Textbooks are the pivot of modern-day education systems. Preparing textbooks requires scholars, academics, and teachers familiar with child psychology and the process of growing up, stage-wise requirements of the learning ladder and, also the expectations of the testing agencies. Authors must also be well-versed in the ever-changing pedagogy, issues like curriculum load, burden of the bag, and all that snatches the joys of childhood and adolescence from the children.
No author of a textbook can ignore the given: “It is the supreme art of a teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge!” Textbooks can be prepared only through cumulative inputs and combined efforts of experts.
Textbooks at national level are prepared by the NCERT through a very well-evolved process. These books receive widespread appreciation, and acceptance. State government agencies normally develop their own textbooks incorporating local elements of curriculum, and keeping the NCERT books as the model for guidance.
Things are, however, not as simple and linear as there are private publishers, private schools, commercial considerations, unscrupulous practices and nexus among the corrupt. Often, state governments approve privately published textual materials after ‘scrutiny’. CBSE-affiliated schools have the liberty of using books of their choice up to Class VIII; private publishers and schools are pretty pleased about it. Recently, the CBSE ordered the use of NCERT books in its affiliated schools in all classes. Protests followed and, once again, it is practically status quo ante.
What happens in India is, indeed, a global phenomenon. Eminent physicist Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate of 1965, once became a member of the State Curriculum Commission of California that was supposed to vet the quality of textbooks. He wrote a chapter, ‘Judging Books by Their Covers’, which describes how the “experts” had evaluated the book that was not ready but its cover page was indeed submitted to beat the submission deadline. In this chapter, Feynman wrote: “As a rule, however, state agencies don’t want legitimate evaluations of textbooks that publishers submit for adoption, because the agencies are allied with the publishers.
The adoption proceedings staged by these agencies are not designed to help school districts, protect students or to serve the interests of taxpayers. Rather, they are designed to serve the interests of the publishers, to generate approvals and certifications for the publisher’s books, and to help sell these books to local schools.” Without any substantial changes, it could be a statement from one of State Textbook Approval Agency of India.
In India, private schools enjoy unfettered power, as even the most powerful and resourceful go to them for admission of their wards. Often schools compete among themselves in prescribing additional textbooks, supplementary books, support books, even answers to exercises contained in textbooks. That results in avoidable burden on children. Schools blame it on tough competition ahead to get into prestigious professional institutes, or to get admission in institutions abroad. In all this the bare basics of developing professionally-sound textbooks are lost.
The quest for better textbooks must continue. Einstein once said, “Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind from its creative pursuits”. This could be an enlightening input for textbook developers. He once told a firm believer in rote-memory that there was no need to get the whole book by heart. It is enough for you to know where you can get information. Such considerations could help develop new textbooks, free from obsolesce, incorporating the new and necessary, igniting creativity and, permitting children “learning to learn”.
J S Rajput
Former director of the NCERT
rajput_js@yahoo.co.in