Much of the conversation around school education in India focuses on what we might consider core academic skills — the ability to read, write, deal with numbers and, to some extent, think critically.
The 2005 National Curriculum Framework, taking its lead from the Yash Pal Committee report titled “Learning without Burden”, also considered the broader role of education, in some ways hearkening back to Gandhi’s Nai Talim and the need for education to give children a cultural, moral and social grounding in the world they live in. In the years following the consultative process around NCF 2005, the NCERT began the laborious task of actual curriculum reform, producing materials and working papers in such cross-cutting areas as value-based education and peace education.
Broader view
Textbook publishers, always looking out for gaps to fill, have been attempting to produce series that can help teachers build the kinds of values that we would wish our society to live by. The series “Living in Harmony” from Oxford School Education, a division of Oxford University Press (OUP), is one such example. Spanning Classes I to X, the set of books, in the words of series editor Mini Krishnan, is a “contribution to the crucial task that lies ahead for all of mankind… [and] turns the child’s gaze both outward and inward to take a much broader view of life.”
The series has an ambitious goal, to “integrate and promote emotional literacy”, a concept that is still difficult to understand, much less define in a way that makes it “teachable”. Yet that is exactly what the series aims to do. Built around 84 “key values”, the series uses stories, comic strips, art activities, discussion points and interactive as well as self-directed games to get children to think about the way they engage with the world. It tackles a broad swathe of issues, from generational dynamics to friendship, from dealing with animals and nature to environmental sensitivity, social justice, and inequality of various kinds.
Each book is built around 11 values, and a unit that draws from Gandhian thought, which in the early years is called “Learning from Gandhiji” and in higher classes is simply titled “Mahatma”. As might be expected, lessons increase in complexity and nuance as one goes up the class levels, with detailed teachers’ notes. Chapters in the first 3 to 4 classes focus on how children interact with their material environment, as well as bringing in lessons on kindness and resource sharing. By the time one reaches Class VII and VIII, the emphasis shifts to psychological and emotional well-being, achieving centred-ness and equilibrium through introspection and reflection, and in Class X, issues of identity and community are explored more fully.
The seven authors who have contributed to the 10-book series represent a range of experience across the education sector, including names such as Valson Thampu, former Principal of St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi, writers Sumathi Sudhakar and Malini Seshadri, Usha Jesudasan, a family counselor, Maya Gaitonde, a values educator, Anna George, an educator, and Vincent Moses Raja, an illustrator and designer of children’s books.
Ideally, values and ethics should be built into the fabric of education — indeed, of socialisation — in a way that does not require explicit calling out. That we have to “teach” these aspects of life is a somewhat sorry commentary on the state of the world. But again, navigating today’s interconnected, interdependent, dynamic world demands a complex set of life skills, and these books certainly do offer a means to deliver those skills in an interesting manner.
Living in Harmony — Class I to X : Oxford University Press, School Education
Prices range from ₹165 to ₹228 a book.
