From India's largest Newsroom. I'm Warren Gorge.
And this is the times of India podcast.
The National Council for educational research and
training has been in headlines since it emerged, that multiple
permanent changes had been made in textbooks, that will be
issued this year. The modifications in a history
chapter about Mahatma Gandhi's, assassination, sparked outrage,
after B, about assassin. Nathuram godse, and the
rashtriya swayamsevak sangh RSS were cut out.
However, it's not just history, where the changes have been
made. Reports have pointed out that
reference has to the 2002 Gujarat riots, have vanished
from the textbooks. One report says, topics.
Like police atrocities and air pollution have also been erased
from a textbook, the director of the ncert Denisa clanny meant in
that. All the cuts made in the
textbooks were done, only to reduce the burden on students,
it is not change in curriculum or syllabus.
It was changed in books, only in order to reduce the content.
Politicians from various opposition parties have largely
focused on the changes in the history textbooks that they say
a politically biased. However, a group of 200 experts,
which includes historians issued, a statement criticizing
the changes that have been made in all the textbooks, one of the
signatories to the letter is Professor, Anita rampal.
She was the dean of the faculty of Education, Delhi, University,
and had worked on the creation of school textbooks.
In today's episode, we're talking with Professor ample
about the impact of the these changes.
She also explains how the textbook changes proposed
changes in schools curriculums and other factors are changing
public education in India. Mr. Humble to start with.
Could you talk about these ncert textbooks?
How much do they influence? Education in India and would say
States like say a Kerala which has objected to changes in
history textbooks, would they be able to change their textbooks
in order to sort of bypass changes that are made in ncert
textbooks? Yes, you are still an important
question because Kerala right now is debating on these issues
and I happen to be on a core committee there on on the
curriculum revision. So many states use the higher
secondary 11th 12th, textbooks from ncert.
Even the other textbooks, ncert gives them a camera-ready copy
and states can have an mou and include some chapters on their
own and use what PN C RT is made.
So you know for many years this has been Been happening.
But yes, 11:12 is an issue because you can't suddenly
produce these books now. So you know, they were they
obviously don't want to use the deleted versions.
And so now, they will have to, they have said, I think the
minister is given the statement that they be using the earlier
version, the unedited version as they were.
So, how would that work? Because if ncert stops a
publishing, those old textbooks, you know, wouldn't it in effect
be really Difficult to then continue would then say states
have to bring out their own versions of text books based on
ncert textbooks, if they want to keep that going States.
Again, have that freedom to do that.
The constitution allows in fact, a tell states that they make
their own curriculum and they choose whether they want to use
these in Toto or they want to use them and add some component
of their own, you know, which they've been doing even in the
other ninth tenth or other classes.
So that is up to To the states. Obviously, you can't produce
11th, 12th textbooks with the kind with, with a group and with
the expertise suddenly within six months.
So, obviously States will have to take this decision.
Those that don't want, the edited version will have to see
how they can legally work on on using the earlier version
without having to produce completely new ones, what will
be the understanding and what they communicate to ncert.
But Professor, Anita, a points out that apart from the time
that it takes for states to bring out new textbooks.
There's another issue that they would need to deal with the
competitive exams. That students are required to
write after class 12, and if the exams are based on the mat in
the ncert textbooks, they can't be ignored.
What worry States is even earlier that cbse books were
becoming the kind of exit level text for school and the entry
level takes for admission into various kinds of tests or even
in the is exam or something like that.
Now, a very concerted lie, when the sea Wheatie, the common
Entrance Test, or the need for these kinds of tests which the
center is pushing. In terms of a ation of Entrance
Test that is questionable because that they clearly saying
is going to be based only on CBS t.
Professor ample says that under existing guiding principles is
no set period after which textbooks need to be revised.
There's also no real requirement for revisions but in 2020, when
the pandemic hit schools were shot courses went online.
That's when a process of rationalization was carried out
in ncert textbooks under this process, certain portions of the
textbook would be cut out of the syllabus so that students didn't
have to study it for exams. Professor a is that even when
cutting things out of a syllabus, it needs to be done
carefully. She says, the latest revisions
are an extension of a process that started during the
pandemic. Normally there are no revisions
which are done in this way, unless there is something like
they did the covid revision so-called covid because they use
the covid to again, delete the same kind of things, and people
had raised this question. But that was, again, it was a
list given out. It was kind of booklets given
out and the books remain the same as they were.
But now they have deleted that in the book so that they made
that into a permanent thing within covid.
In any case, many, These are disrupted and I remember the
first time that the media had asked me, I said you don't do
even a revision for an emergency like covid.
You don't do this way. There is a certain sequence.
You have to understand because each concept each theme.
Each topic Falls within a pattern of progression of how
ideas are going to be developed. How students understand this is
not a disciplinary exercise that as a discipline.
I think this comes after this, you know, there is no
chronology. Only coming from the And it has
to follow the sequence and the pattern and the depth and
complexity and the abstract nest of a certain concept and how one
Builds on the other or how students, at what age with what
connections in their lives. Do they actually understand
these so that is how technically it should be done.
You can't pick up something threw it out, we have been
following in the sense critiquing writing about ncert.
That's our work. That's my work.
I've been working with text Books in different states.
That's something we do when I teach this, I also teach
curriculum studies but the way this was done.
Well it's completely devoid of any such consideration or any
such discussion. So then with the latest changes
in the ncert takes history textbooks, particularly you are
among a group of over 200 experts who've signed on a
letter, objecting to the changes and deletions made in the
upcoming editions. Could you explain the reason for
this? Letter.
The reason why is because this was being done just without any
consultation. And many of the people who
signed it including me, we are part of the syllabus committees
a textbook development teams. The advisors chairpersons.
So, you know, we've been involved in this exercise and
there's been absolutely no consultation or discussion.
Plus it seems to be extremely motivated in a very deliberate
selection is being made or what is being deleted.
And that is why Being, that's extremely worrying.
A contentious cut is the fact that the 2002 Gujarat riots,
which took place. While Narendra Modi was chief.
Minister are now alledgedly completely absent in all
textbooks. Professor ample explains, the
logic of the inclusion of the riots that resulted in the
deaths of over 1,000 people in textbooks for us.
It was important because For the First Time, very sensitive,
political issues, also dealing with the role of parties and way
they were and socio-cultural Context in which say, a riot
happens. Now, right?
Is a very sensitive issue. How do you talk about?
You need us. Don't give a year in.
Dayton. See so many people died.
How do you build on the understanding of the tensions
that happen. So this was done in one
political science, textbook. Last well we're at the regional
level, you're also looking at the Gujarat Riot and in another
chapter, you're looking at the deli rides, the anti say crimes,
both are there and very consciously done because And I
think that, you know, they were the political science group also
had just a kind of waiting meeting to get people to see
that even in the party. Some the I remember the
education Minister I just seen this when the draft was ready
and said nothing which was very important for the kind of
academic confidence and freedom. That you feel.
You have when you're designing curricula because it's the
ruling party and you're talking everything you're talking about
what Justice anonymity is said. You're You about an apology that
the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, later gave, you're doing
all that and that is what we thought was what is an honest
way of dealing with something as dramatic as that and similarly
with the right. Right.
But this early purges any mention of the Gujarat, right?
Not just this this chapter to pay whatever it is an earlier
chapter Sociology Chapter in class 11.
So there is no mention of a guitar, right?
But the entire Delhi anti-sikh riots is there as it is.
So isn't this motivated? What more could be motivated?
Like the whole discussion about gun.
He is Assassin. This is come into media, what
you write, why they were trying to write.
And this is not, you know, this is a known fact of why Gandhi
was being targeted. So what is the history of that?
And to say that he is insistence on hindu-muslim Unity over
something that was oh, King people so how can you just take?
That sentence and say not to run God, say kill him.
Finished, is that you the way you write a textbook?
In any case, as I'm saying, these are issues, which are
traumatic, which are difficult. Uncomfortable.
You have to trust young people to be able to speak openly in a
transparent manner, so that they can then take up these issues.
Because students come with their own socializations, they come
with their own back background, what they hear.
And, uh, Other sources. So when they get something, it's
not a dollop of information that is being thrown on them, they're
being given to it. They're being given this
exposure so that they can question it also through their
frames of reference through their ways of how they have
looked at these things. So, giving one piece of
information and taking out the entire resul, they are true for
putting it there in the entire rational analysis, whatever
possible he's again is terrible pedagogy but it's also extremely
Tree me motivated because you're then distorting.
You coming with a divisive mind of what is allowed and what is
not allowed, what you think is palatable and what is not.
And also then the entire effort that was made was to try and
present. A more composite Nation were
more composite history in terms of how history has been.
And to get people to understand that democracy is not just going
in casting a vote. By the focus has been the
history deletions another report flag.
The fact that in other social science textbooks, you have
things which seemingly innocuous like a water park in with
herbal, which is water. Starved, the effects of air
pollution and issues that seemingly aren't even very
objectively political maybe from why do you believe we seen these
changes in areas that one would not even see as political one.
I would like to say that education has to be looked at
politically in the sense whenever you questioning power.
It's not a party but you're questioning disadvantage.
You're questioning whose knowledge comes into a
curriculum and whose doesn't like political science for
instance, tries to give you an understanding in, which you go
beyond these partisan issues and look deeply into the nature of
polity and the nature of power. So, as we keep saying that, Just
what comes in a syllabus and whose life it shows.
And what does the textbook show you?
Not just the names and the visuals but whose lives, you
know? So it tells you there many lives
it does not show, or it does not represent or how they are
represented. So these questions are not just
in terms of colonial and Imperial and things like that.
But this these questions run through even today in fact, this
entire chapter on environmental degradation is out.
So why are these Doubt. So anything that can question.
Government decisions are question, the role of the
government or question, what is happening in terms of
development, why are people in in the tribal districts?
So agitated and worried about mining, for instance, or why are
they protest movements that are happening there?
So people's movements protest movements chipko?
You know, these may be things which look non-political but
they clearly political even if not Partisan immediately.
If you are looking at which party is involved to then
certain parties are going to feel more discomfort in this
because it relates to some of the other decisions they may be
taking after all you're preparing students to question.
I mean that is the whole nature in which your these particular
books were clearly that and that's why we see the
difference. These were books not made by
ncert, but a whole lot of people it was a whole, you know,
ecosystem of people were Working in education across the country
and that's why many of them, not all.
But many of the books came out in a very fine way, in terms of
the pedagogies that we think should be there that we teach
about. So, here was this pedagogy,
which was not just throwing out information at you, or not just
throwing out some questions at you and asking you to repeat the
answers, but it was based on social constructivism.
That's what we were supposed to work on.
The basis of our approach was that any learner is constructing
knowledge and the knowledge is being constructed.
As a social process not alone. I is a learner, don't construct
my knowledge alone. I constructed through a process
of doubting speaking. Not understanding aligning with
people talking, and that is what a classroom is supposed to be.
But with this subject of rationalization, I just want to
stay with that, you know, like you said in covid there.
There was some logic that. Okay, we cut this chapter out or
good doesn't appear in the exam or go to the sort of load on
students has less. How do we know if we're
overburdening students? Is there a sort of
rationalization that, you know, sort of has been pending?
You believe? It should have been done during
the covid and immediately after the covid, we should have been
ready, state twice as to how we going to restructure a given
current Suppose we find that children in Primary School have
lost out completely on two years which they have and that's a
crucial stage. When you're learning some
things, then you have you have time up to classified.
So within a given syllabus, you have time for that segment of
the syllabus of how you restructure it.
But it needs that thought it needs that thinking what is it
that can be given up and in what way, and then, what are the
other Links of the Actions between these Concepts.
How will they be made? So, you know, all that is to be
done. Very carefully and your teachers
have to be oriented accordingly, you can do it in six months.
Like, now Bridge course, is notionally as a formality for
three weeks, six weeks to months that doesn't help.
So what I'm saying is that restructuring we had been asking
for called for during the covid but we need that long-term
vision of what kind of gaps there are.
That didn't happen. But and the symptom of one
argument, any critic of the Indian education system has is
that we perhaps have too much for children, which in turn
encourages a certain form of learning, which in turn perhaps,
negates any way what you're talking about, soup in that
light then wouldn't sort of paring down of what or how much
students have to study wooden. That anyway, kind of makes
sense. That's correct.
Regular development. It's not called rationalizing.
So whenever a curriculum is made, you have to keep asking
these questions. Nothing is made for ever.
We have done that in the past. We've done that in 2006 to 2008
when these books came out. But again with the same kind of
a large consultation of scholarship that works there.
You can't hear someone say. I don't like this.
I'm taking this from a discussion that I had yesterday.
When someone does it one thing that I did go.
That he translated the ramen. That's all the one thing that
they find out what did good you really need scholarship, which
goes beyond what is there in the text or in the syllabus?
You mentioned the national curriculum framework?
That is also submitting its reports as of now, it's made
headlines for its changes and how it wants education to be
done in school levels and multiple board exams possibly.
You spoke a bit about how it's an real scenario that we face in
the education system right now. But where does this push sort of
take it? According to you, I just look at
how it's saying in terms of specially the class 9 in 10 and
11 and 12. It sounds very nice when we sing
that we should have many options and we should be doing a very
broader spectrum of things. It sounds good even today
without looking at that, we have a challenge of how you make an
integrated. How do you?
Integrate disciplines we can say that but it doesn't happen
because you to see how ready are teachers have day been
professionally developed in that sense, how ready are teacher
Educators? But the other thing is that this
remains on paper or it only sort of day, it's there for the elite
schools. Because if you look at even
Delhi, government schools, right?
A very small board. I mean thousand schools, 1100
schools for Delhi government very small as compared to what
other states are. I have to look at and even here
two-thirds of the government schools.
Do not offer science. They only offering Commerce and
social sciences. Why is it?
So and this state, which Goes to Town saying that it's done in
Education Revolution, which is really a very unpleasant thing
to be hearing any government say on the basis of what it actually
does and it actually throws out students into the open school so
that their marks don't show up in the CBS C exams.
This is one of the states where all government schools and all
poor children and all their marks will come up in the cbse.
Not all states. Have it there, they stayed ones,
you see. So that's the difference.
So this state, if it wants to show only good marks, it has to
throw out children into the open school.
It does that. And not just that, it's not
offering science why we know the reasons.
We know that they may not be science.
Teachers, who can teach at that level that maths teachers are
not. There we are.
I also know, there are no Labs, there are no facilities till
class tend to get away by doing no experiments, only doing
something for the final exam. So I'm saying, within the system
is a rationale of its own of who gets what the choice rhetoric is
only there on paper and it's only there for some very elite
school because private schools are also low cost private
schools which I have worse than government.
Schools are teachers are not trained, they don't have
qualified teachers so it's a small subset.
Of our entire system which might make use of these so-called
choices or these options. So this sorting will allow you
to push out. A lot of people and not demand,
more not want to come into the more specialized courses which
we know are not going to be really open to people from
disadvantaged classes or homes with unsupported families or
backgrounds and things like that.
Among the changes suggested in the school.
Curriculum is the introduction of mobile occasionally courses,
at the school Level under the new curriculum rules being
proposed. Students would be able to opt to
focus on vocational courses instead of the traditional ones.
Professor a is that this would work against many students,
particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
What is called location is troublesome in our context one
because vocation in our country, still is tied to cast and it is
tied to Advantage and social status and Social Capital.
You know, where who goes into? What kind of a cost.
I have been saying specifically that we should have work based
education for everyone. Why should some people be pushed
into a so-called less academic stream called vocational?
You should have work based education for anyone.
Anyone, you could have be doing a science course and you do a
web-based course you do something else.
You could be doing a work, based course not segregation the
segregation. And differentiation is what then
actually harms students and the kinds of opportunities that they
might get to go further. We have to be conscious about
these things not just as rhetoric, which might sound
nice, but through the ground realities and how constantly the
ground realities play out there. Logic and play out their own
rational within the system. There's nothing called choice.
But how do you see all these changes?
Then you know the Fallout of all of this lets out a
centralization of exams. This sort of mainstream attempt
to make sure that people don't look Beyond a certain thing that
they stick to the textbook. The Textbook itself, limits your
vision and you look you all sort of have a blinkered view of what
your world is in a sense, how does all of this come together?
We're risking our kind of precarious higher education,
which sort of serves for the precariat as it is like the gig
economy serves the prokaryotes you know you you do what you do.
You're not you don't know. You're not employed etc.
Etc. The pirate education.
Also this for your course can serve that purpose.
You leave after every year and you get a diploma.
What is the value of that diploma?
But you have something in your hand, this way, you Have
something in your hand saying, I've done one Euro, you paid for
something. It was shocking that someone
just made this comment. Delhi, LG made the comment that
degrees are just the receipts of the expenses that you paid for a
course. He said that because when up
went into this show your degree campaign and things like that.
He said, what is this degrees? I just the receipt.
So this is the way if degrees are meant to be just that, then
we are dismantling. In fact, what we have achieved
in public education and the higher level, which is what we
need to really have expanded in a more higher quality, more
inclusiveness more opportunities, which we haven't
done. And now we are dismantling even
what we have done and then leaving it to all those who can
pay to get whatever they want, or the others to do get all
their credits from some teaching shop, or some online because
that's what the universe. Is alone.
They've spent time giving us a list of content creators who are
not academics their companies, so you can go and get your
credits from anywhere. So you can just shop around.
We don't have enough universities, public university
is being supported state. Universities are literally, you
know, falling apart. And you're not taking that
seriously. We are talking of other things
circumventing that, it's just going to be the tire.
Education is for those or even good quality.
Education is for those who can pay for it.
Today's episode was produced by Jay Raj Singh, soon-im arathi.
And on adjusting for a daily Spotlight on, people ideas and
stories that matter, subscribe to us, we're available on t.i.
plus Spotify, Apple Google podcast and all other platforms
of your choice. For any new steps email us at
DIY podcast at times, internet dot in Today's episode was
produced by Jay Raj Singh, soon-im arathi.
And on adjusting for a daily Spotlight on, people ideas and
stories that matter, subscribe to us, we're available on t.i.
plus Spotify, Apple Google podcast and all other platforms
of your choice. For any new steps email us at
DIY podcast at times, internet dot in