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EDUCATION: NCERT
Grand Unification Theory
A composite textbook for all social sciences: a brave
new world or the dumbing down of India?
By Ashok Malik
Controversies in
any academic setting are usually arcane and obscure, leaving ordinary
mortals unmoved. The quarrels at the Delhi-based National Council of Education
Research and Training are hardly different (see box). They are intelligible
only to those within the loop. There is, however, one exception.
India's apex consultancy for school education,
NCERT-which advises state and Central governments on how and what to teach
tomorrow's Indians-has drawn up a strategy to teach social science that
is a radical departure from the past. When implemented from the 2002-03
academic year, it could completely change the way India's children study
their history, geography, society and world.
The "integrated" approach to the social
sciences forms part of the National Curriculum Framework for Secondary
Education designed by NCERT. This framework will replace the one of 1988.
It has, NCERT Director Jagmohan Singh Rajput says, four salient features.
- It should be light on children. As the Yashpal
Committee pointed out a few years ago, the Indian child carries a particularly
heavy bag to school.
- There should be stress on value education.
"Not religious education," Rajput cautions, "but education
about religions."
- "The Indian viewpoint should not be
neglected"; social sciences have to be related to "the child's
immediate surroundings".
- Do away with compartmentalisation, move from
"subjects to themes".
That final parameter will have an immediate,
tangible impact, Separate "400 page" textbooks for geography,
history, civics and economics will be replaced by one composite book.
This is a whole super-subject really, one that will encompass, to quote
R.K. Dixit, head of NCERT's department of humanities and social sciences,
"history, geography, civics, economics, a bit of sociology and elementary
legal studies".
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"Why
tell the child which part of the course belongs to history and which
part to geography? Let him or her decide ... That is the thematic
approach."
Ashok Ganguly,
CBSE chairman
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An NCERT audit found that the current syllabus-based
on the National Curriculum of 1988-comprised "35 per cent history,
35 per cent geography, 20 per cent civics and 10 per cent economics".
This formulation was seen as obsolete and not in keeping with "the
new needs of the child".
In simple classroom terms what does the "thematic
approach" mean? As an NCERT staff member puts it, "This will
take children away from merely remembering names and dates and into a
non-segregated system. They can inquire into the inter-relationships between
subjects." Ashok Ganguly, chairman of the Central Board of Secondary
Education (CBSE), is blunt: "Why tell the child which part is history
and which part is geography? Let him or her decide." So instead of
chapters on, say, the Mauryas or the Himalayas, social science teachers
will now focus on "Development of civilisations" or "Natural
resources and their development".
While more catchy segment headings will doubtless
be devised, what this entails is telling a child that, for example, jute
is grown in Bengal (geography), it led to an industry in British times
(history), with its multiple uses contributes much to the region's wealth
(economics) and has created a jute-dependent populace for better or worse
(sociology).
The "inter-disciplinary approach"
is not new. It was, as an NCERT researcher stresses, a founding principle
of Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University three decades ago. The thematic
method of teaching the social sciences is popular in Australia, Thailand
and Japan. It is expected to be welcomed by parents who feel subjects
like history are overdone and a burden on children who should focus on
"contemporary" and "job-oriented" science and mathematics.
NCERT's framework is only recommendatory. The
three national secondary educations boards-CBSE, ICSE and National Open
School-and 31 state boards are free to work around it and prescribe multiple
textbooks. In practical terms the CBSE, which oversees 5,800 schools in
India and is the model for most state boards, is the prime mover behind
NCERT's "integrated approach".
"Parents complain," says Ganguly,
"that the course is simply too large. A child has to study 28 chapters
of history alone in Class X. And then answer 30 questions in three hours.
Where is the room for creative thinking or analytical skills?" An
educationist who worked on the new curriculum at NCERT adds, "There
was a a time when the textbook was the principal source of information
for schoolchildren. Today, with the media explosion, with television and
the Net, this is no longer true. You now need the textbook to guide you,
not catalogue facts that may already be available." Ganguly concurs,
"Information is growing at an exponential rate, its quantum is doubling
every six to eight years. No textbook can keep pace. We have to think
of a new approach."
While this may be music to those who feel history
and geography have been reduced to "mugging up dates and names"
and an examination of "what is taught, rather than what the child
knows", there is the other side of the story. Technology-driven societies,
such as those in east Asia, tend to discount the humanities. NCERT's critics
say the integrated approach will similarly dumb down the social sciences
and reduce their learning to a rudimentary level. Also, with its emphasis
on India rather than on the classical subjects-in classes VI-VIII, children
will study "India and the world"; in IX-X "Contemporary
India"-it may actually discourage higher studies in the social sciences.
While Rajput acknowledges the danger, he says
this "merely poses a greater challenge for the teacher". The
counter-argument is that in the best of schools the quality of history
and geography teachers is suspect. Now you expect them to teach both subjects
as well as introduce the child to economics and sociology. An anyway mediocre
teaching system is being institutionalised.
Critics point to the failing of the similar
integrated approach used for science since 1988. NCERT recommends one
textbook for physics, chemistry and biology in classes IX-X but many schools
and boards feel it is inadequate. The "oversimplication" of
science, an NCERT insider complains, has also led to "Class X graduates
not being able to cope in Class XI and XII". Ganguly admits "there
are gaps" but says this is a "syllabus lacuna and not an approach
lacuna". The current CBSE course "overemphasises physics in
Class IX" but neglects it in Class X, leading to "problems for
those who opt for the science stream" thereafter.
As any scientist, physical or social, will agree,
empirical evidence is the best response to a dispute. Ganguly says the
integrated approach was experimented with by middle school social science
teachers in two well-known institutions-Mother's International, Delhi
and Sivasami Kalalaya, Chennai-over the past three years. CBSE is satisfied
with the outcome. Beginning April 1, 2002, the rest of India can make
up its mind.
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