NCF and the illusion of curriculum choice

The rollout of a centralised curriculum framework challenges the idea of India

On the second anniversary of the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP), the Union Ministry of Education (MoE) announced a digital public consultation to collate inputs from various stakeholders for the formulation of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF). The education minister even said that after the Indian Constitution, the NEP is the biggest document drafted through public participation and consultation.

With governments competing in the populist massification of policy-making, India could set a record in ‘virtual global curriculum design’. Our diaspora too could pitch in through online consultations with their ‘knowledge of India’, the apparent thrust of the NCF rollout.

Read | The dream and the reality of education

As directed by MoE and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), NCF will draw upon 25 position papers and State Curriculum Frameworks (SCFs), prepared through a centralised technology platform. States were asked to conduct consultations and surveys through a ‘paperless approach’, with detailed guidelines and e-templates — with word limits for each question — guiding the position papers. Ground reports indicate that often, the leading questions of the surveys were duly filled with ‘expected’ responses.

NCERT informed the states that their position papers and draft SCFs will be machine-read, to pick up pre-decided codes, for inclusion in the NCF. However, in principle, in the federal structure, education is a concurrent subject. Therefore, the prerogative to design their SCF, curricula and textbooks, within their own specific contexts, rests with the states.

The recent Digital Survey for National Curriculum (DiSaNC) — another belaboured acronym coined by MoE, is one more of these technologically controlled measures. Its ten questions, some very poorly framed, provide one or more options taken from the NEP.

An extended exercise in futility, such number crunching of people’s ‘choice’ — about, say, subjects to be taught in primary or secondary school — cannot lend legitimacy in place of serious curricular and pedagogical deliberations. However, in the context of the upcoming celebration of 75 years of Independence, the ruling dispensation seems inclined to use more populist means to push its problematic stance, particularly on issues of ‘constitutional values’ and ‘knowledge of India’.

However, in NEP 2020, constitutional values are marginalised by consistently prefacing them with ‘human’ values of ‘cleanliness’, ‘sacrifice’, or even ‘respect for public property’. Similarly, the following survey question shows a deliberate confounding of values, and the glaring omission of the constitutional values — justice, democracy, liberty and equality — foundational for all preceding education policies and commission reports:

Q. Which values do children need to imbibe in the course of school education?
- Constitutional values such as fundamental duties towards nation and state, law abidingness, peaceful co-existence, fraternity, etc.
- Values such as teamwork, commitment to personal, institutional, and national integrity, etc.
- Human values such as fellow-feeling, empathy, honesty, mutual respect, etc.
- Moral values such as truthfulness, non-violence, integrity, commitment, etc.

However, in NEP 2020, constitutional values are marginalised by consistently prefacing them with ‘human’ values of ‘cleanliness’, ‘sacrifice’, or even ‘respect for public property’. Similarly, the following survey question shows a deliberate confounding of values, and the glaring omission of the constitutional values — justice, democracy, liberty and equality — foundational for all preceding education policies and commission reports:

Q. Which values do children need to imbibe in the course of school education?
- Constitutional values such as fundamental duties towards nation and state, law abidingness, peaceful co-existence, fraternity, etc.
- Values such as teamwork, commitment to personal, institutional, and national integrity, etc.
- Human values such as fellow-feeling, empathy, honesty, mutual respect, etc.
- Moral values such as truthfulness, non-violence, integrity, commitment, etc.

The nebulous phrase ‘knowledge of India’ is repeated several times as one of the options, clubbed with other topics such as “health, well-being, yoga and sports” (see Box). The ‘knowledge of India’ option appears in three out of the ten survey questions, asking about desirable ‘subjects’ to be taught. Many of the terms — health, well-being, sports, yoga, crafts and team activities — cannot be equated with ‘subjects’, like science or social science, so this confuses the issue. Forcing people to choose from such poorly designed options, which supposedly emerge from the NEP, is not an educationally reliable or worthwhile proposition, but can probably qualify as the manufacture of
consent.

Unclear definitions

The question on the ‘foundational stage’, too, reinforces the dumbing down by the NEP, with a minimalist curriculum for ‘fundamental literacy and numeracy’ (see Box). Clubbing children from anganwadis and classes one to two opens the space to minimally trained volunteers and anganwadi workers instead of professional teachers. It is not clear here what ‘fundamental’ literacy, or even environmental awareness implies.

However, what is clear is that children (aged six to 14 years) have a fundamental right to quality education, mandated by the Right to Education Act 2009, tied to NCF 2005. In a good learning environment with caring support, children in this age group learn nuanced use of their first language to develop an understanding of their social and natural worlds, with concepts of mathematics and environmental studies, which includes science, social science and environment education.

Contrary to NCF

Seeming to follow NCF 2005, the ongoing process is actually contrary to it. In 2005, NCERT had upheld its academic role and constituted 21 National Focus Groups, with members from across the country, to write position papers to inform NCF. Along with Syllabus Committees and Textbook Development Committees, this constituted a large national resource pool of experts, acknowledged for their contribution to different domains. States were encouraged to translate and circulate the NCF for wider discussion, and to develop their SCFs, which some had done, with no requirement for state position papers.

Clarifying its role, NCF 2005 states: “The Term National Curriculum Framework is often wrongly construed that an instrument of uniformity is being proposed. The intention ...(of) NPE 1986 was quite the contrary”. NCF should be a relevant, flexible and high-quality framework for modernising the system of education, to respond to India’s diverse milieu, while ensuring its core constitutional
values.

It reiterates its vision of a robust democracy, in the words of the Secondary Education Commission (1952): “...a democratic citizen should have the intellectual integrity to sift truth from falsehood, facts from propaganda and to reject the dangerous appeal of fanaticism and prejudice...should (also)...dispassionately examine both (the old and the new) and courageously reject what arrests the forces of justice and progress...”

Missing: Democratic vision

The ongoing process does not reflect a commitment to this democratic vision. It also unnecessarily taxes the limited resources and capacities of state institutes, many questionably espousing ‘corporate partners’ for the task. It also seriously detracts attention from the crucial challenges of improving curricula and textbooks, and teacher development, to ensure equity and quality education for all.

Karnataka deleted crucial sections of its textbooks on the democratic secular ethos of India, and its significant social movements and continuing struggles for justice, equity and social harmony. Its position papers prepared by committees with dubious expertise and often no experience in curriculum and pedagogy, are poorly written. Propounding an imagined knowledge of India, they uncritically eulogise the past to divert attention from its present and its future.

However, opting out of the technological platform, Kerala, is launching its own participative process for SCF. Extensive public dialogue will be conducted at panchayat, block and district levels, with people from different backgrounds, including children. The State Council of Educational Research and Training and the Core Curriculum Committee will not dictate, but negotiate the transformations envisioned. They call for good quality work-based education for all, the idea of India as envisaged by Gandhi and Ambedkar, for changing demeaning mindsets on manual work, removing hierarchies of skill versus knowledge, or caste, gender and socio-economic status.

Its position papers will be premised on constitutional values, to critically interrogate social perceptions of gender, ethnicity and religion; on using education technology innovatively, not only limited to computers; and the role of social media, and fake news, for democracy.

(Anita Rampal is former dean, Faculty of Education, Delhi University)