Bangalore, please note. And underline. Nobel-laureate Amartya Sen has called for a radical reform in primary school curriculum. This would bring down the curriculum overload in primary education in India, making “homework useless and private tuition unnecessary.” If anything, Bangalore’s moms would surely agree.
The famous economist said he would bring up the suggestions, which are part of the findings of the Pratichi India Trust that he heads, in Delhi in February to ramp up opinions on this problem.
The most worrisome finding that Sen highlighted was the growing dependence on private tuition. He said it was a “real regression”. According to the findings, the proportion of children relying on private tuition has shot up. This is not peculiar to India alone. Even Japan, Korea and Taiwan are embracing this trend.
But Sen warns: “The harm, however, is much greater when private tuition becomes “essential” (rather than merely competitively advantageous for the fortunate), especially when most families of first generation school-goers are not able to afford this artificially-generated essentiality.”
The other bad thing, Sen said, was homework. “There should be no rule for homework to complete basic education on the part of school children at their elementary level when they are very young,” he said.
Sen argues that the prevailing system—expecting students to complete part of their curricula at home —has perpetuated backwardness among weaker classes. He also opines that the worst affected are parents who are incapable of teaching their children personally. “When they lack that, we, instead of removing inequality through education, perpetuate inequality through education,” Sen said, in Kolkata.
With IANS
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