If you have a strong opinion on the school curriculum, books or the syllabus, you can now write to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) with your recommendations. In an attempt to make the syllabus more holistic and to reduce the academic burden of the students, the NCERT has invited suggestions on ‘rationalising contents for class I to class XII with the objective of all round development of students’.
This step is, indeed, in the right direction as Generation Alpha gets ready to go to school and Generation Z starts graduating from high school. The students need to be armed with skills that are needed by Industry 4.0 and these are definitely not provided by schools with ‘bookish’ curriculum that stress the students.
It has taken a long time for NCERT to wake up and say that “adequate attention on life skills, experiential learning, health and physical education, sports, visual and performing arts, literary and creative skills, and work based education, are indispensable besides cognitive and analytical skills.” The window to send in suggestions is open till the end of the month.
Set-up in 1961, NCERT, admitted that while the current curriculum incorporated these skills, but the heavy load in cognitive and analytical areas did not give the students time to develop other skills.
An autonomous body set-up in 1961 to assist and advise the governments, at the centre as well as in the states, on policies and programmes for improving school education, NCERT undertakes, promotes and coordinates research in areas related to school education, prepares and publish model textbooks, supplementary material, newsletters, journals and develops educational kits and trains teachers among other things.
By inviting views of all stakeholders including parents, teachers, academicians and youth, NCERT is trying infuse a new way of thinking. To be in tune with the times it needs to act on the suggestions with the lightning speed or should we say ‘twitter’ speed.