After 35 scholars, including chief advisers for textbook development committee Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, asked for their names to be removed from the “rationalised” National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks, another 73 academicians have called their move “a false propaganda against the NCERT” and the exercise of school curriculum rationalisation.
Academicians from Jawaharlal Nehru University, University Grants Commissions and Vice-Chancellors from various State universities issued a joint statement saying that stalling the process of issuing revised textbooks was no less than stalling the students’ futures.
“Their demand is that students continue to study from 17-year-old textbooks rather than updated textbooks. In their quest to further their political agenda, they are ready to endanger the future of crores of children across the country,” they said.
“In the past three months, there have been deliberate attempts to malign the NCERT, a leading public institution, and disrupt the much-needed process for curriculum updation. Academicians trying to capture media attention through this name-withdrawal spectacle seem to have forgotten that textbooks result from collective intellectual engagement and rigorous efforts,” they said
The NCERT had clarified through a statement earlier that it held intellectual property rights over the textbooks and that it was at the liberty to print the names of the advisers who had been on the committee between 2005 and 2008.
Academicians, who supported the “rationalisation” exercise, stated that it was public knowledge that the school curriculum in India had not been updated for nearly two decades. “The last update of textbooks was undertaken in 2006. The current NCERT team has been making consistent efforts to reduce the burden on students and improve learning outcomes by rationalising the syllabus and making the content relevant according to current needs.”
“Through misinformation, rumours, and false allegations, they want to derail the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP 2020) and disrupt the updation of NCERT textbooks,” the statement further said.
