State dumps Shakespeare

Acirc;reg;MUMBAI, January 25: William Shakespeare, Keats, Shelly, Robert Browning. Two years after the new-course English text books were ...

Acirc;reg;MUMBAI, January 25: William Shakespeare, Keats, Shelly, Robert Browning. Two years after the new-course English text books were introduced at the junior-college level minus these names, teachers are yet to come to grips with the omissions.

The emphasis of the new text books for standards 11 and 12 is now on communicative, rather than literary skills, which some teachers feel would benefit vernacular students.

Hectic orientation programmes, which ended recently, have been conducted to equip the teachers with the requisite skills to teach the new course. Professor Isaac Samuel of Chetana College Bandra, main co-ordinator for the orientation programmes, admitted that there was still confusion. 8220;They the teachers are yet to come to terms with the fact that some of the classics have been dropped,8221; he said.

The orientation programmes for English lecturers were necessitated by poor performance of students in the last HSC board exams. 8220;In the Mumbai divisional board itself, 27 colleges had an alarming zero pass percentage. Part of the blame must fall on the teachers who have not been able to adapt to the new course,8221; he said. 8220;However,8221; he reasoned, 8220;one must understand that vernacular students, who constitute 95 per cent of the student population in the state, cannot really comprehend the classics. Shakespeare8217;s works, for example, are like an alien language to them.8221;

Does that mean that the syllabus was simplified only to help more students pass the HSC exams? Professor Dolores Fernandes of Bhavan8217;s College, Andheri, thinks so. 8220;Chapters and poems from the new course books have been deliberately cut out, and most of the study matter in the new course is just poor translations of the works of some Indian writers.

Professor Nagesh Havanur of Hinduja college was more vehement. 8220;These advocates of communicative skills are philistines. They are opposed to Shakespeare in principle. But even while form has now become more important than content, the authorities have not answered one fundamental question: Communicate what?8217;,8221; he said.

He cited the example of the Rapid Reader text for standard 12. In this, the bio-data of a candidate has been given under the topic Application for a job8217;. 8220;Part of this biodata reads: games and sports 8212; third in high jump; elocution/debate 8212; nil; any other 8212; nil. We feel embarrassed to teach such stuff in class,8221; he said.