Curriculum Vitae

And, in another example of teaching innovativeness, the NCF shows how to combat standardisation and rote. Here’s how teachers could frame questions, it suggests: ‘‘If the answer is ‘5’ what might be the questions? If the answer is ‘it was red’ what might be the questions?’’

Pastoral fantasy or pedagogic responsiveness? An attempt to construct knowledge through the student’s experience or abdication of responsibility for setting universal standards for accomplishment? As a document, the National Curriculum Framework is lavish in its resolve to place the child at the centre of all learning, to abandon the sole emphasis on textbooks in instruction and on examinations in evaluation. It has, however, invited questions about how this educational reform will actually be effected.

How they know what they know

A PRIMARY guiding principle in the NCF is to connect knowledge to life outside school. It speaks of ‘‘the need to recognise the child as a natural learner, and knowledge as the outcome of the child’s own activity.’’ Accordingly great emphasis is placed on incorporating local knowledge, on encouraging ‘‘intelligent guessing’’ — that zone between what an idea a child knows and what he almost knows — and on making the child pose questions.

‘‘These are forward-looking reforms to make education more relevant and more joyful,’’ says historian Ramachandra Guha, member of the National Steering Committee (NCM) for preparing the Framework. Anita Rampal, professor at Delhi University and chairperson of NCERT’s textbook writing team for primary schools, adds that these recommendations on construction of knowledge are based on theoretical research. When a child first learns to conceptualise things, she says, the most important exercise is to enable her to reframe them in her own language, to be able to articulate what she has understood.

But historian Irfan Habib, of Aligarh Muslim University, warns that this stress on local knowledge traditions could serve as ‘‘an umbrella for all kinds of obscurantism’’ and be an impediment to rationality. Says he: ‘‘There are no local variations of rationality. Systematisation of knowledge must be universal.’’

Rampal feels that interlinking the syllabus with the world around the student can lead to critical pedagogy, whereby he learns to question and to critique. The present environmental studies syllabus makes a conscious attempt to locate science within social studies at the primary level.

Not only by the book
THE NCF launches a concerted assault on ‘‘flabby textbooks’’ and demands transition to a plurality of textbooks and additional reading material. The challenge, says Rampal, is to write textbooks so that they respect the student’s experience.

The current emphasis on fact, says NSC chairperson Yash Pal, prioritises memorising, not learning. ‘‘To nurture thinking children,” he says, ‘‘the syllabus will have to be lightened.’’

Habib, however, asks: ‘‘If your classroom teaching is not based on prescribed textbooks, how do you monitor teaching? This denigrates one major instrument of transmission of knowledge.’’ It also, he reckons, covers in advance possible criticism of the textbooks that are to be written.

Adds Anil Sadgopal, professor at Delhi University’s Department of Education and NSC member: ‘‘This plurality of textbooks is already there, but only in private schools.’’ How, he demands, can vast chunks of Indians surviving below the minimum wage afford a multiplicity of schoolbooks? There also must be, he stresses, a mechanism for regulation of textbooks.

Lost in translation
‘‘IT is hard to exaggerate,’’ says the National Curriculum Framework, ‘‘the importance of teaching home languages in school.’’ Later, recognising that English is perceived as a language of empowerment, it notes: ‘‘Within the eight years of education constitutionally guaranteed to every child, it should be possible to achieve basic English language proficiency in a span of about four years. A multilingual approach to schooling from the very outset will counter possible ill-effects such as loss of one’s own languages, and the burden of incomprehension.’’Yash Pal sees language as the mode to make education inclusive, with a couple of years of instruction in her mother tongue being the child’s entry point into schooling.Rampal connects this respect for a student’s mother tongue to the task of helping children to conceptualise, articulate and communicate. She, emphasises the importance of the use of mother tongue in school to enable the child to think with the language and develop concepts. She however, adds: ‘‘I think we need a fresh look at national language policy. The three-language formula is not necessarily the only way to look at language. It evolved forty years back. Most states have in any case circumvented it. We need to relook at it in the light of new understanding about language teaching in school.’’

Testing times
CONSTRUCTIVIST learning and privileging experience over information demands creative ways of evaluation. The NCF recommends that evaluation be broadbased by including such things as open-book tests and assessment diaries maintained by teachers. It even questions the wisdom of the Class X board examination: ‘‘Is it worth wasting a year of perhaps the most fruitful period of a child’s life in such non-productive engagement?’’ It even suggests: ‘‘Boards should consider as a long-term measure, making Class X examination optional, thus permitting students continuing in the same school (and who do not need a board certificate) to take an internal school exam instead.’’ Fair enough. As Guha points out, it is absurd and irrational, this ‘‘obsession with a single exam on which a person’s life stands or fold’’. It is a supplementary suggestion that is eliciting misgivings: ‘‘Subjects such as mathematics and English could be examined at two levels: standard and higher level.’’ This, presumably, draws on statistics that the two subjects account for most unsuccessful attempts in the boards. Says Sadgopal: ‘‘Instead of improving the quality of teachers, an escape route is being provided for the state.’’ It is also, he points out, violative of the education policy of 1986, which provides for a common curriculum. Such a move would, he fears, create a parallel school system. Rampal too is apprehensive of any such proposal: ‘‘Our system is already too hierarchical. Courses can be designed for different needs and requirements, but there should be no differentiation between higher and lower abilities.’’ Courses can be designed with optional modules depending on different needs and interests, but with similar depths of understanding.’’

Where are the teachers?
THE NCF addresses the challenge posed by multigrade schools in delivering child-centred learning. Over 75 per cent of schools in rural areas, the document notes, are multigrade. It accordingly seeks reform in instruction in multigrade classrooms and ‘‘a shift away from textbooks designed for monograde classrooms.’’For one, asks Sadgopal, with teacher-pupil ratios deteriorating, how can a teacher take five classes simultaneously, and help students construct knowledge? He also questions this legitimisation of multigrade schools and the NCF’s reluctance to demand better teacher-pupil ratios. ‘‘This document,’’ he says, ‘‘talks of some very advanced ideas in pedagogic research. But these ideas must be situated in the reality of Indian school conditions.’’ He questions the negligible value placed on acquisition of productive skills. Clearly, even after acceptance of the NCF by the Central Advisory Board on Education, the debate may have only just begun.