People's Democracy

Curriculum Not A Property Of Any Political Party: Kanti Biswas

THE West Bengal minister for education, Kanti Biswas, along with the education ministers belonging to Congress and Left ruled states strongly protested the high handed manner in which the entire process of curriculum revision was gone about by the union ministry of human resources development. They staged a walkout from the 39th annual general meeting of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), held in New Delhi on December 16 as part of their protest.

Kanti Biswas strongly objected to the human resources development minister, Murli Manohar Joshi's contention that the Supreme Court had approved the steps taken by the central government in formulating the National Curriculum Framework for School Education. Biswas pointed out that two judges ­­- Justice Dharmadhikary and Justice Sema of the three judge bench of the Supreme Court emphasised the importance of Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) and directed the Union of India to consult this body. He quoted from the judgement given by Justice Dharmadhikary:

"In evolving a National policy on Education and based thereon a curriculum in accordance with long standing practice, it was desirable to consult CABE although for non-consultation, the National policy and curriculum cannot be set aside by the Court ....."

The two judges opined in their judgement "We would further direct the Union of India to consider the matter of filling the vacancies in the membership of CABE and convene a meeting of CABE for seeking opinion of the members on the policy and the curriculum." Justice Sema in his judgment said “while it is true that the CABE is a non-statutory body but one cannot overlook the fact that it has been in existence since 1935. It has also been accepted as an effective instrument of meaningful partnership between the states and the centre, particularly at evolving a consensus on the major policy issues in the field of human resource development. I am of the view that the importance of the role played by CABE cannot be side-tracked on the plea that the body is non-statutory, particularly when it has been playing an important role in the past for evolving a consensus on the major policy decisions involving national policy on education ...."

Despite various state minister's stressing the importance of taking CABE into confidence on this question, Murli Manohar Joshi remained adamant and refused to consider the question of reconstitution of CABE. The state ministers made it clear that central government was not the sole authority to decide on this matter and that National Curriculum was not a property of a particular political party or any government. Kanti Biswas demanded that an Education Ministers’ conference should be held to discuss this issue, that CABE should be reconstituted and it should be given scope to discuss the Curriculum framework, and ultimately the Parliament should decide on this.

The West Bengal minister made it clear that nobody has the right to mislead young students by incorporating erroneous, false, motivated and concocted statements in any text book. He said it was a criminal offence to mislead the young generation and any person found responsible for this erroneous presentation should be held guilty. He mentioned few examples from the textbooks "India and the World" for Class-VI and "Contemporary India" for Class IX.

Another issue raised by the West Bengal minister for education was the non-inclusion of their protest against the ministry in the minutes of an earlier AGM of the NCERT. At the time of confirming the Minutes of the 38th Annual General Meeting of the Council held on  May 26, 2002, Kanti Biswas had raised the question that 14 education ministers of different states submitted a joint memorandum in the last Annual General Meeting in which it was stated that "The ministry of human rsources & development and Director, NCERT have misled the Parliament, the Supreme Court and the nation by asserting with the National Curriculum Framework for School Education was discussed and approved by the 37th AGM of NCERT held on 30.12.2000. We denounce such mis-representation of facts and demand that the Minister and the Director should withdraw such statement”.

Why was this matter withheld from the minutes of the last meeting?, questioned Biswas. Responding to this, Murli Monohar Joshi assured the Council that it would be incorporated in appropriate place.