Misrepresentation by Marxists and media cronies
Pioneer. COM
Sudharshan K Kapur, Educator and author of textbooks
On June 29, 1966, Dr DS Kothari submitted a monumental report of the first post-Independence educational commission to the then Union Education Minister, MC Chagla. The report, which was about 760 pages long, was aptly titled Education and National Development but was later simply known as the "Kothari Report". It covered matters like education and national objectives, education system, its structure and levels, status of teacher and teacher-education, school education, school curriculum, higher education aims, administration of universities, etc.

It goes to the credit of the Kothari Commission that the report was based on proper and sound understanding of concepts and basic principles of education with recommendations logically delineated. The report contained a summary of as many as 230 recommendations , which are as valid, relevant and practicable today as they were four decades back. It is perhaps for this very reason that the Kothari Commission Report is still regarded by the educationists as the "Bible on Indian education".

The National Policy on Education, 1968, was entirely based on this report. It is another matter that those who were at the helm of affairs in the 1970s were not sincere enough to implement these recommendations in letter and spirit and made a mess of the whole thing and arbitrarily imposed upon the country an educational system which negated the recommendations of the 1966 Education Commission and the stipulations of NPE, 1968.

The Government had established NCERT as an autonomous body with the objective to assist and advise the Ministry of Education (now MHRD) in the implementation of its policies and major programmes in the field of education, particularly school education. One of the principal responsibilities of NCERT was to develop curriculum and prepare model textbooks and instructional materials in all school subjects from Classes I to XII.Obviously, it became the responsibility of NCERT to implement the recommendations made by the Kothari Commission. In 1976, Education was brought in the Concurrent List by a Constitutional Amendment.

It was during the Emergency that NCERT was subject to public mischief, committed by the concerned authorities of the Ministry of Education, which deprived NCERT of whatever little autonomy it ever had. The central government of the time superimposed 19 subject committees, each consisting of four or five members, upon NCERT to develop curriculum and prepare textbooks in various subjects.

Most of the subject experts in these committees belonged to Jawaharlal Nehru University or were their bedfellows who had no experience in school education and pedagogy. They either selected themselves or their bedfellows as authors to write school textbooks to be published by NCERT. They exploited the situation and monopolised the authorship of NCERT textbooks and grabbed huge amounts of money as royalties.

Much can be said about their character and standards of integrity. Thanks to their artful manipulations, NCERT, which was supposedly an autonomous organisation comprising experts, academicians and educationists, was reduced to the status of a servile and slavish institution serving the interests of these exploiter-masters occupying important positions and chairs in JNU, ICHR, ICSSR and other institutions. Some of these artful manipulators later started writing for the Press and a few of their bedfellows have monopolised columns in the English Press of today.

Over the past six years, most of the English newspapers have madly engaged themselves in discussing and debating irrelevant and insignificant issues, or rather non-issues, like "saffronisation" or "detoxification" of education. Our worthy editors and armchair columnists wasted hundreds of columns on these topics without having a knowledge of how much history is taught in Classes III to X and what was the quantum of the contents to be detoxified by Arjun Singh. Everybody started beating about the bush without knowledge of the A, B or C of school education whatsoever.

And, what has been the contribution of Arjun Singh as HRD Minister in the last 20 months? Replacement of one set by another set of tricksters, uncalled for and unwarranted reprinting and publication of unrevised and unreviewed History textbooks in thousands of copies each to benefit his bedfellows, the Marxist historians, and serve their vested interests.

It is a sad reflection on the functioning of the Press that it has failed to take notice of a landmark Judgement, with wide-ranging implications, delivered by the Supreme Court of India on September 6, 2004. It is going to benefit millions of school and college level students who opt for HIndi or any other Indian language as medium of instruction. The Order was passed on a Public Interest Litigation praying for directions to the Union of India, the HRD Ministry, NCERT and CBSE to implement Presidential Order on recommendations made by the Committee of Parliament on Official Languages in the First Part of its Report vide Resolution No. 1/20012/1/87-OL(A-1) dated 30.12.1988. This Presidential Order was not implemented for all of 12 years.

The entire Media, including the national English Press, almost blacked out this Judgement and did not take due notice of something which concerned the quality of education of crores of students. Perhaps, the all-knowing journalists and editors did not comprehend the requirements and implications of this revolutionary order of the Supreme Court. One implication is that NCERT would have to withdraw HIndi versions of all its textbooks which had not used technical terminology evolved by the Commission for Scientific Technical Terminology.