August 10th, 2009
“The present day classroom practices are, in almost all schools of the country, totally dominated by textbooks. All premises of flexibility of the curriculum and syllabus and freedom of the teacher are completely forgotten by the time an educational plan reaches the classroom. The teacher is seen as either incompetent or unwilling or both, the school is seen devoid of all learning material, and the environment is seen as of no use in the child’s learning. The textbook emerges as the single solution to all these problems. It is sought to collect all the knowledge that the child is supposed to acquire at a given stage or class and is planned so that the child never needs to look beyond. Thus, ‘teaching the textbook’ becomes the whole of education.
As a result of this undue importance given to the textbook, it has acquired an aura of supremacy and a standard format. It has to be completed from cover to cover in a strict sequence, has developed a language of its own that is difficult to comprehend, and is laden with dense concepts……It has become a symbol of authority difficult to ignore or disobey.”
Extract from: NCF Position Paper Volume II
On Curriculum, Syllabus and Textbooks
Why
* are Indian schools, as organisations unable to distinguish between curriculum and textbooks?
* are the monitoring bodies so incompetent that they are unable to ensure compliance with curriculum guidelines, especially in the primary years?
* are the parents so badly informed of the best teaching-learning practices that they accept the third rate education imparted by many of our schools?
* is the publishing lobby so influential that it has the last say in what our children are taught? Besides the vested profit motive, what makes them competent or qualified to do so?
Tags: classrooms, Curriculum, Education, educational plan, learning material, NCF 2005, syllabus, teacher, textbooks
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April 14th, 2009
A recent education supplement of a leading daily news paper carried an article by school principal of local and national repute. According to the educationist, the role of good education is “to mould the minds of students, bring about desired changes in their thinking and create a group of people who would be dynamic in thought and action”.
In the first appearance it appeared like the mind-moulding mission statement of a radical right wing educational institution!! The presumption of such a view is that students are empty headed or misguided, so their thinking needs deliberate alteration through education.
The above statement leads me to ask the following questions:
1. Has the concept of apperceptive mass, been relegated to the textbooks for aspiring teachers with little or no use in the schools? And who decides what mould is best suited anyway?
2. If the role of education is to `bring about desired changes in thinking`, whose desires are we talking about- the state, the designers of curriculum, the lobby of academics who have a vested interest in this process of thought alteration? If the thought alteration process is determined by someone else other than the child, how would it impact his individuality, original thinking, etc?
3. How dynamic in thought and action would this educated group be if they cannot think dynamically and diversely as individuals first? What is more important that they think and act in unison or bring their uniqueness to contribute to group synergy?
Being an educationist myself, and having being exposed to education systems in different countries and from different perspectives, I believe that each child is unique and education plays an important role in developing and nurturing this uniqueness, helping them discover who they are while respecting their creativity, skills and thoughts. A good educational institution does this by encouraging independent thought and action while differentiating between acceptable and unacceptable social behaviours.
Tags: academics, apperceptive mass, aspiring teachers, Creativity, Curriculum, Education, education system, educationist, individuality, original thinking, schools, textbooks, unique
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