NCERT: Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav informed the council that a rationalisation process carried out by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) had “mutilated” textbooks “beyond recognition” and made them “academically dysfunctional”. Palshikar and Yadav asked the council to remove their names from the textbooks that were initially released in 2006-07 based on the 2005 version of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) in a letter to NCERT head Dinesh Prasad Saklani on Thursday. Their names are given in a “letter to students” and in the section at the start of each book that describes the team that developed the textbook.
Renowned Academics Express Concern Over Controversial Changes in NCERT Textbooks
Yadav is the creator of Swaraj India, while Palshikar is the principal editor of the journal Studies in Indian Politics and a former political science professor at Pune’s Savitribai Phule University. Their letter to NCERT was written in the midst of a debate over the removal of a number of subjects from the curriculum in 2022, including passages on the theory of evolution, allusions to the Cold War, the Mughal courts, the industrial revolution, the Gujarat riots of 2002, the role of agriculture in the Indian economy, and a section on democratic challenges. The posture of Hindu radicals against Mahatma Gandhi’s efforts to promote Hindu-Muslim brotherhood and the banning of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh following his assassination are two subjects that have been taken out of political science curricula. According to NCERT representatives, the modifications were meant to “reduce the content load on students” in anticipation of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2022. New textbooks released earlier this year incorporated the modifications. The council stated that the omissions in political science textbooks may have been an oversight in April and that “minor changes need not be notified” because they were implemented at the experts’ advice. Palshikar and Yadav claimed in their letter that they were unable to recognise any “pedagogical rationale” for the changes made to NCERT textbooks.
Academic Experts Disavow NCERT’s Controversial Textbook Changes and Request Removal of Names
“Despite the rationalisation used to justify the changes, we are unable to see any educational justification in this situation. The text has been completely altered, as we discover. Numerous and unreasonable cuts, as well as significant deletions, frequently without any effort made to fill the resulting gaps, are made. We were never asked for input or even told about these changes,” they claimed. “We expressly state that we fully disagree with NCERT in this regard,” they continued, “even if they did consult other experts for their decision on these cuts and deletions.” Palshikar and Yadav further stated that they were “embarrassed that our names should be mentioned as chief advisors to these mutilated and academically dysfunctional textbooks” because they were “organically associated with the preparation of these textbooks”. “We want to make it clear that we completely oppose the practise of changing the text in the guise of rationalisation. We both want to distance ourselves from these textbooks and ask the NCERT to remove our names as chief advisors from all political science textbooks for classes 9 through 12, as well as from the list of textbook development team at the beginning of each textbook, which is mentioned in the “letter of the students,” they continued. According to NCERT’s statement from the previous year, the rationalisation process took into account a number of factors, including “overlapping” topics, subjects that were “not relevant or outdated in the current context,” subjects that were “difficult” or “easily accessible to children and can be learned through self-learning or peer-learning,” and subjects that were both.
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