New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Tuesday, July 7, ‘rationalized’ the syllabus for classes 9 to 12, reducing the chapters by 30% while attempting to retain the core concepts due to COVID-19 situation. The decision to revise the syllabus was announced by HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank.
“Looking at the extraordinary situation prevailing in the country and the world, CBSE was advised to revise the curriculum and reduce course load for the students of classes 9 to 12. To aid the decision, a few weeks back I also invited suggestions from all educationists on the reduction of syllabus for students and I am glad to share that we received more than 1.5K suggestions. Thank you, everyone, for the overwhelming response,” Ramesh Pokhriyal tweeted.
“Considering the importance of learning achievement, it has been decided to rationalize syllabus up to 30 per cent by retaining the core concepts,” he said.
The Minister had said that the Centre had asked educationists for suggestions on how to reduce the burden on students. “I am glad to share that we received more than 1.5K suggestions,” he tweeted. “Thank you, everyone, for the overwhelming response.”
The chapters that were deleted during the revision process includes sections on Citizenship, Nationalism, Secularism, Understanding Partition & Democratic Rights across multiple subjects, according to the documents uploaded on the board’s website.
Among five chapters scrapped from Social Science in Class 9 are Democratic Rights, which the board said has been completely removed.
The curriculum for Class 11 students included chapters on Peasants, Zamindars and the State, Understanding Partition and sections on ‘Revolt in The Countryside’ which were based on farmers’ agitation against moneylenders, have been removed.
Additionally, topics including Federalism, the need for Local Governments, Growth of Local Government in India, which fall under a section titled Indian Constitution at Work, have been removed from the subject of Political Science in Class 11. In the subject of Sociology, chapters on Social Structure, Stratification and Social Processes, and Environment and Society have been removed for Class 11.
On this move of CBSE, former NCERT director Krishna Kumar told the media that by removing chapters from books of CBSE, the right of children to read and understand is being taken away. He said, ‘There is a contradiction in the chapters that the government has decided to remove. Remove the chapter of Federalism and teach the Constitution to the children – how will this happen? You remove the chapter of social movements and teach history – how will this happen? History emerges from the social movement only. This initiative will promote the nature of rote among children.
He raised the question ‘What is the need to delete any chapter? Why is there an effort to implement education-based education system? Why is it necessary to remove a chapter from the CBSE book to take the exam? Krishna Kumar was the director of NCERT from 2004 to 2010.
