Large textbooks with not much of quality have been a matter of concern to K-12 professionals in our country for the past 30 years.
In the '80s and '90s, Central and many State Government Departments of Education produced National Curriculum Framework and other such regional level documents respectively with elaborate proposals on the importance of reducing quantity in textbooks, making the school bag lighter, need for child nutrition and health etc. But the problem was that many of these proposals were assumption based and not practically possible in actual classrooms.
At the NGO level, Organisations such as M S Swaminathan Research Foundation produced far more meaningful evidence based multimedia supported reports such as `Kuzhanndaikku inda bharam tevaiah?' (with English versions as well) and public awareness products such as this this one. But still, as education administration professionals and teachers would know, impact of these publicity campaigns was marginal mainly due to absense of an effective monitoring agency. (In fact in spite of viable proposals, Syllabus Boards and textbook publishers added more quantity at the cost of quality and many schools began replacing value education periods into Maths or English periods in their time tables, thereby violating mandatory requirements for affiliation).
Very recently, things seem to have improved in this direction: for example, Tamilnadu Government's implementation of Activity Based Curriculum and Trimester system in its Primary schools. Such a move can make children's school bag lighter with enjoyable lesson materials. Naturally, the move seems to have received overwhelmingly positive response from stakeholders, particularly parents and teachers. (This afternoon I happened to look at an activity based textbook for Standard 1 published by Tamilnadu Government. It looks very good and child friendly).
Hope such improvements are implemented effectively and the impact monitored closely using an effective watchdog mechanism which places values at its core.
At the NGO level, Organisations such as M S Swaminathan Research Foundation produced far more meaningful evidence based multimedia supported reports such as `Kuzhanndaikku inda bharam tevaiah?' (with English versions as well) and public awareness products such as this this one. But still, as education administration professionals and teachers would know, impact of these publicity campaigns was marginal mainly due to absense of an effective monitoring agency. (In fact in spite of viable proposals, Syllabus Boards and textbook publishers added more quantity at the cost of quality and many schools began replacing value education periods into Maths or English periods in their time tables, thereby violating mandatory requirements for affiliation).
Very recently, things seem to have improved in this direction: for example, Tamilnadu Government's implementation of Activity Based Curriculum and Trimester system in its Primary schools. Such a move can make children's school bag lighter with enjoyable lesson materials. Naturally, the move seems to have received overwhelmingly positive response from stakeholders, particularly parents and teachers. (This afternoon I happened to look at an activity based textbook for Standard 1 published by Tamilnadu Government. It looks very good and child friendly).
Hope such improvements are implemented effectively and the impact monitored closely using an effective watchdog mechanism which places values at its core.
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