Book review

Introduction

1. Title: Political Agenda of Education                 
2. Author: krishan kumar
3. Fiction or Nonfiction: Non fiction                              

The book is divided into two parts.

• Part i- knowledge

This part focused on true and valid knowledge. The writer said we are following the colonial education system in current time which causes the lack of moral education among the learners. Colonial education just needs quantity of education not quality of education. But nowadays we need a quality of education which is based on true and valid knowledge. 

• Partii- the three quest

In this part of the book the writer discusses the curriculum and pedagogy. They focused more on the curriculum which was set after the colonial period in India.

In the introduction we see a zoo where all the students perform different activities and their teacher reacts to their actions. While reading the book I found the same situation when I was on any educational field trip. The children were harassing the animals, writing their name on the walls and other museum material. The teachers were only focused over their own duties which were assigned to them during the trip. The writer felt so bad when he observed the behavior of school children towards the animals as they were hitting the animal with stones. Some students were interested in what’s going on in their surroundings. They just follow their teacher’s instructions.

What is worth teaching?  One of the key processes involved in educational change concerns the question because was there a wide gap between an Indian child’s life at school and that at home . The school’s daily curriculum had no reference to the children’s life outside the school. The teachers were  free to make such a reference, and they occasionally do. Whereas curriculum policy permits  the teacher to teach all the school subjects without establishing any link between the child’s life and social life  and the knowledge content of the syllabus . 

In the indigenous tradition, the teacher was remunerated by the community he served but under the new system, he became a paid servant of the colonial government.  

State control over schools had significant implications for curriculum and teachers.  The points of ‘inconsistency’ Arnold noticed between the Indian and the English concepts of education can be placed in two categories. The first included his observations concerning language and reading or literacy, and in the second   placed his observations concerning science, including geography and mathematics. 

In the context of language education, Arnold made two basic points. One is that pupils were  capable of reading but unable to derive any meaning out of what they read. The other point was that education in a ‘common vernacular’ like Urdu—which his office decided to introduce in schools in place of Persian—was ‘utterly inconsistent’ with people’s idea of ‘erudition and learning’. 

Both these points relate to the perception of literacy and that of its functions in a culture. 

1857,  Persian School, where is more number of students are Hindu and Muslim. In this school that taught about writing, but with less energy and success. a student learns how to read without understanding the meaning of those words, and the shocking thing is it satisfies both teacher and parents. Reading aloud from it was a source of pleasure and satisfaction, even its meaning could not be comprehended. why did we just discard all the old Persian books? I mostly don’t know the meaning of new books.  it is very unwise and worse. Language has a great role in education as well as religion and morality. We have to include this domain in education.

 Facts and rule

We know how subjects are interrelated to each other but we found people ignorant of the geography of their province, Ignorant that there was Science as geography. in Victorian-era geography and natural history had begun to find places in the curriculum of some  English public schools. Rugby student 1840s, Arnold Exposed to the new interest shown in a study of nature and earth. he was irritated with arithmetic, where arithmetic was divided into two main classes-   the Khattries trained by long and diligent practice, But at a loss when directly they got beyond their habituated problems because they are unknown with the scientific method.  In his first report, Arnold Had described a style of account keeping.  for better school education he suggested for rules of arithmetic-  the rule of three methods through the medium of legible character-  more profitable to the scholar than the cumbrous Process and illegible Handwriting of Banias Bookkeeping.  Where are I supposed to teach the former, in hopes one day effecting a change in the latter? Arnolds Director of public instructions,  Punjab. Gratifying result of new curriculum policy. In  report boys  Hindu and Muslim,  four rules of arithmetic pass a good exam in the geography of India. But teachers Resisted the new curriculum. But training for the same.  The training was seen as a solution to the problem posed by teachers.

Teacher training was seen as a solution to the problem of incompetency of teachers for the new curriculum. According to Arnold, having basic knowledge of arithmetic, history & geography will be enough to teach efficiently. Thus teacher training was really a re-education of teachers.

 In the old system, a teacher decides his\her pedagogy of teaching but in the new system, teachers were perceived as a source of resistance to curricular change. 

The colonial policy led to the suspicion of Englishman’s education & the subtle resistance to his pedagogy. The Englishman’s religion & education system became a matter of concern in Indian society as the Indian parents who enrolled their children in English schools were worried about religious conflict that can come between them and their child. Walsh also discussed in her study that the greatest fear of Indian parents in the 19th century was that their children would convert to Christianity. 

Parents blame education for the views & behavior of their children. As caste system is prevalent in Indian society drinking water from a Muslim by a child is considered as outraging caste rules and the child was told that all this came through his reading English. 

In case of girls, the perception of remaining uneducated was common till early 20th century but the scenario improved after revivalist movements such as Arya Samaj etc. 

Mishra identifies in his studies that educated men are set apart from all others because they are considered as Christian.  In response to this belief Chaturvedi quoted ‘Learn English and you lose your humanity’. The educated men served as a scapegoat in this respect. 

On the other side, the colonizer’s design in teaching English language & literature to the natives was to influence their morality. The East India Company administrators had been under pressure from missionaries, traders, as well as members of parliament, to take steps to improve India morally by teaching religion in one form or another. Some Indian administrators oppose religion-education as it can cause backlash. The question of teaching religion directly and morality remained uncertain throughout the 19th century and even later. 

Out of this conflict arose the fluctuation that the government’s relationship with missionaries went through.From its early policy of discouraging missionaries, the Company had been pushed towards a sympathetic view of missionary work around the time its own educational role had crystallized.

Although teaching a lesson inevitably involved getting chil-dren to memorize the ‘maxims’ given in the textbook, mission teach-ers were concerned that the boys understood what they had learnt by rote.

Once the child saw how little the accounts of gods and goddesses have to do with the ‘facts’ of history and geography, it was expected that he would turn to the ‘rational’ belief system that Christianity had to offer. 

Children everywhere protect themselves in classrooms with the help of memorized re-production when they are faced with concepts or material that they cannot grasp or find meaningless.

The tradition now acquired a new validity and focus under the auspices of a textbook-centred curricu-lum and examination. To the English administration, examina-tions—like textbooks—were a means of norm maintenance.

 All he could do was to prepare them to the hilt, which meant giving them the opportunity to rehearse endlessly the skills of reproducing the text from memory, summarizing, and essay-type writing on any ques- tion based on the textbook.

Although I understand that a good teacher  needs to give opportunity to each and every student to explore their own environment and under the basic concept of theme.