
will carry these impressions at
the end of the lecture, forget
holding them till the end of the
day."
This seeming inability to hold
on to secular images, according
to the lecturer, is because
colleges are just one agency
moulding young minds.
Disagreeing, Dr V J Naik,
chairman of the board of studies
in history and archaeology,
says: "Four of the first graduates
from Bombay university —
Bhandarkar, Ranade, Wagle
and Modak — who later became
social reformers in
Maharashtra, were products of
a good education."
The western education of the
era he was referring to gave
India leaders like Agarkar,
Tilak, Gokhale, and Naoroji. In
practice, says Naik, two strands
of thought merged into one, like
Agarkar who became a follower
of J M Mill's liberalism, and
others including Tilak, who
were influenced by logicians
like Butler who practised
conservative nationalism.
The moulding of minds
begins in school.
What is taught
at this stage is narrative history,
says the lecturer who is also
involved in preparing school
syllabi as a member of the
Maharashtra Rajya Madhyamik
va Uchamadhyamik Shikshan
Mandal,Pune.
At this stage, the lessons
combined can make or break an
impressionable mind. Here
systems become at once
important when events such as
in Ayodhya take place," said
Prof Sakhalkar. "Let's accept
that most teachers at the
undergraduate level come from
the middle class and it is their
value system that dominates
Indian society at present. Those
at the forefront of the
not-so-secular movement also
belong to the same class."
Thus, if a syllabus is
manipulated, a trend seen in
some city colleges, the
movement on the streets and
education inside the colleges
complement each other. The
threat to an education system Charity begins
at school
Vidyadhar Kamat gets the academics' views
on allegations that the syllabi prescribed in
schools and colleges in the city foster
fundamentalist ideas in students
again, a child has to contend
with political influences in the
family. However, children
seldom reason things out and
there is very little that can be
questioned in narrative history
or constitutional politics.
The RSS, at least, considers children an important part of their overall strategy. By the time their children get into college, their minds are already in uniformity with the shakha ideology. "Their minds are closed and no matter how much you reason with them or how good the syllabus, the teacher's efforts to impart a secular education are bound to fail." Students who come from Shiv Sena backgrounds, she feels, are more open to reason. This may be because, unlike the RSS, the Sena does not have any hardcore ideology. The students from the RSS and the Sena subsequently join college unions of their organisations. At the political level, there is nothing to counter this . propaganda. Congress Seva Dals have stopped functioning a long time ago. Meanwhile, the functioning of the NSUI, the student wing of the Congress, leaves much to be desired. All the academicians spoken to said the role of the teacher came in for serious questioning. This assumes importance in the light of unsubstantiated allegations that the majority of history' teachers in the city's colleges are pro-fundamentalist.
"Our backgrounds and value
from biased teaching looks
increasingly real when one is
told by a reader on the
university campus that talking
about secularism has become a
risky proposition.
How much the present syllabus
can withstand the onslaught of
fundamentalism is difficult to
gauge but they are definitely
changing. For example, at the
undergraduate level, there now
exists a paper on political
thinkers from Maharashtra. It
includes many Hindu thinkers.
The trouble, feels Dr Shridhar
Shrimali, reader, centre of
Soviet Studies, Bombay
university, is that we have failed
to build "an irreligious' society
which allows religious feelings
in others to blossom at the same
time, should they so wish."
There was a time when
NCERT seemed to abhor the use
of the word 'God'. This was
reflected in the way syllabi were
prepared, said Naik.
One change proposed by
Sakhalkar at undergraduate
level is the introduction of a
subject called 'Our rights and
their implementation', which
would give students an idea of
the ground realities as far as the
law7 is concerned. In present
times, when the rule of law is
under constant threat, this
subject "has immense
possibilities," he says. It will be
introduced in 1995.
At present, there is no
interaction between those who .
prepare syllabi for schools and
those who prepare
undergraduate syllabi.
THE INDEPENDENT (BOMBAY) 3 APR 1993 N20 COMMUNALISATION OF EDUCATION CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
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15/03/2005
N24
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