Take thermocol balls or mustard seeds in a bottle and shake the bottle vigorously. The seeds try to move away from each other, but stick to the bottle. Why does this happen?
Answers
N ot a day passes in our country when somebody somewhere has not criticized our system
of education, particularly our school education. A great many ills and inadequacies of
the system probably flow from extraneous causes and need socio-political initiatives that go
beyond mere reforms in school curriculum. But some problems do arise directly from the
curriculum - text books, teaching and evaluation practices. There is then a need to keep these
problems in view and continually try to devise new curricula to overcome them.
Efforts in curricular reforms and innovations are not new to our country. Nearly every
decade or so, there have been initiatives at the Central and State levels to effect changes in
curricula. Several independent school networks and voluntary groups have brought out their
own textbooks and related materials. There is no doubt that significant progress has been
made by the country in increasingly better conceptualization of the school curriculum at pri-
mary, middle and secondary levels. The paradigms of school curriculum in India have steadily
evolved and become more relevant and modern. Unfortunately, the over-all deterioration of
the system due to extraneous factors has tended to obscure these gains. Also, and most impor-
tant for our purpose here, there is a large gap between the generally agreed objectives of the
curriculum and their actual translation into textbooks and teaching practices.
Homi Bhabha Curriculum is basically an attempt to close this gap as much as possible. It
is not conceived to be a revolutionary curriculum. The broad aims of the curriculum are much
the same as those articulated in countless reports and articles of different education depart-
ments and agencies. The idea is not to produce a fanciful, ‘museum-piece’ curriculum that
nobody would adopt, but to attempt to discover a sound and wholesome curriculum that is
practical to implement in our school system. ‘Practical’ is, however, not to be regarded as a
euphemism for the status quo. As the users will find out, the alternative textbooks of the
Homi Bhabha Curriculum are full of radical unconventional ideas that we believe are both
urgent, necessary and, given enough efforts, feasible. But rather than describe here what we
believe to be these innovative aspects, we leave the users, students and teachers, to find and
experience them. In the simplest and most favourable situations, devising a curriculum and
translating it into books, laboratories and teacher manuals is a daunting task. In the complex
parameters and constraints that govern our country’s educational system, the task is formida-
ble. Only time will tell if and to what extent the Homi Bhabha Curriculum is an effort in the
right direction.