The Hindu : National : NCERT draft curriculum framework criticised

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Sunday, Aug 07, 2005

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National

NCERT draft curriculum framework criticised

Special Correspondent

Lacks a firm commitment against a sectarian and narrow vision of education, say academics

NEW DELHI: Academics under the banner of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust and Communalism Combat on Saturday urged the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) not to approve the draft National Curriculum Framework (NCF) in its present form. The NCF, brought out by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), came in for severe criticism from the academic community at a convention here for lacking a firm commitment against a sectarian and narrow vision of education.

Correcting wrongs

Speaker after speaker sought to drive home the point that the draft had not been brought out in a vacuum but in effect had been aimed at correcting "the blatant anti-constitutional approach" of the previous regime while drafting NCF-2000. Such being the case, the general refrain was that CABE, scheduled to meet later this month to take a final view on the draft NCF, should ask for it to be rewritten.

"Withdraw draft"

Irfan Habib, historian, said that all secular State Governments should try and get the draft NCF withdrawn as the framework seeks to promote obscurantist education in the name of local knowledge and skirts the issue of secularism. Conceding faults in the pre-2002 textbooks, which were replaced by NCERT under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime, he said the present dispensation at the Council was displaying the same kind of hostility towards them as was evident between 1998 and 2004.

Finding fault with the draft NCF on several fronts, Prof. Habib said that "if our school education is to be prevented from taking such a self-destructive course and the interests of the mass of our school-children are to be protected, then, there is no alternative but to reject the draft NCF-2005 and start afresh from the scheme of the National Curriculum for Elementary and Secondary Education 1988."

"Politically correct"

While the draft NCF came under attack in general for toeing a "politically correct" line, with those involved in the exercise preferring to avoid the contentious issues that dominated discourse in educational circles in the six years of NDA rule, another lament was that the syllabi was being prepared even before the draft framework had been approved by CABE.

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