Former educational quality advisor to the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Subir Shukla currently heads Ignus Pahal, a non-profit that facilitates quality improvement in education systems.
Excerpts from an interview.
Evolution of the National Curriculum Frameworks
If one goes back to the roots, education was content driven and passed down generations through the oral tradition. The child was considered an empty pot to be filled and enriched with information. This thinking was also evident in the early curriculum framework. By the 1980s, we had switched to thinking about minimum levels of education and competencies. This approach emphasised observable action as a result of education. The child was seen as clay to be moulded by education. The last two curriculum frameworks, in 2000 and 2005, recognise the right of a child to learn, and acknowledge his/her independent agency. Unlike the previous frameworks, they encourage a two-way exchange, where the child is an active participant in the learning process.
Issues with Indian curriculum design
When curriculum frameworks began to be designed, only a small percentage of children availed of education and they were usually from better-resourced families. However, by the 1990s, education infrastructure had started spreading to the far reaches of the country and enrolment had shot up. Children from all types of backgrounds — religious minorities, tribes, labour classes — stepped into schools for the very first time. These were children with a very different life experience.
Unfortunately, while designing the curriculum we didn’t account for this difference. The design was focused on what was desirable rather than what was feasible. It continued to cater to the ‘mainstream’ and failed to account for this ever-growing majority of children from marginalised backgrounds entering the education ecosystem.
Even our teacher training doesn’t account for the very different needs of teachers teaching in different set-ups. Teachers from rural schools are given the same training as teachers from urban areas, even though their classroom environment may be very different.
In many instances, curriculum designers have not been able to give up on age-old, hierarchical ideas. Designing curriculum is an exercise in humility. To be effective, it requires curriculum designers to give importance to the deprived child and understand his/her reality.
Gender marginalisation in curriculum design
One of the problems in curriculum design is that it’s often patriarchal. It doesn’t speak sufficiently about the female experience. For example, many girls come to school after cooking food. Cooking is a great mathematical experience, yet it doesn’t figure in mathematics books because it is ‘girls’ knowledge’.
Representations of girls in our textbooks are usually very limited and stereotypical.
The notion of ‘when you educate a girl, you educate a family’ only works if you enable a girl to view herself differently, communicate and renegotiate a different position for herself, and work with the community to support change.
Role of textbooks
A textbook is a means of implementing the syllabus derived from the curriculum. It captures about 40 to 60 per cent of the curriculum. However, it is by no means sacrosanct and over-reliance on textbooks is a problem. Children should learn from a variety of materials.
At Ignus, we work with several states to develop low-cost textbooks that enable a higher degree of learning.
However, children in government schools need other books too. So, we are setting up Manan Books, a low-cost publishing house that will supplement learning in diverse ways.
A tool for propaganda?
What children should learn is always a contested area. Every government wants its priorities to reflect in textbooks.
Wherever we’ve been involved, we work hard to ensure that the Constitution is not violated. On occasion this has resulted in us being removed and our work overturned.
Private publishers vs. NCERT
While the NCERT books could do with a lot of improvement, I’m not convinced about the private publishers’ capabilities either. Somehow, I don’t see them going beyond a middle class world view, or spending time in villages or slums to test if their material works. In some states, their production quality is also extremely poor.
A great proportion of secondary school textbooks are published by private publishers who only increase the number of pages to earn more. Many students are unable to afford these textbooks, and eventually drop out of school.
What might work well is to involve experienced professionals from state governments in developing and testing prototypes, which are then offered to private publishers along with specifications and a minimal royalty, but with a cap on the price. Since development overheads are reduced, this should be a winning proposition for private publishers too.
