NEW DELHI, NOV 13: The release of a draft curriculum by the Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi for school education in the country tomorrow to mark Children's Day, may trigger off allegations of saffronisation of education.Though the new curriculum aims at providing a uniform education system for children in all the states, thereby bridging the gap between municipal schools and public schools, the spectre of saffronisation has been triggered by subjects like ``India's common cultural heritage'' and ``India's struggle for freedom, social, political developments and challenges in the post-Independent India'' - a part of the new syllabi.The draft also stresses on the need to understand the real spirit of ``common culture'' before deciding whether it hints at ``uniformity'' of culture or ``unity'' of culture. It further elaborates secularism as an equal understanding of all religions - sarvadharma sambhava - and not rejection of religion as is widely perceived.The new curriculum also proposes to introduce semester-system in secondary classes, grading system instead of marking, abolition of external examination system in all classes except 12th, vocational education and national-level tests for jobs.The draft was prepared by a seven-member expert team from NCERT, headed by the Council Director J.S. Rajput, and submitted to the HRD ministry in January this year. The Ministry will sent it to various boards of school education, SCERTs, directorates of education, parent-teachers association and various national and state level education institutions for their opinion before finalising the curriculum, a Ministry official said.The Ministry hopes to receive response from various quarters within two-three months before it finalises the curriculum and start printing text books.The new curriculum may come into force from academic session 2002-2003 as it would require at least one-and-a-half-years to complete the mammoth task of printing text books in regional languages as well as in English.The text books, so far, were written as per National Education Policy formulated in 1986, which the HRD Ministry officials felt, was not able to meet requirements of present circumstances.The curriculum also prescribes to teach subjects ranging from panchayati raj - since localisation will have impact on future society - to Information Technology - to meet challenges of globalisation. It also favours compulsory teaching of environment education, health education, physical education and vocational (work) education.The curriculum envisages imparting primary education in regional languages and thereafter the second language - which incidentally happens to be English in the present scenario. However, the swadeshi proponents seem to have no love lost for the national language, Hindi.
