A learner-centric approach needed

In his famous story, The Parrot's Training, Tagore offered a scathing critique of the myopic vision of education that we often witness in our country. His satirical tale sharply brings out our tendency to lose sight of the real issues in education while entangling ourselves with extraneous concerns.

The recent debate over the Supreme Court judgment on an NCERT textbook chapter, which, incidentally, was on the judiciary itself, is a good instance of that tendency. In Tagore's story, everyone gets busy with the paraphernalia of the school and there is a hustle and bustle of multifarious activities, but all of it is extraneous to the learner and knowledge.

Similarly, dominant voices in public debates on the judgment revolved around the academic freedom of experts and the limits of the judiciary's power. The tendency to lose sight of the real issue was so much that most commentators missed the moot point of whether the ideal of academic freedom should be applied to a school textbook. After all, it is a state-owned learning material, a symbol and a carrier of the state's authority.

Several 'silences' in the debate can be uncovered if the investigation is directed towards this field of knowledge -- curriculum studies, which have been marginalised in our university system. In a path-breaking document published by the UNESCO in the 1960s, a distinction was made between 'syllabus systems' and 'curriculum systems' of education.

This distinction is useful in identifying the choice that has been made by a system regarding the concept of education. In syllabus systems, the primary focus is on the precise information, as prescribed content, to be transferred by the teacher to the learner, in each subject, in the course of the school year.

However, in curriculum systems, educational activities are based on the postulates of genetic psychology, learner's syncretism, epistemology, along with substantive principles in each body of knowledge and their reception in a specific context. There is an active concern for teachers and their ability to engage children's minds in studying complex theoretical formulations, including problems of society.

It can be inferred that we have a system in which the learning material centres primarily on the information to be transacted while the concerns for the development of children's understanding and the vision of educational activities remain secondary. The subject matter written by experts is to be mastered. Its methods are armchair-based, rather than developmental.

Recent writings in curriculum studies raise the issue of 'politics of official knowledge'. Whose knowledge becomes the official knowledge? Whose experiences and perspectives count as official knowledge and whose remain excluded?

A textbook is not an ordinary entity. It is prescribed and, thus, becomes binding on every teacher to teach. Its tight nexus with the board exams makes it an entity that regulates children's future prospects. There has to be a great sense of authority as well as responsibility around it. The textbook is a carrier of official knowledge in the system and, thus, it demands a far complex construction of knowledge in all school subjects.

Let us consider that social sciences present an account of the forces and forms of social life in which political, economic and social challenges constitute a major theme. The official knowledge of those challenges would demand an intricate weaving of perspectives and ideas rather than a simple declaration of who is responsible for malfunctioning institutions. It also requires careful attention to the selection of illustrations and exercises. There are several instances of malfunctioning institutions in our society which have given rise to malaises, eg, the menace of female foeticide. The officially prescribed text requires a complex narrative on this subject rather than simply putting the blame for it on doctors.

This takes us to the other major concern. How to develop learning material or official knowledge that can be taught by ordinary teachers to ordinary students in thousands of ordinary classrooms, which also reflect the basic or underlying principles of social sciences? For the theme of malfunctioning institutions, it would imply a collaborative development of text in such a manner that all-encompassing ideas and attitudes relating to them are placed at the centre and the level of the text is matched to the capacities of students of different abilities and grades in schools. This places the learner in our academic discourse at the centre rather than the experts. The banality of the public discourse and the backwardness of our system become palpable against these concerns.

Curriculum forms must evolve within the national contexts shaped by the country's intellectual struggles. Working on this principle, the NCERT has made concerted efforts under the aegis of the National Curriculum Framework-2005 by revitalising the process of textbook development and institutionalising teams at different levels.

In 2005, syllabus development committees were formed for each subject, taught at different levels, and textbook development committees for each class. A national monitoring committee along with an overarching committee that worked to achieve parity and coherence among different levels, subjects and their textbooks were also constituted. The editorial team worked at the final stage on the text, illustrations and designs. These structures enabled a concerted effort towards achieving a learner-centred text that did justice to the underlying principles of various subjects.

One instance of that was the creation of a new subject and its textbooks, Social and Political Life (SPL), in place of civics which was a colonial creation. Rather than considering adolescents as passive learners who needed to be civilised by feeding them information, SPL recognised them as critical and observant thinkers. It drew the attention of the learners to instances of malfunctioning institutions.

While the textbook matter was under discussion in the Supreme Court, the media reported that NCERT experts, including the director, had raised their concerns on the text. How did the NCERT's voice and its institutional structures become so feeble? This in itself is a separate theme for curriculum enquiry.