NCERT drops texts on Gandhi, Hindu-Muslim unity, RSS ban from class 12 textbook
'The entire rationalization exercise was done last year, there is nothing new that has happened this year,' NCERT director Dinesh Saklani said.
"Gandhiji's death had a magical effect on communal situation in the country", "Gandhi's pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists" and "Organisations like RSS were banned for some time" are among the texts missing from the class 12 political science textbook for the new academic session.
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), however, claims that no curriculum trimming has taken place this year and the syllabus was rationalized in June, last year.
As part of its "syllabus rationalization" exercise last year, the NCERT, citing "overlapping" and "irrelevant" as reasons, dropped certain portions from the course including lessons on the Gujarat riots, Mughal courts, the Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement, among others from its textbooks.
The rationalization note had no mention of excerpts about Mahatma Gandhi.
"The entire rationalization exercise was done last year, there is nothing new that has happened this year," NCERT Director Dinesh Saklani said.
He, however, did not comment on the missing excerpts which went unannounced at the time of rationalization.
A note by NCERT on its website reads, "in view of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was felt imperative to reduce the content load on students. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 also emphasizes reducing the content load and providing opportunities for experiential learning with a creative mindset. In this background, the NCERT had undertaken the exercise to rationalize the textbooks across all classes and all subjects".
"The present edition is a reformatted version after carrying out the changes. The present textbooks are rationalized textbooks. These were rationalized for the session 2022-23 and will continue in 2023-24," it adds.
Among the reasons cited behind the choice of dropped subjects during rationalization are – content based on genres of literature in the textbooks and supplementary readers at different stages of school education; for reducing the curriculum load and exam stress in view of the prevailing condition of the pandemic; content.
Subjects are easily accessible to students without much intervention from teachers and can be learned by children through self-learning or peer learning and content that is "irrelevant" in the present context was also dropped from the curriculum.
An official from the education ministry, who did not wish to be identified, said the new curriculum framework as per the NEP is still being worked out and the new textbooks as per the updated curriculum will only be introduced from the 2024 academic session.
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