Standardise learning, but avoid stalinisation

Sometime in February this year, a momentous decision was taken at a review meeting chaired by the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, making it mandatory for all schools affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to use text books of the National Council for Educational  Research and Training (NCERT) from the academic year 2017-2018.  Being the nodal agency for educational research, NCERT was assigned the task of producing the standardised textbooks and ensuring their supply chain.

The logic behind it was not only to standardise textbooks and thus ensure uniformity in curricula and enhance the quality of tertiary education but also to extinguish the pernicious practice of exorbitant profiteering by private publishers, who generally pegged their prices 300 to 600 per cent higher than NCERT textbooks. This would dismantle the unholy nexus between rapacious publishers and  unscrupulous school managements that has carried on through the subterfuge of kickbacks at the cost of captive parents.

Prima facie, the initiative is laudable, but a critical examination of its concomitant fall-out raises more questions than answers. Is standardisation feasible, or even desirable, for all subjects?  If CBSE textbooks and curricula are to be standardised, what about the textbooks of the various state boards?  Can we leave them out of this and still enhance the quality of tertiary education?  Considering that tertiary education is the gateway to higher education, these questions assume greater significance especially when none of our higher educational institutions are among the top hundred in the world.

Frankly speaking, there is no single answer for the standardisation debate. It is not always feasible and desirable. It is feasible, and even desirable, in respect of subjects like Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Commerce, etc. These are pre-professional studies, devoid of any political slant. Eminent experts can certainly enrich and redesign the syllabus, pedagogy and timeframe, common to all, and make them relevant to future needs.  "One country-one education" will go a long way in dismantling the barriers between the various boards and universities, and facilitate easy migration of students from one state to another,  creating in the process intellectual cross-fertilisation.

It is not possible without raising dust and din, in respect of the curricula of history and culture, and language studies. These are the subjects susceptible to political slants. There is no guarantee that the party in power will not impose its own version of history and culture — and adopt speeches and write-ups of its favorite netas in the language texts in the garb of knowledge promotion. This can happen.

A single, one-sided narrative in subjects like these will certainly lead to falsification of history, misrepresentation of facts, and manipulation of ideas — all calculated to condition the impressionable young minds and put them into an ideological straitjacket. This, in turn, will usher in an Indian version of 'Stalinisation' in our educational set-up. Such a Stalinised ecosystem will only help to create an "intolerant society" antithetical to our democratic ethos. Here we need to tread carefully.

The state boards are where the action is needed
In respect of state boards, cumulatively, their students vastly outnumber the CBSE. It is here that a major ‘surgical strike’ is needed, if only to make a meaningful transformation in our tertiary education.  But Education is on the concurrent list of our Constitution, with states enjoying a preponderant say in its administration. Our Constitution, however, provides a way out.

Chapter IX, Article 254 says: If a State Law is repugnant to a Central Law, the Central Law shall prevail and the State Law will become void.

This postulates that the Centre, if it wishes, can force its hands on the states and compel them to accept the standardised curricula of the NCERT, which can bring them out in all regional languages — to meet regional aspirations —with a common but enriched content to meet the needs of tomorrow. This should stand up to judicial scrutiny.

(The writer was with IIT Madras for long and is now with TCS, Chennai. Opinion expressed here is personal)