CLASS STRUGGLE: Post vacation, CBSE students may have no social sciences books

When 6,000 schools nationwide affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) open after summer vacations, their Hindi and social sciences lessons may well be conducted without textbooks. Given the grammatically challenged textbooks often provided by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), it might be viewed as a stroke of good fortune, but the thought is causing much trepidation among students and teachers.

At the heart of what R. C. Shekhar, principal of Gyan Bharati School, Delhi, calls an "imminent crisis" is the NCERT's dogged interpretation of the March 22 Supreme Court stay on its new textbooks in Hindi (classes IX and XI), social sciences (Class IX) and history (Class XI). Director (Academics) G. Balasubramanian says that the CBSE, through a circular, asked the schools to retain the old curricula in Hindi and social sciences for another year for classes IX and X. But it's up to the NCERT to reprint the old textbooks, he adds.

In classic bureaucratese, NCERT Director J.S. Rajput explains, "The matter is sub judice and we are waiting for the Supreme Court verdict to take further action." School principals say if they had known the NCERT would not reprint old textbooks, they would have created book banks. But they did not see it coming.

Neither, it appears, did the NCERT, even though it had ample warning. Social activist Aruna Roy, journalist B.G. Verghese and sociologist Meena Radhakrishna Tyabji filed a petition in the Supreme Court in March this year, demanding a stay on the new curricula on the grounds that the Central Advisory Board on Education, an apex body set up to decide the national education policy, was not consulted. The petitioners also accused the Government of promoting its own brand of "political and religious ideology''.

One of the many arguments against the revised social sciences syllabus, according to Arjun Dev, former head of history at the NCERT, is that Class X students will not be taught history as the subject will be dealt with in its supposed entirety in Class IX. As for world geography, it will be completely missing from the syllabi for classes IX and X. An indication, he says, of how hurriedly the history syllabus for classes XI and XII was drawn up is that the NCERT revised it within a month of protests in January this year.

There have been many sideshows to the controversy: eminent but irate writers of history textbooks, portions of which have been deleted by the NCERT, have called sundry press conferences to voice their protest. The NCERT, on its part, is offering affidavits in its support by B.S. Shastri, chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and Maheep Singh, a retired Delhi University reader. Echoing the language of Roy and company's petition, both allege "distortions" in textbooks that need correction so that the "young minds of pupils are not polluted".

Ironically, when offering a defence against a walkout by 14 state education ministers from NCERT's general body meeting on May 26, on grounds that they had not been consulted about the new curricula, Rajput wrote: "The sufferers are the children of India."

But don't expect him to reprint the old textbooks. Instead, Solicitor-General Harish Salve says he will, on NCERT's behalf, ask the Supreme Court to expedite the next hearing, "otherwise the disruption for students will be immense''. Indeed.