SCHOOL CURRICULAM
 

8.01 The school curriculum is in a state of flux all over the world today. In developing countries it is generally criticized as being inadequate and outmoded, and not properly designed to meet the needs of modern times. Even in an educationally advanced nation like the USA, where the traditional curriculum had been radically transformed long ago under the impact of progressive education, the content of the school courses is being challenged by several scholars and university men, and a new reform movement has been started which may bring in sweeping curricular changes in school education. This widespread dissatisfaction with the curriculum is due to many causes. In the first place, the tremendous explosion of knowledge in recent years and the reformulation of the basic concepts in the physical, biological and social sciences have brought into sharp relief the inadequacies of existing school programmes. The gulf between the school and the university in the major academic disciplines, which was always wide, has become wider still with the rapid advance of science. Secondly, there has been a rethinking in educational circles about the nature and duration of the education that is imparted in the ordinary secondary school. Expert opinion now generally favours the lengthening of the period of general education and the postponement of specialized study to a later period in the secondary school course. Again, with the necessity of including more and more significant items in an already overpacked school curriculum, it is realized that there is a good deal of useless educational lumber in the school courses which can be safely discarded, and that more dynamic and stimulating methods can be developed for presenting essential knowledge. All these factors are responsible for the increasing pressure for the reform of the school curriculum.

8.02 Against the background of the striking curricular developments that are taking place abroad, the school curriculum in India will be found to be very narrowly conceived and largely out-of- date. Education is a three-fold process of imparting knowledge, developing skills

and inculcating proper interests, attitudes and values. Our schools (all also our colleges) are mostly concerned with the first part of the process-the imparting of knowledge-and carry out even this in an unsatisfactory way. The curriculum places a premium on bookish knowledge and rote learning, makes inadequate provision for practical

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activities and experiences, and is dominated by examinations, external and internal. Moreover, as the development of useful skills and the inculcation of the right kind of interests, attitudes and values are not given sufficient emphasis, the curriculum becomes not only out of step with modern knowledge, but also out of tune with the life of the people. There is thus urgent need to raise, upgrade and improve the school curriculum.

ESSENTIALS OF CURRICULAR DEVELOPMENT

8.03 Measures Needed for Curricular Development. Most of the curricular revision attempted so far has been of an ad hoc character- not generally preceded by careful research, not based on adequate expertise and not followed by such necessary supporting measures as the preparation of learning materials, the orientation of teachers or the provision of the needed physical facilities. What is worse, the curricula are prepared at the State level and are prescribed uniformly for all the schools in the State. Such a procedure cramps the freedom of headmasters and teachers and renders experimental work almost impossible. It also makes curriculum revision very difficult and infrequent. This problem which faces education at all stages is particularly acute at the school level. It is this weakness of school education that compels colleges to spend time on what is essentially school work; and the content of higher education cannot be adequately deepened until the school curricula are upgraded and made more challenging.

8.04 For upgrading the school curriculum, a number of important steps have to be taken. The more important of these are indicated below.

(1) Research in Curriculum. The first is the need for systematic curricular research so that the revision of the curriculum may be worked out as a well coordinated programme of improvement on the basis of the findings of experts instead of being rushed through haphazardly and in a piecemeal fashion, as often happens in many States today. Facilities for such research should be established in the universities, in the secondary training colleges, in the State Institutes of Education and in the State Boards of School Education. It would also be advantageous to have some experts in curriculum on the staff of the State Boards of School Education who would work in close collaboration with the State Evaluation Organizations and the State Institutes of Education.

(2) Preparation of Textbooks and Other Teaching Aids. Basic to the success of any attempt at curriculum improvement is the preparation

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of suitable textbooks, teachers' guides and other teaching and learning materials. These define the goals and the content of the new programmes in terms meaningful to the school, and as actual tools used by the teacher and the pupil, they lend substance and significance to the proposed changes.

(3) In-service Education of Teachers. In addition to this, it is necessary to make the teacher understand the chief features of the new curriculum with a view to developing improved teacher competence, better teaching skills, and a more sensitive awareness of the teaching-learning process in the changed situation. Accordingly, an extensive programme of in-service education, consisting of seminars and refresher courses, should be arranged to orient the teachers to the revised curriculum.

8.05 Relating Curricula to Available Facilities. A curriculum should be related to the quality of teachers, the facilities available in the school and the needs of the students with reference to their socio-economic background. These very immensely from one institution to another. Consequently, a single State curriculum designed to serve the needs of the average school ceases to be meaningful for the large variety of institutions in the States. It proves to be beyond the competence of the weaker institutions and falls to provide an adequate challenge to the better ones. The solution lies in making it possible for schools to devidse and adopt curricula suited to their own needs and to vie with one another in upgrading them.

8.06 Freedom to Schools to Adopt Experimental Curricula. Two steps are needed before this development can take place. The first is to schools to try out experimental curricula. The general rule should be that a school will follow the common curricula prescribed by the Department unless it has prepared alternative curricula of its own and adopts them with the prior approval of the Department. Such a provision is found in some States even today, but it exists only on paper. Most schools do not have the courage and the ability to take advantage of this freedom, and those that do embark on any bold curricular venture often find their enthusiasm dampened on account of the vagaries of an unimaginative educational administration. There is need for greater initiative and competence on the part of the schools and a more liberal attitude on the part of the Department for pro- moting experimentation. Teacher-training institutions having model or demonstration schools under them can give a lead in this matter. The same can be done by universities in the experimental schools which, as recommended by us, should be conducted by them for the improvement of quality in school education.

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8.07 Gradual Introduction of Advanced Curricula. The second, and even more significant step, would be for the State Boards of School Education to prepare advanced curricula and introduce them pro- gressively in all the schools and all the subjects through a phased programme spread over a number of years. For this purpose, the Boards should finalize two sets of curricula, advanced and ordinary. The ordinary curriculum would be common for all the schools. The advanced curriculum would be one which can at present be adopted only by the good schools but which may become the ordinary curriculum, let us say, about ten years hence. For instance, we have recommended in Chapter II that the standard reached in the external examination at the end of class X at present should be gradually raised, within a period of about ten years, to the standard of the present higher secondary (i.e., the standard reached at the end of class XI). In terms of this recommendation, the present curriculum for classes I to X would be the ordinary curriculum, and the proposed curriculum for the same classes (with the content raised to the higher secondary level) would be the advanced curriculum. This is stated by way of illustration only, and we would like to stress that an advanced curriculum does not necessarily imply the teaching of topics generally prescribed for higher classes. It may also mean a study of the given subject at much greater depth than is done in the ordinary curriculum.

8.08 State Boards of School Education should prescribe conditions for introducing the advanced curriculum in a given subject in terms of the qualifications and competence of the teachers and the facilities required. Only schools which satisfy these conditions should be allowed to introduce the advanced courses. The introduction of advanced courses would involve the following considerations:

-A school need not adopt the advanced curriculum in all the subjects. It may begin with one or two subjects, and then gradually cover more subjects, or even the entire course in a wellplanned programme suited to its convenience.

- it should-be open to a student in a school which has not adopted the advanced curriculum to prepare himself privately for it if he so desires.

- The Board of School Education should arrange for examining candidates at the external examinations in both the advanced and the ordinary courses.

- A beginning should be made with the introduction of advanced courses in some subjects at least such as science, mathematics and languages, in those schools which are ready (or can be helped to get ready in a short time) to adopt them.

- In course of time, more and more schools should be assisted to

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adopt the advanced courses by securing qualified teachers and providing the needed facilities. Every year such `aspirant' schools should be identified and given the necessary assistance to develop the advanced curriculum. An essential part of this assistance consists in preparing the teachers for handling the new courses.

Under a programme of this type, it will be possible to introduce advanced courses progressively in one school after another until most of the schools and almost all school subjects are covered. Once the programme is initiated, a healthy competition will arise among several schools to opt for the advanced courses, which will have much prestige value. If this enthusiasm is properly utilized and encouraged, the curriculum will be upgraded in due course in all the institutions and the whole process can then be restarted towards some higher goal. We will thus have a built-in mechanism in the educational system which will operate for a continual deepening of the content of school education.

8.09 Subject Teachers' Associations. We would like the State governments to encourage the formation of subject teachers' associations for the different school subjects. This will stimulate initiative and experimentation and assist in the revision and upgrading of curricula through the provision of better teaching materials and the use of improved techniques of teaching and evaluation. It should be a responsibility of the State Education Departments, working through the State Boards of School Education, to assist the subject teachers' associations to hold periodical seminars and conferences and to conduct journals of their own, most of which would naturally be in the regional languages. The NCERT should coordinate the work of each State-level association, help the formation of all-India subject teachers' associations and assist in running journals at the national level, in English and in Hindi, for the use of teachers all over India.

ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM

8.10 Curriculum of the First Ten Years. We shall now consider the broad features of the curriculum as it should be organized to achieve the objectives of school education. For the first seven years of schooling, as we have indicated elsewhere, there will be an undifferentiated course of general education for all. Of those who continue their studies after class VII, an estimated 20 per cent are expected to be provided with full-time or part-time vocational education, the nature and scope of which have been indicated in the previous chapter. The remaining

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80 per cent of the pupils at school should, in our opinion, continue to receive general education for a further period of three years, without any diversification of studies, but with provision of courses at two levels and of options in creative activities and types of work- experience. In other words, for the vast majority of pupils there would be a single curricular stream from class I to class X, ending with the first external or public examination, and there would be no `streaming' or specialization in this general course.

8.11 Scheme of Multipurpose Schools. It will be seen that this proposal is quite different from the scheme of higher secondary education recommended by the Secondary Education Commission, which has been under implementation in certain States during the last ten years. This scheme required a diversification of studies at the end of class VIII and the provision of a variety of courses for students in classes IX to XI. A number of multipurpose higher secondary schools have been opened offering different groups of elective subjects to students in the last three classes. Students are divided into streams according to their optional groups, and the opportunities for further education are determined, by and large, in terms of the groups selected.

8.12 In discussing the structure of the educational system,81 we referred to the basic defects of the higher secondary pattern. The multipurpose schools, which should really be called multilateral schools, reproduce these defects in an intensified form. Most of the students who Join these schools have only one purpose in view-to pursue their studies further at a university. Consequently, streams like fine arts and agriculture and even the technical stream, which do not lead to popular courses at the university stage, are taken up by few students, and the science course is at a high premium. At the present stage of our economy, a Multiplicity of expensive courses catering for the special interests of small groups of students cannot be prescribed in schools of general education. An analysis of the different groups of electives in the existing multipurpose schools will show that comparatively few schools have more than three diversified groups, so that one of the main objects for which the scheme of diversification was introduced-to provide a variety of courses to suit the different interests, aptitudes and interests of adolescent students-has not been realized.

8.13 One of the major weaknesses in the scheme is that specialization of studies begins too early. We have seen schools where, at the age of 13 or 14, the students are classified as belonging to the pre-engineering or the pre-medical section. The streaming of pupils in this way into

81 Chapter II.

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specialized groups from class IX upwards is undesirable. We mentioned earlier82 that recent world trends in secondary education are in the direction of lengthening the period of general education and postponing diversification and specialization to the second cycle or senior stage of secondary education. We, therefore, recommend that in the non-vocational schools a common curriculum of general education should be provided in the first ten years of school education and that diversification of studies and specialization should begin only at the higher secondary stage.