JOIN USThe morning lesson
“Shocking, shocking,” my friend Hari huffed, ignoring my good morning greeting. “What on earth is going on. Is this the education our children and grandchildren will be getting?” he continued, before I could get a word in edgewise.
Before setting out on his daily constitutional, Hari had read the newspaper report about the CBSE’s decision to reduce the syllabus of classes IX to XII by about 30% by scrapping some key topics to reduce the burden of the students due to the pandemic. “Isn’t that good, I’m sure students would be delighted,” I exclaimed.
“No good. CBSE has cut out very important chapters such as democratic rights, federalism, secularism, citizenship, gender, religion and caste,” he babbled on until I interjected.
But we are anyway the largest democracy; our constitution guarantees citizenship, asserting we are a secular nation and provides us right to freedom of religion, I rationalised, adding all that’s part of our fundamental rights and no one can take that away.
Hari turned red in the face. “If all these concepts are not taught in school, how will students know what their democratic rights are. Education my friend, education,” he roared. “There are some people in this country who are mortally scared of educated people.”
“Listen, my father, along with hundreds of patriotic Indians, participated in several protest movements against the British. It is because of such people we attained independence. Shouldn’t future generations be enlightened and inspired by these struggles?” he demanded to know. Indeed, was my quick riposte.
“Tomorrow, if there are threats to our secularism or democratic rights, our children and grandchildren can take a leaf out of the Quit India Movement and launch a Quit Government Movement,” he pontificated.
I quietly nodded as he made his final point, “CBSE has not spared science subjects too; they have shelved topics like reproduction in organisms, anatomy of plants and animals, pollution and so on,” he mentioned. “Don’t our children need to know about reproduction? Do they want the future generation to remain bachelors or ascetics?” he thundered, causing some heads to turn.
Thanking him for his early morning lesson, I beat a hasty retreat saying I can’t wait to read the newspaper and we can continue our discussion tomorrow.