Knowledge economy, not silly conformity

A school or college syllabus is not propaganda. One would have thought that the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) would know this difference. However, comments by NCERT director D P Saklani on the new Class 12 political science textbook suggest otherwise. His explanation for the removal of sections pertaining to the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 and communal violence in the 2002 Gujarat riots is that these ‘can create violent and depressed citizens’. This is straight out of the Agitprop 101 manual. Saklani also asked whether studying such ‘episodes’ is the purpose of education. He justified these latest deletions by pointing out the ‘lack’ of similar outcry over the absence of any mention of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in textbooks. And, thus, we have entered the tu-tu mein-mein whataboutery of textbook politics.

That India has plans to be a knowledge economy doesn’t sit well with such groupthink. The fact that ‘unpleasantness’ is perceived as a criterion for textbook excision tells a sad story about NCERT’s understanding of pedagogy and knowledge. If fake facts for our young are to join the trough of fake news to maintain some skewed notion of national ‘pleasantness’, we’ll be entering pamphleteering territory of ‘Mao’s Little Red Book’ variety instead of one that encourages critical thinking and disparate ideas, and prepares our young to engage and navigate the difficult questions of life and society.

Saklani is right when he says syllabi are updated the world over. Indeed, they must – to incorporate new findings, excise mistakes and make them more engaging. Shielding ‘unpleasant’ facts, especially in this digital age, is a sure way of producing dimwits who are unable to tell facts from fabrications.