Learning without burden,1993
Introduction
* The ministry of Human Resource Development constituted an eight members committee under the chairmanship of professor Yashpal called National advisory committee properly called after the name of its chairman in 1992
*To advise on the ways and means to reduce the load on school students at all levels particularly the young students, while improving quality of learning including capability for life- long self-learning and skill formulation.
* July 15, 1993 the commission render to report titled LEARNING WITHOUT BURDEN to the government
How the report was formed
Formation of report
- Initiated with a meeting with few faculty members of NCERT.
- Conducted meeting with teachers and principals working in different states at four different places in the country.
- Even conducted meeting with parents and volunteers.
- Collected response through All India Radio and Doordarshan.
Problems of curriculum load
Need to set committee
- Preamble (weight of school bag).
- Joyless learning.
- Examination system
- Textbook as the "Truth"
- Language Textbooks.
- Observation Discouraged
- Structure of syllabus
- Teaching Everything
- Starting early
- Not just an Urban problem
Roots of the problems
- Knowledge vs Information
- Isolation of experts from Classroom realities
- Competition-based Social Ethos.
- Convention of 'Teaching the Text'
- Centralized character
- Absence of Academic Ethos.
- Group activities and group achievements must be encouraged.
- Education committees should be constituted at village, block, and district levels.
- The jurisdiction of CBSE should be restricted to KVS and the Navodaya vidyalaya only, and all others schools should be affiliated with the respective state boards.
- No compulsion for school children to carry heavy bags.
Recommendations
Cont...
- Nature and character of homework needs a radical change.
- Teacher pupil ratio need to changed from (1:40) to (1:30).
- B.Ed. degree courses by correspondence be DE-recognized.
- The norms for giving private schools recognition need to be more stringent to avoid commercialization.
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Reference