Those rejection slips

WHAT does NCERT stand for? Certainly not for National Controversy on Education and Rewriting of Textbooks, as it would appear to anyone who ...

WHAT does NCERT stand for? Certainly not for National Controversy on Education and Rewriting of Textbooks, as it would appear to anyone who has read newspapers or surfed news channels in the past year.

It happens to be the National Council for Educational Research and Training, set up in 1961 to assist the Ministry of Education rechristened Human Resource Development by Rajiv Gandhi in formulating policies for school education. One of the Council8217;s activities is to research and publish textbooks for school children across the country.

While traditionally CBSE-and Central schools followed NCERT textbooks in toto, the states adopted some of them entirely the sciences, mathematics and added regional flavours to others history, geography, language and literature.But the basic structure of the NCERT8217;s textbooks was sacrosanct. As was the Council8217;s standing.

But in Bengal red is read.
It has to be

IN Marxist-ruled Bengal, there is a pronounced Left bias in the history syllabus prescribed by the West Bengal School Education Board. So much so, the age-old emphasis on India8217;s freedom struggle or the Indian national movement in the history syllabus for school students gives way to 8216;8216;socialist8217;8217; and 8216;8216;working class8217;8217; movements all over the world.
It is in the history syllabus for Class VIII that the shift in emphasis from national history to world history is most evident. The Indian freedom struggle has been compressed into two short takes to make space for new chapters on socialist movements in the South-East Asian countries.
But the Left bias is apparent in the history syllabus as early as in Class V. 8216;8216;It8217;s very subtle, but undoubtedly an attempt to introduce Leftist thinking,8221; says a teacher of history. Terms like socialism, equality, fascism, working class, democracy and regionalism are used liberally; Ho Chi Minh, Karl Marx and Engels rub shoulders with the leaders of the freedom struggle.

8212;Subrata Nagcoudhury

In the chaos over NCERT8217;s textbooks and the debated-to-death National Curriculum Policy, no one really knows who is reading what. NCERT director J S Rajput would have us believe that secretly all state governments 8212; barring the dogma-ridden, Left-ruled West Bengal 8212; are following or adopting the Council8217;s new texts.

But the Delhi branch of the NCERT, the State Council for Educational Research and Training, for instance, has its own committee to write its version of history, science, language, mathematics and all other subjects. Says Janaki Rajan, director, Delhi SCERT, is more forthcoming: 8216;8216;We will have our own books on all the subjects. The first drafts have begun to come. So, we aren8217;t ready to talk about it.8217;8217;

Rajan, however, careful to defend the SCERT8217;s position: 8216;8216;Every state council has the mandate to publish its own books.8221;

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But the very fact that Delhi University8217;s well-known education expert Krishna Kumar 8212; a strong critic of Rajput8217;s new texts 8212; was chosen to head the Delhi SCERT8217;s our-own-book committee, speaks for itself.

With the assembly election pitting the BJP against the Congress, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, which used to adopt the NCERT8217;s science and maths package in toto, are following Delhi. Punjab can8217;t be far behind. Its education minister had stomped out of the last NCERT8217;s general body meeting, rejecting the new textbooks.

As for the region beyond the Vindhyas, even the NCERT does not want to make any tall claims there. Leading historian M G S Narayanan, chairman, Indian Council for Historical Research the NCERT8217;s sister body has given lectures in the south pointing out the numerous errors about southern Indian history in NCERT8217;s new books.

That leaves us with the CBSE and the Central schools. which got the new books too late to include them in the session.

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Meanwhile, NCERT printed multiple editions to weed out the errors on Mahatma Gandhi8217;s assassination, the mix-up between General R E Dyer and Michael O8217;Dwyer 8212; one ordered the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre, the other was Punjab8217;s governor at the time 8212; and Mussolini8217;s March to Rome, all of which made great news-copy.

But the question remains: Who is reading NCERT books? Apart from the Left intellectuals determined to find errors and NCERT book editors equally determined to cover up errors?

Perhaps, J038;K Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed will emerge as NCERT8217;s unlikely guardian angel. Without any textbooks for his state8217;s school children, Mufti has agreed to buy the Rajput package with a little modification on Kashmir.