SACW #2 | 4-5 Sept. 2005 | India: Debate on school curricula

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire Dispatch No. 2  | 4-5 September,  2005

[Eight Anniversary Issue of SACW]

SELECTED ARTICLES ON THE DEBATE RE THE CONTENT OF SCHOOL CURRICULUM IN INDIA

[1]  National curriculum framework & the social sciences (Romila Thapar)
[2] SAHMAT Seminar On Curricular Framework 2005
  Educationists Demand Rewriting Of NCF Draft  (Rajendra Sharma)
[3]  Guarding the school gates (Harsh Sethi)
[4]  To Accommodate The Curious Mind (Nivedita Menon)
[5]  History textbooks: the need to move forward (Sumit Sarkar)

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[1]

The Hindu
Sep 05, 2005

NATIONAL CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK & THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

by Romila Thapar

Textbooks should certainly be child-friendly but 
it is equally necessary that the schoolteacher 
should be made child-friendly. Teachers need a 
more intensive exposure to social science 
concepts, changes in data and methods in history, 
and critical enquiry.

GIVEN THE centrality of a curriculum for school 
education, the National Curriculum Framework 
(NCF) could have been more extensively discussed 
in public. A curriculum framework has to address 
educational programmes as well as acquainting 
society with what the next generation is being 
taught and why. At the present point in the 
history of India, this particular NCF has a more 
than routine relevance. It has to concern itself 
with how we can prevent the hijacking of the 
curriculum of the kind that we experienced under 
the previous government.

Inasmuch as there has been a public debate on the 
NCF, the more widely publicised aspect has been 
on textbooks in history. This is a predictable 
continuation of the earlier debate on rewriting 
history. There has, however, been less concern 
with other constituent subjects of the social 
sciences, namely the input of geography, 
politics, economics, and sociology. Is this 
public apathy due to the social sciences being 
seen by the public as non-utility subjects, 
therefore less important than the sciences, which 
is the complaint of the NCF? That the approach of 
the social sciences is relevant to scientists as 
part of integrated knowledge needs emphasising. 
In addition to textbooks, two other aspects of 
the curriculum require immediate attention - the 
training of teachers and the reorganisation of 
the examination system. These are recognised in 
the NCF but in a somewhat limited manner.

Textbooks are not the only source of knowledge in 
school nor the only way of encouraging the 
development of a critical mind, although if 
sufficiently sensitively written (and this is 
rare), they can perform both functions. The 
accepted function of textbooks is to provide a 
framework for the student to access knowledge in 
a particular subject. We generally don't remember 
textbooks triggering off creative ideas in our 
school-going youth. We do remember a particular 
teacher or a particular book outside the 
curriculum.

A textbook in history should provide the 
infrastructure of the subject: reliable 
information about the past, an explanation of how 
this information can be analysed, and what this 
tells us implicitly or explicitly about aspects 
of the society in which we live. The range 
selected would vary according to the syllabus 
requirement. As more data become available and 
causal connections are enlarged, the analyses can 
change.

The debate on history textbooks to be published 
by the National Council of Educational Research 
and Training (NCERT) has run into something of an 
impasse. Some are demanding a return to the 
original NCERT textbooks, published in the 
mid-1960s and later. Others favour the writing of 
new textbooks based on a different set of 
historical concerns from those incorporated in 
the old textbooks. The old textbooks are 
critiqued, as being heavy and dull and therefore 
diverting students from history, and for being 
concerned with developmental issues. Development 
as such may be out of fashion these days, but the 
issues with which these older textbooks were 
concerned are still with us. They will have to be 
addressed in whatever textbooks are used, issues 
such as the causes of economic inequality, the 
continuity of social privilege, the intervention 
of religious institutions in civic life, and the 
use of religious ideologies for political 
mobilisation. Indian society in its history has 
experienced considerable achievements but has 
also had to grapple with inequality, injustices, 
and violence. These are of significance in 
understanding the present.

According to the NCF, the old textbooks should 
give way to books with a child-centred pedagogy. 
Textbooks should certainly be accessible to the 
young readers for whom they are intended. 
However, there is some fear that the emphasis on 
pedagogy may erode the disciplinary orientation 
of the subject. Each of the social sciences has 
its specific take on knowledge and students 
should be made familiar with these. To pose 
normative issues in the polity such as equality, 
justice, and dignity as alternatives to 
developmental issues hints at avoiding the 
question of why poverty, illiteracy, casteism, 
and communalism have come about. How secularism, 
democracy, and human rights became a concern in 
Indian society are themes significant to the 
social sciences. If the argument is that all this 
is implicit in the NCF, then it needs to be made 
more visible.

The document says that the social sciences will 
explain diversities in Indian society with 
references to local conditions so that the 
existence of variants can be understood by 
children in their local context. One hopes that 
the social sciences will also explain how 
diversities came or come into being, why there is 
an inequality among diverse groups, and how 
attitudes supporting this inequality are 
constructed. Furthermore, how diversities can be 
a source of enrichment to some cultures, but can 
also in some other cases become agencies of 
oppression. Local conditions and surroundings can 
be more purposefully studied if they are also 
seen in the context of a larger national 
perspective. A `national' framework assumes this 
perspective.

The impasse over the history textbooks can be 
resolved since historians work within the 
structures of the social sciences. Discussions 
among those who authored the original textbooks, 
those who are proposing to write new ones 
together with a few other historians and 
schoolteachers, are in any case a necessary 
procedure. Such a group can either modify the old 
textbooks where possible or hammer out a new 
treatment in some other cases. Intensive 
discussion of a detailed syllabus will in itself 
be a helpful exercise, particularly in the debate 
on the structures of knowledge.

Textbooks should certainly be child-friendly but 
it is equally necessary that the schoolteacher 
should be made child-friendly. It is not enough 
to encourage participative discussions between 
teachers and students in class. An extensive 
programme of familiarising schoolteachers both 
with changes in the methods and concepts of the 
social sciences and with child-centred pedagogy 
will help. Without this, there will be no 
essential change in either the approach to the 
subject or the pedagogy. Children will still be 
required to memorise sections of the new or old 
textbook and reproduce these for the exam. 
Instant workshops for history teachers are not 
going to make a dent. Teachers need a more 
intensive exposure if they are to understand the 
concepts of the social sciences, the changes in 
data and methods that disciplines such as history 
have undergone in the last fifty years, and to 
realise the significance of critical enquiry to 
education, which is said to be the aim of the NCF.

Many universities now have refresher courses for 
teachers in under-graduate colleges. Similar 
courses, with minor adjustments, could be 
organised for schoolteachers. This is where 
further reading around the textbook can be 
discussed. Courses by the Open University on 
various subjects can be yet another source of 
orienting teachers to new knowledge. The creation 
of an educational channel on TV for both students 
and teachers remains an untapped resource for the 
social sciences.

The NCF favours a plurality of textbooks. We seem 
to forget that such a plurality already exists in 
the textbooks being used in state and private 
schools. The plurality runs the gamut from 
quality textbooks to a complete negation of 
quality. Currently being used as textbooks are 
the old NCERT history books, the BJP-NCERT books, 
the State Council of Educational Research and 
Training (SCERT) books in Delhi, the books used 
in the States such as those used in Gujarat, and 
the books used in a variety of private schools as 
well as mission schools, Madrassas, Shishu 
Mandirs, and such like. Some teach good quality 
history; others have replaced history by fantasy, 
with pernicious implications. If all these books 
claiming to be textbooks are currently 
prescribed, then who is to judge the legitimacy 
of these books, specifically as textbooks?

Clearly this needs a rational answer. Suggestions 
were made a while back that there should be a 
regular assessment of samples of textbooks in 
each category of schools. But we are still 
waiting to hear if this is being done. Can it be 
that there is a hesitation to intervene in 
private schools that have political clout? Is 
this matter already beyond redemption? The use of 
a single textbook does not preclude consulting 
other books. A quality textbook would suggest 
further reading. But books that claim to be 
textbooks, irrespective of who publishes them, if 
they are treated as reliable in the knowledge 
they convey, must be vetted by a committee of 
professional scholars in the particular subject 
and such as are respected by their peer group. 
Such a committee would be responsible to the 
public and to the educational system for clearing 
the disciplinary content of textbooks. Otherwise, 
textbooks will become like the Internet where 
anything goes.

If the learning of sections of the textbook by 
rote and repeating the text in the exam are to be 
avoided, then the examination system needs to be 
revamped. This would begin with reorganising the 
board of examinations as has been suggested in 
passing by the National Curriculum Framework. 
Paper setters and examiners will also have to be 
retrained to understand the changes required in 
setting and evaluating examination questions. 
Evaluating critical thinking and logic based on 
reading beyond the textbook at the high school 
level will need an altogether different training 
for examiners, used as they are to answers 
repeating what is said in the textbook. Examiners 
will have to judge whether an answer that differs 
from that of the textbook shows initiative and 
further reading, or merely reflects a lack of 
understanding the question, or worse. One has 
heard so often from school students about their 
anxiety as to which historical interpretation to 
quote in an answer to an examination question, 
the fear being that one does not know which view 
is favoured by the examiner. Critical thinking 
would make such a dilemma relatively redundant, 
but only if the examiner is sensitive to critical 
thinking.

If the plea against largescale change is that 
such change requires finances, structural 
co-ordination and bureaucratic efficiency, none 
of which is readily forthcoming, then one wonders 
how we are going to organise an unmanned flight 
of an Indian spacecraft to the moon, in order to 
prove that India is a superpower.

(The writer, an eminent historian of early India, 
is Professor Emeritus of History at Jawaharlal 
Nehru University, New Delhi.)



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[2]

People's Democracy
August 14, 2005
SAHMAT SEMINAR ON CURRICULAR FRAMEWORK 2005

Educationists Demand Rewriting Of NCF Draft 

Rajendra Sharma

A NUMBER of eminent educationists and others 
associated with India's education system have 
demanded that the National Curricular Framework 
2005 be scrapped and a new framework prepared. 
This was the common opinion coming out of a 
national seminar organised by the Safdar Hashmi 
Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) in the Constitution Club, 
New Delhi, on August 6. The speakers here 
underlined the absence from the framework of our 
fundamental commitment to the inculcation of 
secular and scientific spirit through education 
and to the goal of Education for All. Some of 
them also pointed out how the latest document 
seeks to cover up the communal attack on 
education that was launched by the previous BJP 
led government and to centre the whole debate on 
the "burden of education." Renowned historian 
Professor Bipan Chandra, who presided over the 
seminar, thus put forth over whelming opinion at 
the seminar: "This (the curricular framework) 
cannot be improved upon; this has to be rejected 
lock, stock and barrel."

Professor Arjun Dev has been associated with the 
NCERT for long. Initiating the discussion, he 
raised several poignant questions about the 
latest framework and the way it has been 
prepared. Dev lamented that even though the 
present regime is committed to undo the damage 
done by the earlier framework to communalise 
Indian education during the BJP led regime, 
little has been done in this direction. As an 
example, Dev said none of the points raised by 
educationists against the Joshi-Rajput curricular 
framework 2000 has been made the basis of the new 
framework, rather the latest framework repeats 
many concerns of the former one. Dev said the new 
framework makes only one criticism of the 2000 
framework that the latter did not deal with the 
"vexed question of the burden of education." 
There is absolutely no reference to 
communalisation of education. The new framework 
is centred only on reducing the burden of 
education.

Professor Dev also stressed that the whole 
process of preparation of the framework 2005 and 
of the preparation of textbooks under it has 
lacked transparency as it was during the 
Joshi-Rajput dispensation in the NCERT. There was 
no worthwhile discussion on the draft of the 
framework and an undue haste was shown in 
finalising it. The approval for it was received 
from the NCERT executive on June 6, from the 
NCERT annual general meeting on June 7 morning 
and was sought from the Central Advisory Board of 
Education (CBSE) on June 7 afternoon. When 
certain CABE members and state education 
ministers raised the issue of this haste, the HRD 
minister had to assure them that, the draft was 
only presented to them for consideration and that 
it would be finalised only after the states gave 
their suggestions.

Professor Dev pointed to yet another anomaly. The 
work of preparing the framework, designing 
courses and development of textbooks were running 
almost simultaneously. This had led to the 
preparation of courses and textbook development 
even before the framework has been finalised. The 
whole process has thus been put on its head. The 
knowledge about courses has now been confined to 
textbook writers only. Dev also raised the doubt 
that the way the NCERT's role in the development 
of model textbooks is being tampered with, may 
lead to the hand over of this responsibility to 
private publishers.

In his brief and incisive intervention, Professor 
Prabhat Patnaik raised basic questions about the 
perspective and principles underlying the 
National Curricular Framework 2005. He said two 
basic concepts of education have always been 
contesting one another-to meet the needs of 
individuals and to meet the needs of the wider 
society. This contest is all the more relevant 
about the publicly funded education. Patnaik said 
if education were not guided by wider social 
values and societal interests, it would only 
become a means to appropriate of public wealth 
for private ends. In our country, for example, 
"It has become a means of draining out a good 
chunk of our resources to the developed countries.

Patnaik criticised the opinion that children are 
naturally good and, in fact, need to be protected 
from the excesses of the education system. This 
is just an imaginary concept with no basis in 
reality. Instead, he insisted on the combative 
role of education against whatever is negative in 
society and for the creation of a just, free and 
democratic society with worthy citizens. 
Education must produce such intellectuals, as 
have links with the masses. In today's context, 
education needs to help fight communalition as 
well as the growing hegemonic drive of 
imperialism, Professor Patnaik stressed.

Eminent educationist Anil Sadgopal was a member 
of the NCERT's curriculum committee and is a CABE 
member as well. He detailed his experience on 
both these bodies, saying the present regime has 
no will power to combat communal penetration and 
no time to listen to arguments. He said despite 
all talk of importance of education, nobody is 
paying attention to the pressing need of an 
egalitarian education system. On the contrary, 
even educational bodies are, under the pressure 
of growing commercialisation and globalisation, 
saying that such a system is "impracticable." The 
document's stance of being "above politics" is 
itself politics, Professor Sadgopal insisted. The 
document talks too much of equity and social 
justice, but does not touch the present 
inegalitarian and unjust system anywhere. 
Professor Sadgopal said several parts of the 
latest document closely resemble the 
corresponding parts of the Joshi-Rajput 
curricular framework.

Noted historian Professor Irfan Habib criticised 
the document for being confused, full of verbiage 
and full of objectionable points. He said a 
curricular framework needs to decide which 
element of a subject is to be given how much 
weightage. But the document does not do precisely 
this and only assumes that all this would be as 
per the earlier framework of 1988. Further, 
instead of upholding the concept that education 
must be guided by societal needs, the document 
makes individual needs as its starting point. 
"Self image" has replaced the critical and 
self-critical vision. The document is full of 
phrases about the natural learning capacity of a 
child; indigenous knowledge, teacher's autonomy 
etc, and Professor Irfan Habib showed how all 
this fits in well with the neo-liberal thinking.

Referring to what the document talks of "burden 
of education," Professor Irfan Habib termed it as 
a quixotic crusade. In this context, the talk of 
two - common and higher --- level courses 
practically means a division of every class into 
two classes in the school that are already 
resource crunched. But two classes in the same 
amount of resources mean double deprivation. The 
document also fulminates against the burden of 
textbooks, yet paves the ground for imposition of 
more textbooks, reference books etc.

Professor Irfan Habib also commented on how the 
framework has made a mockery of the examination 
system. It talks of elimination of all outside 
examinations except those for class XII; only 
such students would have to sit in examinations 
in class X as are willing to continue their 
education further. Those willing to drop after 
class X would be awarded a certificate without 
any examination. The speaker sarcastically 
commented that in that case the government would 
have no difficulty in having arranged "education 
for all." It seems the policy makers are more 
concerned about reducing the government's burden 
than the children's burden. The speaker also said 
the real problem is not of imparting scientific 
education in madrasas but of imparting modern and 
secular education to all children. He also said 
the BJP would not have any problem with the idea 
of imparting education in the transcendental, but 
the secular forces must oppose is firmly.
          
Ms Rooprekha Verma, former vice chancellor of 
Lucknow University, said the important 
differences of this document from the 
Joshi-Rajput document must not be overlooked 
either. The framework does not view education as 
a means of social transformation and of fostering 
critical thinking. Referring to the lack of 
universal values behind the framework 2005, she 
said science ultimately has to do with the 
method, not with conclusions. Lack of any mention 
of scientific temper in the document, is 
astonishing she asserted.

JNU professor and NCERT executive member Ms 
Mridula Mukherjee said that the NCERT's 
functioning in the whole matter would be 
remembered for its ad hocism, lack of a system 
and inconsistency. She said the whole history 
course is just like that designed by the 
Joshi-Rajput dispensation, there is no place for 
world history in it and Indian history would be 
repeated at all stages. She insisted that all 
changes must be based on a review of whatever was 
being taught till now, and that all changes must 
be discussed openly. She also criticised the 
whole document as an example of "elitist 
perspective in a radical language." Depreciating 
the talk of reducing the burden of books for 
children, she recalled the slogan of an 
organisation working for child labourers, to the 
effect that books are lighter than bricks.

JNU professor & CABE member Ms Zoya Hasan said 
the document talks of reducing the burden of 
information and that the earlier framework did 
not take care of pedagogical concerns. Yet, she 
said, the latest document fails on both these 
counts. Criticising the emphasis on the local, 
she said education is also a means of going 
beyond the local or everyday experiences. Society 
may be viewed as a network of social relations or 
as a sum of separate identities, and it is the 
latter perspective that informs the document 
which talks of adopting the perspective of 
tribals, Dalits and the other disadvantaged. This 
is a post-modernist perspective. The document 
also makes a conscious attempts to keep out the 
secular versus communal struggle, and is also 
excessively Indo-centric.

Professor Rajiv Gupta of Jaipur University said 
the document does not answer the basic question 
of why it was after all needed. The 
constitutional goal of socialism has been given a 
go-by.

Shamik Bandyopadhyay (West Bengal) expressed 
concern over the contemptuous attitude the 
document adopts towards formal education.

In his presidential remarks, Professor Bipan 
Chandra described the document as ecclectic, yet 
there is a running thread in it - an enmity 
towards the very idea of nation building and 
progress. It even seems to dispense with the 
three Rs (reading, writing, arithmetic), that is, 
the three minimum tasks of education. It even 
lacks a sense of responsibility regarding 
continuity and change. The decision to bring in 
new textbooks in place of those replaced by the 
erstwhile BJP regime is not based on any review 
of the earlier textbooks. The phenomenon of 
communalisation is totally missing from the 
history course as it may anger some inheritors of 
the communal heritage in India and even in 
Pakistan.

George Mathew, Madhu Prasad and other 
intellectuals participated in the discussion that 
followed the seminar presentations.


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[3]

The Indian Express
August 27, 2005

GUARDING THE SCHOOL GATES
LEFT RESPONSE TO NCERT'S DRAFT NATIONAL CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK IS DISTURBING

by 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 
communalisation 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, 
characterises 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

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[4]

The Telegraph
August 25, 2005

TO ACCOMMODATE THE CURIOUS MIND

To withdraw the national curriculum framework is 
to silence dissent against orthodoxies - both 
that of the left and the right, says Nivedita 
Menon The author is reader in political science, 
Delhi University
It seems that the dark years of NDA-rule have 
disabled some of our intellectuals permanently, 
rendering them incapable of understanding 
anything that is happening today, except through 
a rigid secular/communal grid.

That the Bharatiya Janata Party would go into a 
sulk over the draft National Curriculum 
Framework-2005 was to be expected, but the sharp 
attack on it by a group of left-wing scholars 
under the banner of Sahmat, terming it as 
"obscurantist", would be laughably absurd if it 
did not have the dangerous potential of derailing 
one of the most creative initiatives in the field 
of pedagogy in independent India. Here I will 
address only two of the main grouses emerging in 
the seven essays in a booklet called "Debating 
Education" - first, that the NCF-2005 does not 
spend any time attacking the saffronization of 
text-books by the previous regime. This means 
that the NCF-2005 is "trying to accommodate the 
Sangh Parivar's views", according to the Sahmat 
spokesperson. Second, that NCF-2005's stress on 
"local knowledges" and "local belief systems" 
promotes regressive values and is, in fact, 
communalism in a different guise.

It is important to remember that NCF-2005 evolved 
out of an uncommonly democratic process, 
involving about three hundred people all over the 
country - teachers, academics and educational 
activists - over a period of seven months. Also 
that scholars of impeccably secular credentials 
have participated in the process - educationist 
Krishna Kumar as director of NCERT, political 
scientist Gopal Guru, historians Narayani Gupta 
and Sumit Sarkar, to name but a few. However, for 
a certain kind of left-wing scholars, critical 
analysis of anything that cannot be directly 
attributed to "communal forces" is anathema.

Introspection and rethinking on given truths like 
secularism or the nation are promptly dismissed 
as communal. Political critique, for them, is 
exhausted by attacking something called 
globalization and of course, communalism.

To address their complaints then - that 
sufficient space and energy have not been 
expended on tearing apart the text-books produced 
under the NDA regime. Of course they were 
sub-standard and shoddy, full of hilarious 
factual errors, and thought little of spelling 
and grammar, because their one-point agenda was 
to push Hindutva politics and vilify the 
minorities. They have by now been thoroughly 
exposed - indeed, by some of the very scholars 
involved in producing the NCF-2005. Can we move 
on, please? Or is all that is required for 
perfect happiness the return of the pre-NDA 
text-books?

I cannot think of anything more criminally 
irresponsible than to lose this opportunity to 
rethink entirely what school education has meant 
in India, what have been our successes, and what 
our failures. Surely, communalism is not all that 
has ailed our system? Surely, in the 21st 
century, it's not too much to ask that we should 
reassess what else has gone wrong? If the 
NCF-2005 wastes no time in reiterating well-known 
criticism of the previous regime, but takes the 
initiative to outline an alternative vision of 
education on the assumption that this is the 
moment to really "debate education" - then, 
rather than "accommodating the Sangh Parivar", it 
is sending out the opposite message. That the 
sangh parivar will not be allowed to set our 
agenda any more, that it is no longer our 
reference point.

NCF-2005 states its commitment to secularism 
baldly and uncompromisingly on page 6 - "India is 
a secular democratic state, that means that all 
faiths are respected, but at the same time the 
Indian state has no preference for any particular 
faithŠIndia is a multicultural society made up of 
numerous regional and local culturesŠAll the 
groups have equal rights to co-exist and 
flourish, and the education system needs to 
respond to the cultural pluralism inherent in our 
society."

What NCF-2005 does not do is assume, as Irfan 
Habib does, that children are a mindless mass, 
full of "notions, irrational biases, 
superstitions, gender, caste and communal 
prejudices, scorn for the less privileged etc". 
Given his opinion of children, it is not 
surprising that he thinks the "prime duty of 
school education is to eradicate such 'native 
wisdom'". The prime duty of education is to 
"eradicate" people's beliefs? That's nothing 
short of a fascist agenda. What was it that Marx 
said - "the educator himself needs educating"? A 
refresher course in Marxism might not be 
redundant for some of these "leftist" scholars.

So does the NCF-2005 valorize "local knowledge" 
in such a way that everything local is valuable, 
as Anil Sadgopal accuses it of doing in another 
essay, including "sati, caste, class and gender 
discrimination, Brahminism, superstition, 
fatalism, child labour, lack of scientific 
temperament etc." (I love the "etc's" with which 
Habib and Sadgopal end their long lists of the 
terrible faults "the people" have - as if the 
list would be endless if they didn't, shuddering 
with horror, force themselves to bring it to a 
halt.)

NCF-2005 certainly has a lot to say about local 
knowledge. One example is the following on page 
27 - "Unless learners can locate their individual 
standpoints in relation to the contexts 
represented in textbooks and relate this 
knowledge to their experiencesŠknow-ledge is 
reduced toŠmere information ŠChildren bring to 
school their experiences of the world around - 
the trees they have climbed, the fruits they have 
eatenŠYet rarely do we heed the knowledge that 
theyŠbring into the classroom. Rarely do we ask 
the children to talk about or refer to the world 
outside the school during our teaching." On page 
28, a box titled "Local Knowledge Traditions" 
says: "Many communities in India also have their 
local knowledge traditions of naming and 
categorizing plants, or ways of harvesting and 
storing water, or of practising sustainable 
agriculture. Sometimes these may be different 
from the way in which school knowledge approaches 
the subjectŠ In these situations, it could be 
possible that the teachers recognize and help 
children develop projects of study based on the 
local tradition, this may also involve comparing 
it with the school tradition. In some cases, as 
in the case of classifying plants, the two 
traditions may be simply parallel and based on 
different criteria considered significant. In 
other cases, for example the classification and 
diagnosis of illnesses, it may challenge and 
contradict local belief systems. It is also 
possible to consider that there are cases where 
the local belief system seems more ecologically 
valid than the textbook opinion."

Is this such a shocking thing to say today, when 
19th century arrogance about man's control over 
nature has been widely acknowledged to have 
brought the earth to the brink of ecological 
disaster? (Habib is proud to confess that he has 
no idea what "ecologically valid" means - "how 
can a system or anything else, be ecologically 
valid or invalid?" he asks incredulously.) From 
the 18th century, education and schooling have 
played a central role in producing the kind of 
population and beliefs necessary for unbridled 
capitalist development. Are Habib and Sadgopal 
votaries of such development? Is it not time, 
however belatedly, we opened our ears to some of 
the ideas so mercilessly defeated by the 
relentless march of History?

As for local knowledge of the sort Sadgopal 
decries, NCF-2005, addressing it directly, says 
(page 29): "The social context also calls for a 
much greater critical awareness and critical 
engagement on the part of curriculum developers 
and teachers. Community-based identities of 
gender, caste, class and religion are primary 
identities but they can also be oppressive and 
reaffirm social inequalities and hierarchies. 
School knowledge can also provide a lens through 
which children can develop a critical 
understanding of their social reality. It could 
also provide them space to talk about their 
experiences and anxieties within their homes."

However, unlike the writers in "Debating 
Education", NCF-2005 does not consider beliefs 
contrary to our own as something that can simply 
be eradicated. "Communities may also have 
questions about the in-clusion or exclusion of 
particular knowledge and experiences in the 
school curriculum. The school must then be 
prepared to listen to their concerns, and to 
persuade them to see the educational value of 
such decisions." In other words, NCF-2005 
believes the process of social transformation to 
be complex and multi-layered, involving the 
student not only in the classroom, but as located 
in her family and community. Most importantly, 
this process is understood to be uncompromisingly 
bound within democratic procedures - listening, 
persuading, mutually learning. Not eradicating.

In another instance of motivated reading, Habib 
alleges that in "post-modern" and 
"semi-Foucauldian" vein (these adjectives in his 
essay act as terms of abuse, and serve no 
explanatory purpose whatsoever. What, for 
example, would be a semi-Marxist?), the NCF-2005 
is a "tirade against information." Even a quick 
reading of NCF-2005, however, shows that it 
simply asserts that mere information is not 
knowledge. How can any serious educationist not 
understand or agree with the distinction? 
Information would be of the order of the fact 
that the earth goes around the sun. Knowledge 
construction involves understanding how this fact 
contradicts our everyday observation, why the 
otherwise valid maxim that "theory has to be 
proved by empirical observation" cannot apply 
here, what protocols are involved when we would 
nevertheless say that the statement, "The sun 
rises in the East", is true, why the medieval 
Church tortured Galileo for asserting what is in 
our lives a commonsensical fact that no one would 
contradict, thinking about how myths of origin 
and about nature evolve. A vast interdisciplinary 
field of knowledge opens up out of a simple bit 
of "information".

The most significant contribution of NCF-2005 is 
a radical rethinking of what teaching means. 
Currently, at every level of education, teachers 
are apt to think of their work as that of 
"imparting knowledge/information". In the 
NCF-2005, teaching is understood as a process of 
encouraging analytical thought, debate and 
engagement with the world in which learners live, 
with all its flaws and uncertainties. Students 
are to be led towards existing scholarship 
through a process of questioning and curiosity, 
and they should be able to engage with this 
scholarship not as established bodies of 
information but as fields of debate and 
discussion.

One point on which I find NCF-2005 to be silent 
is the teacher's own biases in dealing with 
uncomfortable issues like conflict and 
inequality. The complication here is that 
teachers will necessarily carry their prejudices, 
their class/ caste privileges into the classroom. 
We need to recognize that the best written, most 
imaginatively produced text-books and the most 
progressive curricula can be and are, subverted 
by conventional/conservative/right-wing teachers. 
Any curriculum would therefore have to be 
open-ended enough to enable the student to make 
her own decisions on issues. And the evaluation 
process would have to be such that the target of 
evaluation is not opinions expressed, but the 
analytical capacity of the student.

The most dangerous thing about "Debating 
Education" is that its aim is to end further 
debate, its critique apparently being the last 
word on the matter. The demand of the writers and 
Sahmat is nothing less than that the NCF-2005 be 
withdrawn, thus conclusively ending any further 
discussion. There can be nothing more disastrous 
for education than the silencing of dissent 
against orthodoxies, of the right or the left.

______


[5]


The Hindu
July 05, 2005

HISTORY TEXTBOOKS: THE NEED TO MOVE FORWARD

by Sumit Sarkar

The biggest problem concerns not political costs 
or the need to upgrade content, but questions of 
accessibility and appropriateness for young 
people.


THE MEASURES taken or being considered concerning 
school education are among the more promising of 
the initiatives of the United Progressive 
Alliance Government during its 13 months in 
office. The necessary weeding-out from key posts 
of academic nonentities, distinguished only by 
loyalty to the Sangh Parivar, is being followed 
up by moves towards far-reaching reform. Crucial 
here is the new National Curriculum Framework 
designed to replace the retrograde and 
undemocratically enforced Framework of 2000 and 
recently placed before the Central Advisory Board 
of Education with its State Government 
representatives. In sharp contrast to the BJP 
style, every step is being taken through wide and 
open academic discussion. The National Curriculum 
Framework is based on the work of 21 National 
Focus Groups, five regional seminars, and a 
national conference of rural teachers.

Predictably, the BJP is unhappy, and its 
Ministers recently staged a walkout from the 
CABE, forcing a two-month delay in adoption of 
the NCF, to give more time to States. As always, 
history courses and textbooks are given central 
place in this attack. Given the total 
discrediting of the previous educational regime, 
this at present is not much cause for worry. But 
sadly, there are signs of a most unfortunate 
intra-secular rift. Two prominent secular 
historians have criticised plans for new middle 
and high school textbooks. They suggest instead a 
simple return to the old NCERT history texts 
(`old' meaning here 30-40 years or more), with at 
most the insertion of one or two new themes, 
gender for instance.

Demands for retention or restoration of the old 
books had been natural in the polemics over the 
BJP texts, for nothing better was possible under 
that regime. But in today's utterly changed 
situation, a simple restoration would be 
disastrous both academically and politically. It 
would feed into the sense, cynical but quite 
widespread even among many secular people, that 
each regime brings in its train its own entourage 
of academics, and so the labels of `secular' and 
`communal' become no more than the pursuit of 
factional interests. It is surely significant 
that the recent BJP walkout from the CABE meeting 
was partly on the ground that old books were 
being restored, displaying a wilful ignorance 
about the ongoing discussions about new syllabi 
and texts: They no doubt realised that here was 
an argument with some appeal, pitting the `new' 
against the old.

Actually the BJP books had been far more 
outdated, for the 1970s texts had tried to 
incorporate, for the first time in school 
education, something of the shifts in Indian 
historical thinking over the 1950s and 1960s. But 
today many more changes have been happening, and 
their part-inclusion cannot be purely additive. 
The dominant narratives would need to be modified 
to recognise complications and cross-currents. It 
is no longer helpful, for instance, to look upon 
modern Indian history simply in terms of colonial 
versus anti-colonial.

The biggest problem, however, concerns not 
political costs or the need to upgrade content, 
but questions of pedagogy, accessibility, 
appropriateness for young people. Even when the 
secular books were very much in place, there was 
a growing disquiet, often particularly among 
teachers with secular sympathies, that humanities 
and social sciences, and history in particular, 
had become the least popular options, for the 
books were often excessively heavy and sometimes 
frankly dull. In that context, the most promising 
of the recent developments has been the new and 
sophisticated attention given to pedagogical 
methods throughout the New Curriculum Framework. 
Chapter 2, `Learning and Knowledge,' calls for a 
"child-centred pedagogy," the fostering of the 
"active and creative capabilities" of children, 
moving away from insistence on acceptance of the 
teacher's words as authoritative knowledge 
towards more interactive and dialogic methods, a 
rejection of "rote methods" of teaching and 
assessment. At this level, secular and BJP 
textbooks had not really differed all that much.

Such problems have been most acute in history and 
the other social sciences and humanities. Unlike 
the natural sciences, where children in 
laboratories can test with their own hands the 
validity of many relationships or predictions, 
history-teaching perpetually runs the danger of 
forcing children to learn a mass of `facts,' 
without explaining why and to what degree of 
certainty these are `facts' worth remembering. At 
best, an initial listing of `sources' is 
attempted, and maybe some discussion of different 
interpretations: detached from the rest of the 
narrative, these become just more things to 
memorise. And rote-learning has been vastly 
enhanced by the adoption of objective-type or 
short-answer formats at the two crucial rites of 
passage for aspirants to higher education or to 
jobs, the school-leaving CBSE examinations, and 
then the utterly ridiculous NET. For good marks 
in the CBSE, often not just the points but their 
precise order need to be reproduced. The method 
might just do for the less advanced levels of 
mathematics or natural sciences, but is 
disastrously inappropriate for subjects like 
literature or history, for what gets squeezed out 
is the awareness, indispensable here, of the need 
often for multi-sidedness and ambiguity, the 
understanding that simple yes/no, right/wrong 
answers are often not possible, as in life itself.

The biggest problem of all is the assumed 
obligation to be `comprehensive,' to `cover' as 
much as can be packed in, never mind the burden 
and the boredom. In history, particularly, many 
facts come to acquire a peculiar aura or 
mystique. Leaving any of them out opens one to 
charges of being insufficiently patriotic, maybe 
even `anti-national.' The assumption is that the 
main `purpose' of history in schools is to 
inculcate `correct' values, stimulate national 
unity, integration, pride: a special burden 
imposed on no other subject.

Imaginative effort

We do have some examples already of the 
possibility of much more imaginative textbooks, 
once the logic of trying to be `comprehensive' is 
abandoned. I am thinking of two sets of books: 
the Ekalavya ones, now unfortunately withdrawn, 
and the recent Delhi Government texts, both 
formulated after intense discussion with 
school-teachers. The Delhi Ancient India book 
(Class VI), for instance, begins with drawings of 
different kinds of stone tools, some of them on 
display at the National Museum. A class 
discussion would then be initiated about what 
could (or could not) be inferred from them, 
leading children up to more general formulations 
about the kind of society possible at that level 
of technology in a manner much more meaningful 
than any abstract definition of social formation. 
Its Modern India counterpart (Class VIII) does 
not begin with a definition of colonial 
modernity, but foregrounds the theme of 
many-sided transformation by asking students to 
imagine what they think could have been the 
school experiences of children like them in 1720, 
and how a merchant's journey from Surat to Delhi 
would have been different then. At a later stage, 
they are asked to imagine themselves in Kashmiri 
Gate during the 1857 siege. Included also are 
some details about the coming of the numerous 
physical components of today's everyday life: not 
just railways, but print, newspapers, clocks, 
post offices, public hospitals, electric lights, 
underground water supply, gramophones, films, 
radio. Surely it is facts like these that can 
make history come alive for children, far more 
than musty masses of information about forgotten 
kings, wars, or even each and every detail of 
anti-British struggle.

Such books develop some new ways of making 
history come alive for children, and also 
introduce what to my mind is the most important 
potential of the subject. This is a sense that 
everything changes, nothing is eternal, sacred, 
or `natural' since the social world is made by 
human beings and therefore open to 
transformation. The past in many ways was a 
different country (the best answer, really, for 
countering the charge that `sentiments' are 
getting hurt, much heard in BJP times but not 
confined to them). Religious communities, 
nations, etc., do not have absolutely continuous 
histories, and so blaming the present generation 
for the misdeeds of some of their forefathers is 
no more than racism.

(The writer is Retired Professor of History, Delhi University.)

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

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