Reducing Syllabus: A Great Relief for Students

GREESHMA THOMAS

A woman had a pet dog and one day it fell sick. To save the dog, every day she attempted to give a tablespoon of medicine down its throat, yet the dog would always resist and pull away. One day when she took the bottle, it slipped out her hands and the medicine spilled all over the floor. To her surprise, the dog went over to the puddle and began lapping it up! In fact, here, the dog had not been resisting to take the medicine. It was resisting the strategy that its master had used– pushing it down its throat.

It is a similar situation when we consider the pedagogy used in our schools. If heavy subjects, other educational burdens along with parental compulsion and peer pressures are push into children’s throat in the name of educational therapy, many of the students will not be able to absorb them and they will resist and vomit it, especially now, as  they are  in the pandemic situation.

During this Covid-time,  when students, teachers and parents are all  in a crisis situation, the decision of the CBSE to reduce the syllabus for classes 9 to 12  by 30-percent this year, seems as a right strategy due to the trouble caused by the COVID-19. It will certainly elevate students’ to a happy frame of mind to study with earnestness.

The CBSE in their process of trimming down about 190 subjects for classes 9-12, cut various key chapters like secularism, democratic rights, religion, gender and caste and food security, which create now a major controversy by some people. However, there was a mixed response from various stakeholders as many school representatives welcomed the move to decrease the course load on children, while a section of academicians said it appeared to be ideologically driven.

Amidst arguments, however, let us realize that education came to bring life and light to people who have no vision or right vision of life. But so often, as we have seen in the above story, we use the wrong method to force our expectations down students’ throats instead of presenting it in such a way that they will willingly receive it.  Parents also often make wrong decisions in their eagerness to give the best opportunities for their children by giving unwanted compulsion in study down their throat. What children should realize is that they are the ones responsible for their own learning, homework as well.

With the CBSE’s decision by reducing the heavy burdens for students at this juncture of Corona crisis, it is necessary to teach the students the values of secularism, democratic rights, religion, culture as well as the evils of gender and caste discrimination. While reducing the syllabus, these lessons must find some place in the syllabus, maybe in a shorter version.  Our first priority today is to save our world from the coronavirus crisis and to look for ways to revitalize the economy, and our lives, after this major crisis. Let the students now go for enjoying the education with discerningly reduced syllabus and freedom!