Abandoning a reform measure

The UDF government's move against extending beyond Standard Seven the curriculum reform programme introduced during the period of the previous government puts a question mark on the future of a system that has brought about positive changes on the school education scene in Kerala.

R. KRISHNAKUMAR in Thiruvananthapuram

"Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind, "Your definition of a horse." "Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus (and much more) Bitzer. "Now girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind. "You know what a horse is?"

- from the chapter "Murdering the Innocents" in Hard Times.

IN that nightmare of a school that Charles Dickens created out of actual 19th century circumstances in Britain, the free-spirited new student Sissy Jupe ("girl number twenty") fails miserably to define a horse, despite her being the daughter of a man who tends and trains horses. Ironically, Gradgrind's praise is all for the young Bitzer, a utilitarian prodigy, who need not ever have seen a horse but is able to answer the stuffy, dictatorial school-owner precisely the way he wants him to. In Dickens' Coketown school, the Bitzers are the academic stars; the Sissy Jupes, who understand horses better, can take care of them and know how to ride them perhaps, are judged failures.

Simply stated - and ignore the political overtones - this is just the kind of issue that is rocking Kerala today: whether education ultimately means coaching students to memorise textbooks or developing them into life-long learners who are confident, competent and creative in their interaction with society.

Gradgrind's facts-only classroom ("That is it! You are never to fancy!") could have easily been mistaken for what went on all along in schools across Kerala, until very recently. Only a few years have passed since a new, child-centred, activity-oriented pedagogy and curriculum began to be introduced in stages from the primary school level, creating the feeling that the spirit of Gradgrind was finally being driven out of the State's schools.

Thus, within the span of a few academic years, Kerala had seemingly achieved what was until then considered a never-never task. In one sweep, government schools had discarded everything that was "old and outdated" in at least up to Standard Seven. Teaching and learning was no longer textbook-oriented. Rote learning, written exercises, reading aloud from the textbooks, writing on the blackboard, memorising mathematical tables, traditional learning of the alphabet - all these were out. Physical punishment and traditional teaching methods came to be frowned upon. Formal examinations - with their emphasis on testing memory, they shaped the very pattern of teaching, textbook writing and classroom interaction - were no longer the point of reference for classes below Standard Eight.

Instead, the emphasis fell on activity, development of the student's natural inclination to learn, offering greater freedom, making learning more fun than work, creating natural learning experiences, reducing the stress on results; in short, on teaching children to "learn how to learn" in an enjoyable sort of way (Frontline, July 30, 1999).

The potential benefits of the new pedagogy was immediately obvious in many schools. So was the enormous burden that the new curriculum placed on the shoulders of the tradition-bound Education Department and teachers, because of the significant shift away from the customary textbook-oriented teaching and learning to a more activity-oriented, intrinsically motivated learning process.

Because the long-felt need for a qualitative improvement in school education was addressed through such a sudden and dramatic reform, the conditions for its proper implementation were not immediately available in many schools. The engaging new curriculum demanded certain minimum requirements, adequate infrastructure facilities and responsible and motivated teachers. These were made available to a large extent in six of the 14 districts in Kerala where the World Bank-aided District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) was being implemented. But in schools elsewhere in the State, the absence of these preconditions was acutely felt, despite the changes suggested in pedagogy and the curriculum.

Moreover, the government schools in which the new curriculum was sought to be implemented accounted for only about 36 per cent of the total number of schools in Kerala. The rest were private schools, where the children of the rich and the majority of middle-class people studied in the traditional way, with textbooks being the focus of schooling. The general feeling that the "experiments" were only taking place in the government schools, where mostly the wards of the poor studied, was unavoidable.

Such factors only helped widen the great divide. Although there was agreement on the need to bring about quality improvement in school education in Kerala, from the beginning there were sharp differences of opinion on whether the current curriculum revision was indeed the best way to do it. Just as there were people who hailed the new curriculum, there were those who honestly believed that the traditional methods of teaching and learning had their intrinsic merits and should not have been abandoned altogether.

Those who opposed the shift said that the new curriculum with its emphasis on joyful learning and little stress on measurable achievements would eventually produce only a "bunch of clerks and peons". They were critical of the reduced emphasis on memory, math and spelling drills, precision in the use of written and spoken language, legible writing, of the over-emphasis on the informal rather than the formal and of the new evaluation methods which replaced the traditional system of written examinations. Some opposed it for a totally different reason: they saw the new curriculum as one induced by the World Bank "to scuttle Kerala's achievements in education".

But the feedback from a variety of sources, including in-house and external review committees, and especially from the DPEP districts about the new curriculum as was being followed in classes up to the Fourth Standard was positive and highly encouraging. Wherever the necessary facilities were made available and the teachers seemed committed, the new curriculum was generating a positive response and was proving to be highly beneficial to the students. This was the reassurance that the reformers needed.

By the 2000-01 school year, the first generation of the new curriculum students had already reached Standard Seven and the curriculum committee decided to extend the new scheme to the secondary schools, even though studies were yet to be undertaken on its implementation in Standards Five to Seven. What they did not plan for was a change of government in Kerala and political intervention in a purely academic activity of curriculum planning and the revision that was to follow.

ONE of the first announcements made by the leaders of the Congress(I)-led United Democratic Front (UDF), immediately after it won the Assembly elections in May was that the new curriculum would eventually be confined to the primary classes. What followed was a series of statements from the newly inducted Education Minister, Nalakathu Soopy (of the Muslim League, a major UDF partner), which smacked of political one-upmanship and lack of understanding about the reforms, just as a new school year was beginning.

The Minister said that pending a government review of the revised curriculum ("which is all play and no work", "unsuitable for serious study and the future of students"), the government has decided not to extend it to the secondary stage. The Eighth Standard students, the Minister said, would have to revert to the old curriculum and old textbooks and old methods of learning, until a review was conducted, despite the fact that in their entire seven years of study in school, they were only accustomed to the new way of learning and the new activity-oriented textbooks.

The confusion that this announcement created at the beginning of a school year was enormous. An impression gained ground - and this was evident in all the schools that this correspondent visited - that it was only a question of time before the new government did away with the entire curriculum reform in schools and reverted to the old methods and textbooks. In the context of a large section of teachers opposing the new curriculum because of the additional workload that it placed on them, one headmaster told Frontline: "What the new government and the ill-advised Minister did was to topple a carefully prepared and forward-looking curriculum through irresponsible statements. This gave a large number of teachers, who were cursing the increased workload, a good opportunity to revert to teaching the traditional way, and to ignore the demands of the new system."

Kerala's school education was adrift, from that point. If the new child-centred, activity-oriented pedagogy and curriculum is good up to Standard Four, why is it not good enough in the higher classes? Was the curriculum mechanically extended to the higher classes (especially in the present case to the Eighth Standard) without sufficient thought to the stage of development of the upper primary and secondary students and their requirements? Was the new curriculum and textbooks perfect in all respects and beyond any criticism? If not, is going back to the old system the best way for quality improvement, which was the purpose of the whole revision exercise so far?

R.V.G. Menon, president of the People's Science Movement of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad and a prominent member of the curriculum committee appointed by the State government, said that never before in the history of Kerala had so many university, college and school teachers, academic experts and psychologists - irrespective of their political affiliations - been involved in the planning and preparation of a curriculum and textbooks. Earlier, a three-member committee had conducted wide-ranging discussions and prepared a perspective document on how school education from the pre-primary to the higher secondary stage (from Minus Two to Plus Two) in Kerala should be. It was circulated for comments from the public. It was based on this perspective document that the comprehensive curriculum and textbooks were prepared. At every stage, a government-appointed curriculum committee had overseen the preparation of the curriculum and the textbooks, held extensive discussions and provided necessary suggestions. The textbooks thus prepared were then circulated for scrutiny by expert committees.

"A wrong impression has been created that the new curriculum is all play and fun, even in the higher classes. This is not true. It is a more ordered and formal approach, a more centralised and activity-based pedagogy in the higher classes, depending on the age and learning stage of the students," C.P. Narayanan, a mathematician and another member of the curriculum committee, said.

According to C. Ramakrishnan, another teacher and a member of the curriculum and textbook revision committee, once it was decided that school education from the Minus Two to the Plus Two stage should be considered in its entirety, the next step was to spell out what it should provide a student at the Plus Two stage. This, it was decided, ought to be based on a vision of the needs of contemporary Kerala society. "We debated and arrived at a list of competencies, attitudes and temperament that a student should achieve by the time he (or she) passed out of Standard 12," he said. "The next process," he said, "was to arrive at a consensus on what the student should learn at each stage of his physical and psychological development so as to attain the targeted level of learning by the time he is in Standard Twelve."

Explaining the laborious process that was involved in the preparation of the textbooks, he said curriculum statements, learning experiences both within and outside the class, the time required to achieve each of them, and how evaluation should take place at each stage have been diligently listed out. Guidelines on how the student should learn, who should be the teacher, what kind of extended classroom should students be exposed to, how the student, teacher and the school itself should be evaluated, what support facilities should be made available and what should be the nature and content of training for teachers, have also been spelt out.

Narayanan, who has been involved in the education sector in the State since the 1960s, said that at no earlier stage had there been such a diligent and comprehensive effort in Kerala to develop a school curriculum. Until now there were only vague general statements on the aims of school education. That was as close as the State got to a perspective on the aims of school education. Textbooks were prepared without much thought or effort. Authors had the frequent experience of being asked to provide chapters for a textbook in a jiffy, on the eve of a school year. M.N. Sukumaran Nair, another committee member, said that in his 22 years of authoring textbooks at no time had he received any direction on what the textbooks should aim at, or what the expected competencies that the students should achieve from the lessons were.

Moreover, he said, the old textbooks were but a collection of essays on particular topics, "for the teacher to teach and the student to memorise". In contrast, the new textbooks are a collection of material for activity-based inquiry, which the students, teachers and parents could use. The definite requirement was that the students should attain the stated competencies and knowledge at each stage. It need not be from the textbooks alone.

"This is the change that has happened in the Kerala education sector. It may not be perfect and would need corrections, but ask any parent and I am sure they would have noticed the change in the attainments of their children," Sukumaran Nair said.

Significantly, while earlier the entire process of schooling was textbook-oriented, under the new system it became activity-oriented. It required the creation of all the learning experiences within the classroom itself or from the surroundings. Textbooks were deliberately open-ended, asking, for example what happens when water is added to quicklime or to observe whether a man inside a speeding bus is actually moving. There were no readymade answers. The students had to do it with the help of the teachers to draw their own inferences.

The new curriculum drastically reduced the role of the textbook, the tuition master and the parent. The crucial role became that of the teacher. Textbooks did not provide answers that had to be memorised. The new curriculum required the teacher to work more in order that the students reached the right conclusions. The burden on the teachers increased manifold and a large majority of school teachers in Kerala seemed unwilling to accept it. But as many parents told this correspondent, the achievements of their children had "definitely improved" and "there was real attainment of knowledge in the classrooms".

"In my 15 years as a teacher nobody has told me till now what should be the aim of my teaching a particular lesson. But the new curriculum defines this clearly. This is a departure. Is it wrong? If so, we must correct it. Or critics can point out if the targeted competencies are not adequate. Or that they are way above the level of learning meant for a particular class. But the only criticisms that have been raised are generalisations, often far removed from reality. The fact is that nobody had seen the textbooks for Standard Eight when the UDF announced that they were sub-standard and had to be abolished. The big question is why," Ramakrishnan asks.

According to People's Science Movement president R.V.G. Menon, the old system created only doctors and engineers and "those who were jealous and angry that they did not become doctors or engineers". The new curriculum offers so much scope for improving the latent talents of the students, which would have otherwise remained dormant. But a number of parents were initially confused. Since the entire learning experience had to be in the classrooms, a parent did not understand what was going on, or what he had to do to help his child. Many viewed with suspicion the obvious enthusiasm that their children showed to go to school and thought they were up to something in school. It was as if they were trained by the old school to believe, 'if it is good, it must be carcinogenic'," the People's Science Movement chief said.

To brief parents properly the new scheme had planned for books for them too, but they were never distributed, according to the committee members. Although the responsibility for restructuring the curriculum was that of the State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT), the administrative control over the schools and the teachers continued to be with the State Department of Education. According to Narayanan, many officials perhaps did not like the reduced importance that the new system envisaged for them.

Training teachers was a very important component of the curriculum revision programme. Most of them were tradition-bound and training did not receive the importance that it deserved.

Textbooks were open-ended, and so if teachers were to play their role they had to be sufficiently prepared to help students arrive at the right answer. That was not happening in many cases. Teacher motivation left much to be desired. Parents and teachers were not taken into confidence before implementing the programme. Instead, either rightly or wrongly, the impression spread that the teachers were at fault, that most of them were lazy and irresponsible. "To those who were working day in and day out for the revision of the curriculum and the textbooks it was like the enemies jockey-riding their race horse," R.V.G. Menon said.

The loudest criticism was against the evaluation system envisaged under the new curriculum. For many, including Education Department officials, the reduced importance on written examinations (the conduct of which was their responsibility) was the biggest sin. Director of Public Instruction V.P. Joy observed: "The new system may have many positive aspects. But how do you ensure that a student has achieved the targeted competencies at the end of the year? Why should they be against written examinations? Instead the importance seems to be on 'continuous and comprehensive evaluation' by the teacher himself. You should certify knowledge, not ignorance." "Unless you test what the student has achieved," Joy asked, "how do you conclude he has obtained the required knowledge?"

"The question that we faced was what kind of an examination should Standard 12 students face. We were clear that it should not be a mere memory test, that it should also examine the analytical and deductive abilities of the students. The consensus was that evaluation should be a combination of both," Narayanan said.

R.V.G. Menon admits that there was some confusion on the question of evaluation. Along with continuous and comprehensive evaluation, which has become an accepted practice worldwide, the idea of a terminal examination as a kind of standard testing has been accepted in many countries. But there is lack of clarity on how this element is to be introduced in the new system in Kerala. "Evaluation techniques have not received enough importance in teacher training. It is a defect that has to be corrected. But on the relative importance of the two systems of evaluation, there is a real difference of opinion as to where one has to draw a line," he said.

It was nobody's case that the new curriculum and pedagogy as it evolved in its first few years was perfect in every respect. There was agreement on the need for correction. But, says Ramakrishnan, "Education is not politics. The changes and corrections should evolve through an academic process. Then there is scope for me as a teacher, a parent and a citizen to express my opinion. But what the new government did was to decide unilaterally and autocratically to revert to the old curriculum and textbooks in Standard Eight and perhaps to suggest the direction its expert committee should take regarding its conclusions."

Changes in curriculum should not be something synonymous with a change of government. The changes were part of a vision of comprehensive education from Minus Two to the Plus Two stage. By deciding to stick to the old textbooks from Standard Eight this year, what the government has done is to compartmentalise school education. Secondary education falls once again into the old rut of memory-based learning. And the threat is looming large on the upper primary classes as well.

According to Ramakrishnan, anyone who has cared to watch the change in the new classrooms in Kerala will no doubt have noticed that the new curriculum has made the children more confident and creative. "Whether they are getting the necessary competencies is something that has to be proved over the years. For this, teacher training is an important component. Wherever it has taken place properly, there is no doubt that the students are attaining the necessary competencies," he said.

Those on both sides of the argument in Kerala accept that quality education, however defined, should have the following minimum requirements: adequate facilities; well-trained, motivated and responsible teachers; active classrooms and an engaging curriculum. Over the decades, the old system of education had been found wanting in all four respects. Moreover, it had been failing over 70 per cent of the students enrolling in Standard One by the time they reached Standard Ten.

The fate of school education in Kerala is now to be decided by a new committee in three months, the Minister has announced. Until then, as Abdul Waheed, the principal of a government higher secondary school in Thiruvananthapuram, says, "schools will cope as best as they can, because whichever be the system, it is the teachers that will make the difference."

Despite catering to students from a relatively poor background, teachers in Waheed's school seemed surprisingly enthusiastic about the new curriculum. "We ensure that the demands of the new curriculum are met, as best as the facilities allow us. Where it lags behind, we teach the students the good old way. We believe they should get the best of both systems, and should not be made to suffer for the imperfections of any one of them," was Waheed's significant comment.