Opinion Whose line is it anyway?

Research on the use of political cartoons has a long history and can help clarify the pedagogical implications of specific cartoons. For example,Klaus Dodds of the University of London and Paul Armstrong of Leeds University have argued that for a nation keen on developing civic knowledge,engagement and certain attitudes as educational goals,there must be pedagogical tools like political cartoons that can unsettle accepted knowledge. Others have pointed out that if the educational goal is to help children understand the codes of the adult world, there should be visual analogies,multimodal texts and true representations of lived history. Otherwise,the students’ opportunities to learn will be limited. If the educational goal is skill development,then political cartoons have been shown to aid children in developing critical thinking skills,writing skills,verbal questioning skills and in reading multimodal texts. These are some of the ways in which research on political cartoons can be leveraged to improve our understanding of what the cartoons under scrutiny have to offer. We can and should ask: in what ways and to what extent do these particular cartoons seek to unsettle accepted knowledge? Are they helping children understand the codes of the adult world? Are there skills that students are developing as a result of these particular cartoons? If the answer is that they are ineffectual,then the removal is justifiable,because they are then,in fact,“inappropriate”.

The question of “appropriate” or “inappropriate” in an educational context can and should only mean one thing: whether it is educative or “mis-educative”. “Mis-educative”,a term the American educational philosopher John Dewey used almost 80 years ago,is helpful even today. A mis-educative learning tool arrests or distorts growth. It has the potential to make children callous,put them in a rut and promote in them a careless attitude. Only a well-specified inquiry,girded by rigorous research,can help determine if any of these cartoons poses a threat to the educative value of textbooks.

A possible way to reexamine the textbooks could be borrowed from a study by the Thomas Fordham Institute,a think-tank in Washington DC. Its “A Consumer’s Guide to High School History Textbooks” evaluated the 12 most widely used textbooks on American history and world history in the US. Education historian Diane Ravitch brought together a panel of experts to develop a dozen criteria to help appraise each textbook. The criteria focus on a book’s historical accuracy,coherence,balance and writing quality. The reviewers found that most textbooks were abysmal. The best ones were merely adequate. It was not that the reviewers found grave errors or controversial issues. Rather,the textbooks,on the whole,included a great deal of information that was unimportant,uninteresting and uncontroversial. In the report,Ravitch wrote,“Despite their glitzy graphics and vivid pictures,they all suffer from dull prose and the absence of a ‘story’.” She goes on to say,“The writing and editing are done with one eye on the marketplace,the other on sundry interest groups.”

It seems that the effort here in India,which resulted in creative,thought-provoking and well-written textbooks and which has gained the favour of teachers and students alike,is destined to be undone. In their place,it seems,a Niagara of unimportant,uninteresting and uncontroversial textbooks are set to flood schools. A way out of this fatalistic path might be to actually assess these textbooks for their pedagogical value. The criteria used by Ravitch and her committee of pedagogical and historical experts can be helpful in considering the educational value of the textbooks under scrutiny today. The NCERT faculty too must have developed a host of criteria. Whatever be the criteria,there should be some rigorous,research-based method to guide the decision-making process,as opposed to rejecting cartoons on the anaemic grounds of “political sensitivity” and “ambiguity”. Then the discussion can turn away from narrow considerations of personal interests and sensitivities,and towards a rational debate that can serve as a vivid example of politics at its best.

The writer,with the Regional Institute of Education,Mysore,works on educational reform and teacher education practices
express@expressindia.com