Dull dogma doesn’t a syllabus make

: It would be a shame if the parliamentary furore over NCERT textbooks provides yet another occasion for a display of anti-intellectualism and partisan crossfire. Of the three issues raised, the first can be dealt with swiftly: some freedom fighters have been described as terrorists. Ironically, the reference here is to a revised version of a textbook that has been used for years and should be phased out as the process of producing the new textbooks is completed.

Consternation has been expressed over the inclusion of events like the anti-Sikh riots, Gujarat and Emergency in the political science syllabus of class XII. Judgment should await the completion of the textbook. But the syllabus itself is revolutionary. For the first time there will be room for events that are an embarrassment to the ruling party of the day, not just the opposition. Two, the syllabus fills a yawning gap that results from history stopping at 1947. Anyone who has looked at the new political science and history textbooks for class IX and XI will find complaints against the new curriculum and textbooks baseless.

The new textbooks are among the most exciting things that have happened in a long time. Scholars stewarding the process of curriculum or textbook writing like Ram Guha, Yogendra Yadav, Suhas Palshikar or Neeladari Bhattacharya (hardly your rabid partisan list) have done a magnificent job of infusing new vitality into textbooks. (In the interest of full disclosure, I must say I played a very minor part in the committee that produced the textbook on the Constitution)

The issue is not what particular politics or history you teach, but whether students can learn to think. The ambition is not to preach dull dogma, but cultivate thought itself. In the new books, exercises are framed in a way that the student’s critical acumen can turn upon the book itself.

Books must provoke discussion, incite new questions and point to ways of finding answers. The old textbooks were a product of pedagogy that had dogmatic faith in its own authority. The authoritative voice generated a corrosive scepticism, and since those textbooks did not trust the intelligence of students, they came not to trust themselves.

The inclusion of contemporary history must be seen in this context. My first political memory is hearing of the horrors of the Emergency. I was in high school when the anti-Sikh carnage in Delhi took place, the Shah Bano case was...

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