Friday, October 2, 2009

NCERT Textbooks

The Times of India, which most of us in recent years have associated with fluff and half naked women, can, when it puts its mind to it, run some wonderful stories -- leaving its nearest rival here, the Hindu panting way behind. On Gandhi Jayanti day, when N. Ram and his cohorts at the Hindu have been obsessing about China's greatness and its military might, the TOI has a far more relevant, topical and interesting story on the new NCERT textbooks.

The new set of books, designed by the NCERT's primary textbook committee, creates a culturally responsive mathematics curriculum, according to the chair of the committee Anita Rampal -- "(We) have looked at math through the prism of everyday life. Instead of teaching through abstractions, the books tell real-life stories of people so that the youngsters can identify with the characters."

Thus living examples of fish, their shapes and sizes, as well as the capacity of fishing boats off Chennai's coast to teach the principles of maths. Similarly, to make the connection of a map to the aerial photo of a place, they used a photograph of India Gate and Rashtrapati Bhavan by the celebrated photographer Raghu Rai who was only too willing to give them permission to print it.

One of those feel good stories when there is so much bemoaning about the state of our education system...

9 comments:

Venkataraman said...

The new NCERT books are a step in the right direction.

Coming to N.Ram, what does he have to gain by praising China so much? What is the motivation behind such bias?

Rahul Basu said...

That's easy - he just parrots the party line. See Karat's statement today - apparently all the recent comments and news items regarding China and its activities vis-a-vis India is just a right wing conspiracy to spoil India-China relations. The RSS is a unprepossessing organisation but you can hardly blame it for everything!

Venkataraman said...

I see. So he's just showing support his favourite party, not necessarily the party in power.

sunder and sonati said...

I read the original article, too. Yes it is heartening, indeed. Also the fact that there are inputs from divers people, and that the Internet is being put to good use.

Are the books available off the shelf in Madras? How can we get our hands on some sample copies?

Rahul Basu said...

I can check if these are available somewhere and let you know.

BTW just out of curiosity: isn't 'divers' the Old Dickensian version of the modern 'diverse'. Or is it the other way around?

sunder and sonati said...

According to my understanding (and dictionary), divers is several or sundry; whereas diverse is of various kinds or multiform.

Rahul Siddharthan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
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