Halving the syllabus, squaring knowledge

Halving the syllabus, squaring knowledge

Context:

• Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar claimed that the school syllabus needed trimming; he’d also bring back the system of “detention and examinations” in lower classes that the previous United Progressive Alliance government had done away with.

Background:

• Delhi’s Education Minister, Manish Sisodia said in 2015 that schools’ syllabus for the 9th to 12th standards would be cut by a quarter and shun “outdated material” and leave more time for music, theatre and leisure.
• The Bombay High Court in 2017, suggested that mathematics be made an optional for 10th standard students as lots of students were failing them and those in arts programmes didn’t need maths in their programmes.

More in news:

• The common thread in these thoughts is that an enormous work load is the cause of stress among schoolchildren and halving the syllabus would translate into fewer hours of course work.
• But this fails to acknowledge that the culprit is a system that encourages mindless crowd as the dominant indicator of ‘learning’.

Conclusion:

• School students need to be trained to apply facts to real-world problems and be evaluated in their abilities to critique, seek out information and produce knowledge of their own.
• This requires educators to re-imagine testing — everywhere, from kindergarten to management and encourage new Mozarts who’re confident of their creativity.