Kerala set to restore syllabus deleted from school textbooks
As part of its "syllabus rationalisation" exercise last year, the NCERT, citing "overlapping" and "irrelevant" as reasons, dropped certain portions from the course, including lessons on Gujarat riots, Mughal courts, Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement, among others from its textbooks.
FollowThiruvananthapuram: The Kerala government has made steps to include a syllabus about Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru that was removed from the school textbooks, according to state education minister V. Sivankutty.Â
"When the school reopens after Onam break (September), the new textbooks with the omitted syllabus will be distributed. It is important that students should learn history, economics and science from the right perspective," said Sivankutty.
The Centre had removed all of these materials, and the Pinarayi Vijayan government had already committed to teaching children about India in its true spirit.
In June, 73 academics, including vice chancellors of major institutions, published a declaration in the midst of the controversy over the substantial alteration of the original curriculum National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks, claiming that "false propaganda is being spread against the council."
Stating that the school curriculum in India has not been updated for nearly for two decades, they said, "The last update of textbooks was undertaken in 2006. The current NCERT team has been making consistent efforts for reducing the burden on students and improving learning outcomes by rationalising the syllabus and making the content relevant according to current needs."
As part of its "syllabus rationalisation" exercise last year, the NCERT, citing "overlapping" and "irrelevant" as reasons, dropped certain portions from the course, including lessons on Gujarat riots, Mughal courts, Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement, among others from its textbooks. Â The rationalisation note had no mention of excerpts about Mahatma Gandhi.
Earlier, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that the decision to exclude chapters and sections from NCERT's Class 12 political science textbooks is not only a denial of history but also objectionable. He said that historical facts cannot be rejected by eliminating from textbooks what is inconvenient to them.
He said that NCERT is taking positions in favour of RSS' flawed history writing methodology. There needs to be a strong protest against such measures which undermine the secular education envisaged by the Constitution.'
