Recently The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) been in the news a lot for removing few chapters and topics from its textbooks. According to a report in the Indian Express, the decision to eliminated chapters is a part of the curriculum rationalization exercise initiated by the human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar to reduce the “burden” on students.
As a part of curriculum rationalization exercise NCERT recently removed Darwin’s theory from syllabus for the students of Class 9 and Class 10 but its there in the textbooks of class 11.
In response to this More than 1,800 scientists, teachers, educators, and science enthusiasts from across India have signed an open letter to NCERT condemning the removal of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution from the science textbooks for Classes 9 and 10. The Breakthrough Science Society released a press statement on April 20 that includes the letter titled ‘An Appeal Against Exclusion of Evolution from Curriculum,’ which is signed by representatives of notable scientific institutions such as the Indian Institute of Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and Indian Institute of Technology.
Few months ago The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) had announced its decision to erase certain chapters on the Mughal Empire from class 12 history textbooks.
This move of erasing Mughal history from syllabus attracted severe criticism from various faction of political arena. Uttar Pradesh announced that government schools will adopt the NCERT’s new class 12 history textbooks in which portions about Mughal courts have been removed from this academic session. As part of its ‘syllabus rationalization” exercise last year, the NCERT, citing “overlapping” and “irrelevant as reasons, dropped certain portions from the syllabus including lessons on Mughal courts from its class 12 textbooks.
SO WHAT IS NCERT CURRICULUM RATIONALIZATION EXERCISE?
In February 2018, the human resource development minister announced that NCERT syllabus would be reduced in the next one or two years from class 1 to 12. “We have received more than one lakh suggestions…I hope this year (the new academic session) 10-15% of the syllabus will be reduced, and then next year further reduction can happen,” he said. Amita Wattal, the principal of Springdales School in Delhi, said, “A lot of the content in the textbooks is really outdated and irrelevant now. A review of these books was really needed. But I hope the review was done in a scientific manner, and the NCERT has not removed any important portions of the syllabus.” Javadekar said that there were nearly 7-8 million teachers in the school system, which he said was adequate but their deployment was a problem. Under HRD ministry plan, if a state fails to efficiently deploy teachers across its schools, it could impact release of their central grant. This is being done to ensure a healthy student teacher ratio in all government schools and to reduce the number of single-teacher schools.
NCERT rationalized textbooks across subjects using this criterion. This exercise took place in 2020-2021 and the details were made public for the benefit of schools in 2022-23. Schools accepted these changes and modified their curricula and assessment policies. Students also expressed satisfaction. After the books were released in the market for the year 2023-24, the content that was rationalized drew media attention, especially the portrayal of the Mughals in history textbooks and the coverage of Mahatma Gandhi in history and political science textbooks.
NCERT took care of the connection among concepts/themes and no learning outcome was missed. Allegations about deleting the Mughal period are wrong. Those who hold this view need to go through all textbooks from Classes 6-12 to ensure that whatever is removed or rationalized has been included – either in the same subject in different classes or in a different subject in the same class. For instance, content about Mahatma Gandhi finds adequate space in the history textbook, even if some aspects have been removed from the political science textbook. Given the multidisciplinary focus as per the NEP 2020, teachers are expected to deal with themes while taking care of their connections in other subject areas.