Jack and Jill went up what kind of hill, debate teachers

NEW DELHI, Aug 27: Bang in the middle of the controversy over saffronisation of education began today a workshop that would evolve strategies to implement culture studies in school curriculum.

An expert each from the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), Delhi University, Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan and the School of Planning and Architecture, besides teachers from a cross section of Delhi schools, are attending the workshop.

The tone for the two-day session, being conducted by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), was set by IGNCA member secretary N R Shetty who said there was a need to anchor school curriculum in the cultural milieu of the child.

"A complete debate on colonial perspectives on education needs to be attempted. The colonial system of education created a gap between education and lived reality.

"This system of education was ‘teaching oriented’ and not ‘learning oriented’...We continue to perpetuate representation of India and its psyche through categories that we borrow from the intellectual discourses of the ‘other’," he said.

Human Resource Development Ministry Secretary (Education) M K Kaw regretted the present school curriculum kept the child divorced from his cultural surroundings. "They are taught about humpty-dumpty and jack and jill, in some homes children are made to speak in English, a slavish mentality that encourages the children to look up to the west is inculcated," he said.

"It is only fools who refuse to look into the past in the mistaken belief that only the future matters," he added.

But if most of what is taught in the country’s educational institutions are mirror images of the ‘other’ then what should be included under the rubric "heritage activity" that is proposed to be started in schools?

Critics have pointed out that in many BJP-ruled states, the Sangh-affiliated Vidya Bharati Schools and Shishu Mandirs teach falsehoods as facts to push forward the Sangh’s ideas of nation, nationalism and culture.

They point out that included as ‘facts’ in some of these school textbooks are: That Jesus Christ roamed the Himalayas in search of ideas from Hinduism the cow is the mother of us all and that homer adopted Valmiki’s Ramayana into an epic called illiad.

Those attending the workshop here, however, point out that their agenda is different.

"Gandhiji’s Nai Taleem, Rabindranath Tagore’s Vishwabharati experiment, Shri Aurobindo’s and Vivekananda’s powerful insights on education can be the building blocks," Prof Shetty said.

"Don’t get confused about our efforts. This is not about saffronisation of education," said Mr Kailash Kumar Mishra of the IGNCA, who coordinated a sub-committee on ‘cultural heritage studies as a curricular subject in Indian schools’.

The workshop is debating the sub-committee’s draft recommendations.

The sub-committee was formed at an earlier IGNCA workshop which discussed the profile, content, course material and mode of transmission of a cultural heritage course to school children.

It was recommended that cultural heritage studies be named as heritage activity to be taught in all classes in schools. The sub-committee recommended that the curriculum should reflect and highlight the living urban and folk wisdom of the traditions of India.

Efforts to encourage children to learn about their cultural past in a play-like atmosphere, promote music, painting, theatre, recitation and such arts, involve students in knowing about the heritage materials (like temples, archaeological sites etc.), were among its other recommendations.

Prof. Shetty said: "We need to understand history from the perspectives of our diverse communities and peoples, their arts, literature and languages. Their achievements in science, mathematics, aesthetics and architecture is our history. Culture should be at the core of our education system."

The IGNCA’s efforts to inculcate ‘heritage activity’ as part of school curriculum are separate from those of the ncert, but can have a bearing on what is taught to students across the country.

The debate on how to integrate culture and education is an old one, but a reflection of the Sangh Parivar’s selective reading of the past in some school textbooks led to protests by academics and experts who say a more plural and secular history ought to be taught to children.

The NCERT, which has prepared a draft national curriculum framework for school education - to be introduced in CBSE schools across the country from next year - has suggested a course on the "art of healthy and productive living". (UNI)

Delhi Sikhs seek census review

NEW DELHI, Aug 27: A cross-section of the Sikh community in the capital today called for a review of Delhi’s Sikh population whose counting it said was flawed in the census, 2001.

"The Gurdwara Election Commission, an official body, in 1995 registered 326,000 Sikhs older than 21 as Gurdwara voters in Delhi, which is just part of Delhi’s entire Sikh population. But the census 2001 has put our total figure at 599,557 out of the total Delhi population of 13,382,976 which relatively means a considerable decline in Delhi’s Sikh population — something absolutely impossible," Mr Manjit Singh (GK), member of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC), told journalists here.

Mr Singh, who is also member of the newly-created Delhi Minorities’ Commission, said he had made a complaint to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee regarding "flaws" in the counting of Sikhs in the capital and sought an appointment with him in this regard.

He said he had told the Prime Minister there were nearly eleven lakh Sikhs in Delhi in 1979 when its total population was estimated at about 80 lakhs. "It is (thus) really painful that the census authorities have delibrately tried to belittle the strength of the Sikhs in Delhi, as a planned conspiracy to deprive the Sikhs of their varied rights," he alleged in the complaint.

"We will wait for two-three weeks, and if we receive no response from the Prime Minister, we will chalk out protests, or even challenge the census legally as a flaw of this nature in Delhi’s Sikh population will cause considerable harm to the interests of the Delhi Sikh community."

Mr Singh was accompanied at the news conference by Punjabi Academy Vice-Chairman Harmeet Singh, Akali leader and industrialist Avtar Singh Autopin, and DSGMC senior vice-chief Dalvinder Singh Ayur.

"The Census 2001 shows how mismanaged the counting was as Sikh population in Delhi has always stood at at least ten per cent of the total," Mr Autopin, also chairman of Delhi’s Mata Sundri College, said. (UNI)