Rajasthan textbook politics: Many changes made, but not ones most needed

As Congress and BJP spar over Savarkar and Maharana Pratap, changes to curriculum that could improve learning go unacknowledged

Frequent changes over the past few years in Rajasthan's school textbooks have become a perfect example of how politics and ideology are deciding what students do or don't learn, while the more fundamental and necessary revisions in their curriculum that educationists believe could improve the quality of education remain elusive.   

According to one estimate, textbooks for Classes 1 to 12 in Rajasthan have been changed thrice in the past eight years. Education NGO Pratham's Rajasthan Chapter Managing Trustee K B Kothari says that frequent changes in textbooks create problems for students and their teachers and parents. While stating that revision to update the curriculum is important, he argues that it should be done uniformly and after consultation. He adds that inputs from local experts and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) should also be taken. Kothari, however, says fundamental changes are not taking place, while political ones are. "This is definitely the wrong priority," he adds.   

The latest round of changes -- from Savarkar to Sati -- comes months after the Vasundhara Raje-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government was ousted from power in December last year by the Congress, which has termed the exercise as a "corrective measure", needed because of the "biased" content introduced by the previous government. About two weeks ago, a specimen copy of the revised Class-10 social science textbook accessed by a national daily had revealed that among other changes to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar's biography, the 'Veer' (brave) prefix has been removed from the name of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue. The portion on Savarkar was added to the syllabus in 2017 under the then BJP government in the state. The revised textbook will be available from the upcoming academic year. 

Rajasthan Education Minister Govind Singh Dotasra told Business Standard that the changes being made at present have been recommended by the two committees of educationists set up by the Congress government in February this year to review changes made by the previous government. "Before 2016, the curriculum was based on NCERT. In 2015-2016, the BJP government appointed its own committee of teachers and experts to create its own curriculum. Many of the changes were brought in 2016-17. They made changes that are not recorded in history," said Dotasra.   

But, educationists are not satisfied. A member of the All India Forum for Right to Education and a former professor and dean in Delhi University's Faculty of Education, Anil Sadgopal says that the changes introduced by both the erstwhile BJP government in Rajasthan and the Congress government "suffer from the common lack of a curricular and pedagogic framework". According to him, this downgrades comprehension, analysis, rationality, critical thought, internalisation and the yearning to reconstruct knowledge. Sadgopal argues that this calls for building a new political consensus that India's education system has been "waiting for since Independence". 

"There was a ray of hope when the National Curriculum Framework-2005 was drafted and debated in the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), which included the whole spectrum of political parties ruling various states. But, the CABE discourse could not break the existing barriers," he says. Sadgopal has also been a part of CABE in the past (2005-2007).  

Kothari of Pratham explains that there are differentiated groups -- in terms of basic reading and arithmetic ability -- sitting in the same classroom. He says that at the elementary level, changes in the curriculum must help in foundational learning outcomes by addressing these groups. "The curriculum, particularly the teaching and learning component, needs to be adjusted in a manner so that the textbooks can address the needs of all these groups, thereby improving learning outcomes," says Kothari. 

The ASER Centre's 2018 Annual Status of Education Report showed that in Rajasthan, only 20.6 per cent of children in Standard-3 could read Standard-2 level text in 2018. In Standard-5, about 49.3 per cent of children could read Standard-2 level text. Further, 78.5 per cent of children in Standard-8 could read Standard-2 level text. In 2018, 17.4 per cent of children in Standard-3 could at least do subtraction. In Standard-5, some 23.3 per cent of children could do division. Meanwhile, 41.6 per cent of children in Standard-8 could do division. Addressing the learning needs of children who are still to catch up in reading and arithmetic ability is crucial, lest they are left behind their classmates.

According to ASER 2018 at least, Rajasthan has much work to do on basic reading and arithmetic ability for its students. For example, when it came to the percentage of children in government schools in Standard-5 who could read Standard-2 level text, ASER data for 2008-2018 showed that the state scored below the national average in all years except for 2016. In 2018, Rajasthan's score in this regard was 39.1 per cent, while the national score was 44.2 per cent.  

With regard to the percentage of children in government schools in Standard-5 who could do division, the state's score trailed the national one for all years from 2008 to 2018 for which data was available. In 2018, about 14.1 per cent of children in Rajasthan's government schools in Standard-5 could do division, while nationally, 22.7 per cent of children could complete the task.  

The Delhi-based ASER Centre is an autonomous survey and research organisation affiliated to Pratham. 







 

The National Achievement Survey (NAS 2017), conducted by NCERT among government and government-aided schools, however, tells a different story. The study points out that students in Rajasthan fared better than the national average on a variety of subjects across Classes 3, 5 and 8. 

The Rajasthan government is also reportedly planning to remove all references about demonetisation from state board textbooks. A portion on demonetisation, which was described as the "campaign to wipe out black money", was added to the Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education's Class-12 political science textbook released in 2017. That same year, a chapter on the same topic was also added to the Class-12 economics textbook. The Congress had protested these revisions. 

Sadgopal says that the solution lies in not limiting the changes to syllabus topics or certain texts in the textbooks. Instead, he calls for fundamentally transforming the existing curricular and pedagogic framework. "We need to liberate it from its present didactic roots of passive submission to whatever the prescribed knowledge imposes," he argues. 

As an example, he cites the introduction of the chapter on Veer Savarkar by the state's erstwhile BJP government and the present-day Congress government dropping the 'Veer' prefix on the ground that Savarkar sought clemency from the British. "What is common in both the changes is that neither expected the children to apply their mind, interrogate the facts or inquire why BJP and Congress adopted contradictory stances," says Sadgopal. According to him, both the parties have no problem if the students blindly rote-learn the prescribed text and do well in the Board exam.  

The other example Sadgopal gives is that while the erstwhile BJP government indulged in "uncritical glorification" of demonetisation when it introduced the topic in Rajasthan's textbooks, the present Congress government would most probably replace it with denunciation that is equally lacking critical analysis. "Again, both the governments expect students only to uncritically rote-learn their respective versions on demonetisation," he explains.

Rajasthan Education Minister Dotasra also told the media some two weeks back that a portion on the Balakot airstrikes would be included in the Class-9 syllabus, while the illustration on 'Sati' on the cover page of the Class-8 social science textbook would be replaced. These changes are being introduced in the upcoming academic session. 

Under the previous BJP government in the state, school textbooks saw many changes viewed as revisionist or driven by party ideology. In 2015, school textbooks saw Mughal ruler Akbar lose his traditional title of "Great", which was instead bestowed on Maharana Pratap. This change was reported to be the brainchild of Vasudev Devnani, the then education minister in the state.

Then, in 2017, the government decided to rewrite history. That year, the Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education reportedly approved changes in the history section of the Class-10 social science book so that the revised text would teach students that Maharana Pratap had conclusively defeated Akbar in the 16th-century Battle of Haldighati. Until then, Rajasthan's students had learnt that the Battle of Haldighati was inconclusive. 

In a book for Class-8 students, the practice of Sati was described in glowing terms. In 2016, Prithviraj Chauhan came to be described as the king "who defeated Bharat's invader, Mohammad Ghori several times" in Rajasthan's textbooks. And In 2017 again, the name of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, did not find any mention in the Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education's revised Class-8 social science textbook. The book featured other freedom fighters such as Mahatma Gandhi, Subhas Chandra Bose, Veer Savarkar and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, but did not include Nehru and others from the Congress. Gandhi's assassination by Nathuram Godse was also not mentioned.

It is this agenda-driven approach to education, regardless of the party at the helm, that is compelling education experts to lament the subjugation of the student's intellect for political one-upmanship.