Revised textbooks to be submitted to govt next week

BENGALURU: The revised syllabus for the 75,000-odd state board schools in Karnataka, which will come into effect next year, will be similar to the CBSE one, and the Textbook Revision Committee (TRC) will present the revised textbooks to the government next week.
“The revised books are to be used from the 2017 academic year said Baraguru Ramachandrappa, chairman, TRC. “On December 8, we will submit copies to the primary and secondary education minister.”
The committee formed in 2015 was tasked with bringing state board textbooks on par with central board books.Last month, the Karnataka Knowledge Commission had recommended that the syllabus be changed to incorporate elements of the CBSE curriculum, while retaining the flavour of local culture.
“We have designed the textbooks within National Council of Educational Research and Training’s (NCERT) national curriculum framework 2005, which has said that a uniform syllabus will do students good. For the past year, we have been speaking to experts in all fields to get their opinions on all subjects,” he said.
The committee analysed CBSE and state board books for Classes 6 to 10 in each subject. “We found that the state syllabus was good in many areas and have retained those chapters but in others, CBSE’s curriculum was more relevant and we have changed it,” he said.
The government constituted 27 committees for textbook revision in November 2014 following complaints that the textbooks had many mistakes and elements of saffronization. Ramachandrappa was appointed chairman of the committee in 2015 to oversee the syllabus change.
However, Ramchandrappa said the department of public instruction is trying to sabotage TRC’s efforts by printing CBSE textbooks for Classes 9 and 10. Last week, education minister Tanveer Sait announced in the assembly in Belagavi that the department would send the books to print.
“We have given it in writing to the minister that the copies will be handed over to him for review on December 8,” said Ramachandrappa. “Why is the department trying to ruin the work of our committee? This is an insult to me and my work. The minister is being misled by the bureaucrats in the department. Besides, replicating textbooks must be done in consultation with all stakeholders.”
He said they’d finished work on schedule. “The textbooks are ready to be printed. We are proof-reading the copies,” he said.
Sait had also said the new textbooks would not be introduced in the coming academic year because the committee had not presented the interim report. Ramachandrappa said: “We are not a committee meant to present a report. That was never agreed upon. We are merely a committee to recommend changes in the curriculum and revise the textbooks. We were supposed to give the final copies to the government on December 8 and we will.”
TIMES VIEW
Revising textbooks to make content easy-to-understand, relevant, up-to-date and simple is essential so that students, especially first-generation learners, grasp concepts and truly absorb the subjects that they are studying. Understanding concepts is the only way for Karnataka’s students to be competitive at the national and global level; mere rote learning leads to merely having degrees without skills and knowledge that will make them employable citizens who contribute to the state’s growth.