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ANNIVERSARY ESSAY

Futile syllabus loading

malaise

KRISHNA KUMAR

HE TENDENCY TO FRAGMENT THE cur- Political masters of the education system
riculum has become endemic to our system of never tire of inventing new bits they
education. New bits and slices keep getting added
Tto school time-tables. However, most often, these believe are worthy of being glued into the
new bits remain outside the mainstream curriculum. That school routine. ese bits are wrapped in
mainstream consists of subjects for which exams are held
and regular tests are administered by way of preparing politically correct labels
children for exams.
Political masters of the system and the officials who
run it never tire of finding or inventing new bits they be- will implant scientific temper. A separate period for criti-
lieve are worthy of being glued into the school routine on cal thinking implies acknowledgement that science teach-
a daily, weekly basis. These additions are usually wrapped ing in the school is of poor quality. And as for love for
in politically correct labels. The latest example of such one’s country, how can a single period cultivate it if long
labels is the deshbhak ti curriculum introduced by the years of learning history, geography and literature don’t?
Delhi government. The deeper malaise that encourages the tendency to
How does one translate deshbhakti? Describing it as add single-focus bits to the curriculum is rooted in estab-
patriotism isn’t quite accurate. Deshp rem or love of coun- lished pedagogic practices. Conventional teaching tends
try would connote patriotism in normal times. Bhak ti to isolate subject content from any living experience.
involves the type of devotion that’s synonymous with wor- Teachers usually focus on helping children memorise. For
ship. That’s what the nation needs now. When our rivers these typical reasons, subject knowledge remains inert
are dying and the air is filled with toxic pollutants, it’s and inapplicable to real-life issues.
best to project the nation as an idol surrounded by young hus even an efficiency-enhancing subject loses its
worshippers. Tpotential. Take the example of computer education. It
The idea also goes well beyond patriotism. We have is taught in a vast number of schools in isolation from all
transformed into a land of worshippers who make no other subjects. Little children are made to cram the defi-
distinctions, nor brook any criticism. These are hardcore nitions of mouse and keyboard. So, a lot of our students
worshippers of the State. One wonders if a daily period of end up learning how computers work but can’t use one
less than an hour will be sufficient for such a grand aspi- to get a deeper grasp of the subject. Much is made of the
ration. And in senior grades, it will have to be one period Internet as a library of knowledge, but hardly any attempt
a week. At that stage, the nation will have to compete with is made to teach children to distinguish between fake and
more earthly demands like getting through NEET. authentic information.
No special insight is required to discern that this new The story of ‘educational technology’ (ET) is similar.
addition to the already crowded time-table of Delhi’s It is a compulsory subject in teacher training courses and
government schools fits in with the ethos of competitive also very popular. If you visit the website of any major
nationalism. Children studying in government schools university and look at the faculty directory, you will notice
can be made to spare a few periods for the larger political a lot of them specialise in ET. They wax eloquent in their
good. Private schools need not bother. They maintained ET classes, but they don’t — and most of them can’t -- use
their privileged indifference to earlier add-ons like ‘hap- ET resources to teach compulsory papers on psychology
piness’, ‘mindfulness’, entrepreneurship, etc. Government or sociology of education. No wonder trainee teachers
schools have enough time to add periods for these neces- don’t have a clue how ET can be used for the teaching of,
sary yearnings. say, English or physics.
It is not as if private schools have no flair for add- In its hurry to introduce so many add-ons, the Delhi
ons. For many years now, several private schools have government seems to have no time to wonder about the
devoted a full period for ‘values education’. They believe implicit message that allocating a separate period to ‘hap-
the antibodies injected into the values period will robustly piness’ sends. The message is that learning all the usual
counter all the corruption and chicanery that surrounds subjects doesn’t make children happy. The same applies
them. to deshbhakti. Teaching it separately raises doubts about
The tendency to introduce add-ons is rooted partly in the social and political knowledge imparted by schools
perceptual lapse and a deeper malaise. Authorities don’t and their ethos.
understand that values and happiness will result from
good teaching of any subject. Literature taught well will (Dr. Krishna Kumar is a former director of NCERT and NCTE and author of
impart humanistic values just as good science pedagogy Smaller Citizens (2021))

36 EDUCATIONWORLD NOVEMBER 2021