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Science education in India

Before talking about school science education in post-independence India, let us take a quick look at the state of science as well as school education in India during 1900-1947. The practice of science had come to acquire a nationalistic hue. The achievements of Raman, Saha, and Bose — in the face of tremendous odds — were regarded as points scored against the colonial rulers. School education, on the other hand, followed the model set up by the British. The id ea that all children should have access to schooling was still in the future. Gandhi and Tagore proposed alternative models, but the mainstream did not adopt them.

With Independence came a model of economic development that set great store by science and technology. Nehru’s dream was of a modern, prosperous India propelled by science and technology. Naturally, school science education received special attention in the brave new world of Nehru’s India, though not in a systematic fashion.

Scientists were the pilots of this new India, and there was an understandable desire to produce more and better scientists. This perhaps explains the direction school science education took after Independence.

If we look at the evolution of school science in India, we see a clear trend of including more and more content — overwhelmingly in the form of factual information — in the syllabus. Laboratories have declined, and even demonstrations, once common, are now confined to elite schools. Thus the factual information that dominates the syllabi is not supported by any kind of activity, which can make it plausible or even comprehensible. Students therefore have no option but to memorise the facts. The consequence of this is that students find science not only difficult but also boring. As a result, students don’t want to opt for science at the Class XI level.

The overloading of syllabi is often justified by citing the information explosion, and saying that our syllabi have to expand to incorporate it. It is argued that this is necessary in order to catch up with the west. Any change proposed is viewed as a “dilution” that will adversely affect our “competitiveness.” The success of IIT graduates in the west is cited as proof of success of the model. The presentation of science as a set of facts to be learned militates against the very basis of science as something open and ever-growing.

Attempts to challenge the orthodoxy of Indian science education have mostly been very small in scale. An exception is the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme (HSTP), a programme for teaching middle school science through experiments, which started in 1972 as a pilot project in 16 schools of Hoshangabad district in Madhya Pradesh. At the time of its abrupt closure in 2002, it was running in around 1000 schools in 16 districts of the State. The HSTP was unique in that it was a State programme, running in ordinary Government schools, supported by a large academic resource group. Although no longer a running programme, the HSTP has had great influence on the discourse on education in the country.

An important difference between the HSTP and conventional science teaching is that the former emphasised the processes of science — observation, recording, performing controlled experiments, etc. On the other hand, conventional school science emphasises the “products” of science — laws, theories, etc. In some sense the process-product debate continues to this day, with the mainstream in favour of teaching products.

A sad commentary on school education in India is provided by the story of the closure of the HSTP by the Madhya Pradesh Government. Pleas by educationists across the country fell on deaf ears. Essentially, it was a victory for forces that resist change and want to preserve the status quo.

In the last two decades, the universalisation of elementary education has emerged as a national goal. Education for all children up to Class VIII now seems a realistic target rather than a distant dream. It is therefore worthwhile to ask: what is the main aim of teaching science in schools? The syllabi and textbooks of the last 40 years suggest that the (unstated) aim of school science education has been to produce scientists. Hence syllabi are dominated by the disciplinary demands of different branches of science, and there is a relentless downward pressure to cover more content in earlier classes.

However, if all children up to Class VIII (and perhaps Class X) study science as a compulsory subject, the primary aim cannot be to produce scientists. UNESCO has mooted the goal of Scientific and Technological Literacy (STL) for all. Every citizen needs to be aware of trends in science, cope with technology in everyday life, and be able to take considered positions on science-related issues of social importance (e.g. the height of a dam, the location of a nuclear power plant). Clearly school science up to Class X has to be rethought radically if STL for all is seen as the primary aim.

Lately, India’s science academies as well as policy-making bodies have been expressing great concern about school science education, and have launched several new schemes. The reason is not far to seek: the country’s science establishment finds itself starved of person power.

We are simply not producing young scientists of sufficient quality in sufficient numbers. In other words, the school science that leaves the majority of students bored also fails in its primary (unstated) aim of producing scientists.

NCERT, in its National Curriculum Framework document of 2005, addresses the issue afresh. The “product” obsession of school science is acknowledged. For the first time, HSTP and other similar efforts find place in a major policy document. Moving towards a curriculum that is less laden with facts, weakening disciplinary boundaries and linking school knowledge with outside knowledge are its avowed goals.

While these efforts are welcome, much more needs to be done. We must acknowledge that the prevalent model has failed, both from the wider perspective of education and its aims, and from the narrow one of producing scientists. It is imperative to move to a new model of school science education, in which science is not alien, but organically linked to children’s experiences. The processes of science have to be given due importance, and children have to be given opportunities to do things “hands-on.”

Above all, science should emerge as something alive, fallible, and therefore exciting. Such a model will meet the wider aims of science education, and at the same time is more likely to encourage potential scientists to want to study science.

(The writer is Director, Centre for Science Education and Communication, University of Delhi.)

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