Dialectics of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Evaluation
Amarendra Behera, Reader
Curriculum Group, NCERT, Sri Aurobindo Marg,
New Delhi-110016
India, the largest democracy of the world is only second to China in its population i.e. more than 100 crore (Census of India 2001). After 62years of Independence it has been able to achieve only 67.3 (Department of Education, MHRD, GOI-2008) per cent literacy while its Asian counterparts like China, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand have crossed the threshold by achieving cent per cent literacy long ago. If that is our place in the nations of this fast advancing world, it is more than obvious as to what will be pace of our development? A developing society like ours should take into account not merely the needs of a growing economy but also reflect the spirit of a dynamic, liberal and growth oriented society. Education has always been perceived not only as an agent of social change but the very basis of creating a dynamic, liberal and growth oriented society.
Further, there is a deep disquiet about several aspects of our educational practice: (a) the school system is characterised by an inflexibility which makes it resistant to change; (b) learning has become an isolated activity which does not encourage children to link knowledge with their lives in any organic or vital way; (c) schools promote a regime of thought which discourages creative thinking and insights; (d) what is presented and transmitted in the name of learning in schools bypasses vital dimensions of the human capacity to create new knowledge; (e) the “future” of the child has taken centre-stage to the near exclusion of the child’s “present”, which is detrimental to the wellbeing of the child as well as the society and the nation. The basic concerns of education—to enable children to make sense of life and develop their potential, to define and pursue a purpose and recognise the right of others to do the same—stand uncontested and valid even today. If anything, we need to reiterate the mutual interdependence of humans, and as Tagore says, we achieve our greatest happiness when we realise ourselves through others. Equally, we need to reaffirm our commitment to the concept of equality, within the landscape of cultural and socioeconomic diversity from which children enter into the portals of the school. Individual aspirations in a competitive economy tend to reduce education to becoming an instrument of material success. The perception, which places the individual in exclusively competitive relationships, puts unreasonable stress on children, and thus distorts values. It also makes learning from each other a matter of little consequence. Education must be able to promote values which foster peace, humaneness and tolerance in a multi-cultural society.
The problem of curriculum load on children is another important issue. A committee appointed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in the early 1990s had analysed this problem, tracing its roots to the system’s tendency to treat information as knowledge. In its report Learning Without Burden the committee pointed out that learning at school cannot become a joyful experience unless we change our perception of the child as a receiver of knowledge and move beyond the convention to use textbooks as the basis for examination. The impulse to teach everything arises from lack of faith in children’s own creative instinct and the capacity to construct knowledge out of their experience. The size of textbooks has been growing over the years, even as the pressure to include new topics mounts and the effort to synthesise knowledge and treat it holistically gets weaker. Flabby textbooks and the syllabi they cover symbolise a systemic failure to address children in a child-centred manner. Those who write such encyclopaedic textbooks are guided by the popular belief that there has been an explosion of knowledge. Therefore, vast amounts of knowledge should be pushed down little children’s throats in order to catch up with other countries. Learning Without Burden recommended a major change in the design of syllabi and textbooks, and also a change in the social ethos, which places stress on children to become aggressively competitive and exhibit precocity. To make teaching a means of harnessing the child’s creative nature, the report recommended a fundamental change in the matter of organising the school curriculum, and also in the system of examination which forces children to memorise information and to reproduce it. Learning for the sake of being examined in a mechanical manner takes away the joy of being young and delinks school knowledge from everyday experience.
The National Curriculum Framework (NCF)-2005 which has been developed after a country wide debate and deliberation addresses some basic questions related to development of curriculum:(a) What educational purposes should the schools seek to achieve?, (b) What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to achieve these purposes? (c) How can these educational experiences be meaningfully organised? (d) How do we ensure that these educational purposes are indeed being accomplished? The fact that learning has become a source of burden and stress on children is an evidence of a deep distortion in educational aims and quality. To correct this distortion, the NCF-2005 proposes five guiding principles for curriculum development: (i) connecting knowledge to life outside the school; (ii) ensuring that learning shifts away from rote methods; (iii) enriching the curriculum so that it goes beyond textbooks; (iv) making examinations more flexible and integrating them with classroom life; and (v) nurturing an overriding identity informed by caring concerns within the democratic polity of the country.
Besides, while putting the child at the front seat, the NCF-2005 has recommended for constructivists approach in teaching and learning (for construction of knowledge and fostering creativity, connecting knowledge across disciplinary boundaries for insightful construction of knowledge), providing learning experiences for developing critical perspectives on social issues (critical pedagogy), plurality of textbooks and other material incorporating local knowledge mediated through constitutional values, scientific temper and principles.
While discouraging the cut throat competition, the NCF-2005 emphasises on group learning strategies and states that examinations needs to be non-threatening, flexible and integrated with everyday classroom life. Also the NCF has advocated for a shift from content based testing to problem solving and competency based assessment, examination of shorter duration, flexible time limit, evaluation by peers, maintaining of daily diary by both teachers and students, maintaining portfolio etc.
In order to ensure effective transaction of the curriculum there must be some system for co-ordination across the key departments, and it is the school curriculum that must lead programmes rather than the stand-alone programmes intervening in the school curriculum (NCF-2005). Also the National Curriculum Framework-2005 has emphatically mentioned about cooperation and coordination among various agencies (at National, state and local level); encouraging grater communication and transparency between different structures and levels of decision making; and convergence of programmes as systemic issues and indicators of quality schooling. Then it is not very far that the Constitutional vision of India as a secular, egalitarian and pluralistic society founded on the values of equality and social justice, will be grooming with the fruit of a national system of education and provide opportunities for nurturing independence of thought and action, sensitivity to others, participation in democratic process with the idea of living together, and the ability to contribute to economic processes and social change.
Amarendra Behera, Reader
Curriculum Group, NCERT, Sri Aurobindo Marg,
New Delhi-110016
India, the largest democracy of the world is only second to China in its population i.e. more than 100 crore (Census of India 2001). After 62years of Independence it has been able to achieve only 67.3 (Department of Education, MHRD, GOI-2008) per cent literacy while its Asian counterparts like China, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand have crossed the threshold by achieving cent per cent literacy long ago. If that is our place in the nations of this fast advancing world, it is more than obvious as to what will be pace of our development? A developing society like ours should take into account not merely the needs of a growing economy but also reflect the spirit of a dynamic, liberal and growth oriented society. Education has always been perceived not only as an agent of social change but the very basis of creating a dynamic, liberal and growth oriented society.
Further, there is a deep disquiet about several aspects of our educational practice: (a) the school system is characterised by an inflexibility which makes it resistant to change; (b) learning has become an isolated activity which does not encourage children to link knowledge with their lives in any organic or vital way; (c) schools promote a regime of thought which discourages creative thinking and insights; (d) what is presented and transmitted in the name of learning in schools bypasses vital dimensions of the human capacity to create new knowledge; (e) the “future” of the child has taken centre-stage to the near exclusion of the child’s “present”, which is detrimental to the wellbeing of the child as well as the society and the nation. The basic concerns of education—to enable children to make sense of life and develop their potential, to define and pursue a purpose and recognise the right of others to do the same—stand uncontested and valid even today. If anything, we need to reiterate the mutual interdependence of humans, and as Tagore says, we achieve our greatest happiness when we realise ourselves through others. Equally, we need to reaffirm our commitment to the concept of equality, within the landscape of cultural and socioeconomic diversity from which children enter into the portals of the school. Individual aspirations in a competitive economy tend to reduce education to becoming an instrument of material success. The perception, which places the individual in exclusively competitive relationships, puts unreasonable stress on children, and thus distorts values. It also makes learning from each other a matter of little consequence. Education must be able to promote values which foster peace, humaneness and tolerance in a multi-cultural society.
The problem of curriculum load on children is another important issue. A committee appointed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in the early 1990s had analysed this problem, tracing its roots to the system’s tendency to treat information as knowledge. In its report Learning Without Burden the committee pointed out that learning at school cannot become a joyful experience unless we change our perception of the child as a receiver of knowledge and move beyond the convention to use textbooks as the basis for examination. The impulse to teach everything arises from lack of faith in children’s own creative instinct and the capacity to construct knowledge out of their experience. The size of textbooks has been growing over the years, even as the pressure to include new topics mounts and the effort to synthesise knowledge and treat it holistically gets weaker. Flabby textbooks and the syllabi they cover symbolise a systemic failure to address children in a child-centred manner. Those who write such encyclopaedic textbooks are guided by the popular belief that there has been an explosion of knowledge. Therefore, vast amounts of knowledge should be pushed down little children’s throats in order to catch up with other countries. Learning Without Burden recommended a major change in the design of syllabi and textbooks, and also a change in the social ethos, which places stress on children to become aggressively competitive and exhibit precocity. To make teaching a means of harnessing the child’s creative nature, the report recommended a fundamental change in the matter of organising the school curriculum, and also in the system of examination which forces children to memorise information and to reproduce it. Learning for the sake of being examined in a mechanical manner takes away the joy of being young and delinks school knowledge from everyday experience.
The National Curriculum Framework (NCF)-2005 which has been developed after a country wide debate and deliberation addresses some basic questions related to development of curriculum:(a) What educational purposes should the schools seek to achieve?, (b) What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to achieve these purposes? (c) How can these educational experiences be meaningfully organised? (d) How do we ensure that these educational purposes are indeed being accomplished? The fact that learning has become a source of burden and stress on children is an evidence of a deep distortion in educational aims and quality. To correct this distortion, the NCF-2005 proposes five guiding principles for curriculum development: (i) connecting knowledge to life outside the school; (ii) ensuring that learning shifts away from rote methods; (iii) enriching the curriculum so that it goes beyond textbooks; (iv) making examinations more flexible and integrating them with classroom life; and (v) nurturing an overriding identity informed by caring concerns within the democratic polity of the country.
Besides, while putting the child at the front seat, the NCF-2005 has recommended for constructivists approach in teaching and learning (for construction of knowledge and fostering creativity, connecting knowledge across disciplinary boundaries for insightful construction of knowledge), providing learning experiences for developing critical perspectives on social issues (critical pedagogy), plurality of textbooks and other material incorporating local knowledge mediated through constitutional values, scientific temper and principles.
While discouraging the cut throat competition, the NCF-2005 emphasises on group learning strategies and states that examinations needs to be non-threatening, flexible and integrated with everyday classroom life. Also the NCF has advocated for a shift from content based testing to problem solving and competency based assessment, examination of shorter duration, flexible time limit, evaluation by peers, maintaining of daily diary by both teachers and students, maintaining portfolio etc.
In order to ensure effective transaction of the curriculum there must be some system for co-ordination across the key departments, and it is the school curriculum that must lead programmes rather than the stand-alone programmes intervening in the school curriculum (NCF-2005). Also the National Curriculum Framework-2005 has emphatically mentioned about cooperation and coordination among various agencies (at National, state and local level); encouraging grater communication and transparency between different structures and levels of decision making; and convergence of programmes as systemic issues and indicators of quality schooling. Then it is not very far that the Constitutional vision of India as a secular, egalitarian and pluralistic society founded on the values of equality and social justice, will be grooming with the fruit of a national system of education and provide opportunities for nurturing independence of thought and action, sensitivity to others, participation in democratic process with the idea of living together, and the ability to contribute to economic processes and social change.
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