Education News

Delhi Content control proposal Although the septuagenarian Union minister of human resource development (aka education) Arjun Singh has numerous infirmities — he never answers letters or telephone calls and reportedly dozes off during meetings — his commitment to secular tenets enshrined in the Constitution is unquestionable. From the day he took charge of the ministry some 16 months ago, he has led an unremitting campaign to expurgate communal propaganda from textbooks used by the Hindu fundamentalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Muslim madrassa schools. Now in pursuance of the same objective, Singh has reportedly established a Textbook Regulatory Council (TRC) which will monitor and review textbook content mandated by all independent schools and examination boards including the Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE). The decision to set up the council has reportedly been prompted by educationist Zoya Hassan’s much-discussed report on textbooks used in private schools, which according to the writer “often contradict the basic tenets of the Indian Constitution and the national education policy”. Hassan’s report, which was debated last month by the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE), a body which comprises all state education ministers, detailed several communal organisations which publish their own textbooks. For instance, the Deoband (Uttar Pradesh)-based Darul Uloom Deoband and Nadvat-ul-Ulema, though affiliated to several school state boards, still publish texts over which the state governments have no control. Similarly, the RSS-run Shishu Mandirs also publish textbooks on non-mainstream subjects like Vedic maths and Sanskrit. Though schools affiliated to the state boards prescribe textbooks published by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) or its state-level counterparts, private schools often mandate supplementary texts published outside the government system. HRD ministry officials believe that the national interest demands that Central and state governments should be invested with powers to screen and regulate content in privately published textbooks as well. The council will have the power to act on complaints or take suo motu action to summon any textbook publisher for interrogation. It will also have the power to proscribe ‘objectionable’ writing from school books. Inevitably this initiative has stirred strong reactions in academia. While some approve of government supervision of school texts, others are cynical whether the TRC will be invested with sufficient autonomy. Comments Jyotirmoy Sikand, a retired government school principal: “No matter how many regulatory councils are set up, the very fact that the control of what is acceptable rests with a political party means autonomy will be diluted. The fact is that in India the linkage between politics and education can’t be wished away.” Nevertheless some measure of supervision in the interests of quality control is regarded necessary by most educationists. “In a country like India — where numerous state boards, different types of schools and political interests exist, it’s essential to have a central regulatory authority to monitor the books children read in school. This move was long overdue,” says Jyoti Bose, principal of Delhi’s Springdales School. Currently HRD ministry officials are working on drafting legislation to empower the TRC. Once the draft…