True teachers: Sri Aurobindo & Swami Vivekananda

NCF-2005 against the psyche of the nation

By Rajendra Dixit Organiser Home > 2006 Issues > July 02, 2006

National Curriculum Framework-2005 (NCF-2005) is against the wisdom and psyche of the nation. It imposes an outdated materialist ideology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries behind the facade of rational and scientific approach on a nation that aims to send its 21-century generation to moon and stars of beyond. It negates and in reality violates founding fathers, Parliament of India and the considered opinion of the Supreme Court on many counts.

The Constitution Assembly debates tell that even our founding fathers distinguished between religious education and education about religions and had accepted the latter. So has the Supreme Court in its September 12, 2002 judgment. Similarly, S.B. Chavan Committee also maintains a similar view. There was even a directive to the NCERT to implement the Chavan Committee report on this issue. But the NCF-2005 absolutely ignores these values completely. The students would not be able to develop spiritually as per Gandhiji’s dreams. Education would be limited to being an instrument of mere material, cut-throat competition and valueless social living.

The draft of the NCF-2005 at least mentioned the names of some Indian thinkers like Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, etc (P.97) but under the unfortunate pressure of leftists, these names were dropped from the final document. It is a matter of grim concern that the NCERT has not followed the established procedure in which first the curriculum is framed, on the basis of which syllabi of various subjects are formed and finally on the basis of these syllabi the textbooks are written...

The new framework presents India in the form of a multinational country fragmented on the left considerations of caste, groups, class, religion, etc. It also declares its resolve to do so. The students would fall a prey to ill will, prejudice and misgivings because of their constant reading and brooding about caste, religion, class etc., and would remain involved in social division, self-condemnation, cynicism, class conflicts, etc....A paradigm shift is recommended proposing the study of social sciences from the perspective of marginalised groups above. It is an extremely divisive and exclusivist view aimed at further fuelling close conflicts—not helping national cohesion.

The Kothari Commission, deemed to be the guiding light in Indian education, has described education as the most important instrument of national unity, social cohesion etc. National identity has also been accepted as being important. As against this, these elements have been driven out of the new NCERT documents. The NCF maintains studied silence on India’s past glory and ancient fund of knowledge. It focuses on “making education more relevant to the present day and future needs only.” (The author is former joint director of NCERT)