The Hindu : `New textbooks only after considering all suggestions'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 20, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

`New textbooks only after considering all suggestions'

By K. Ramachandran

CHENNAI April 19. The School Education Directorate will seek to include all suggestions from experts, teachers and members of the public in the draft syllabus now mooted for standard VI-X, while preparing the new textbooks. The textbooks will meet the higher skill and application levels required by the revised syllabus, the Director of School Education, S. Paramasivan, said on Saturday.

Although the textbooks based on the new syllabus for classes VI and IX were in various stages of printing, "it is still possible for us to include the changes suggested by various persons at least in the next print. For other classes, the entire feedback will be considered before the lesson plans and textbooks are finalised," Mr. Paramasivan said summing up the discussions on the revised syllabus for Tamil language.

Over 50 subject experts, teachers and retired teachers, besides 40 students met in different groups to discuss the Tamil language syllabus for various classes. Similar meetings were held in Madurai for Tamil, in Tiruchi and Coimbatore for English, in Cuddalore and Salem for Mathematics, in Erode and Thanjavur for Science, and Vellore and Tirunelveli for Social Sciences. However, as the announcement about the holding of discussions to deliberate the new syllabus came only on Friday morning, very few parents and non-governmental representatives participated and aired their views.

Mr. Paramasivan said the new syllabus would come into force in the next academic year (2003-04) for all subjects for class VI and IX and only for Tamil for Class X; in 2004-05 for Classes VII, X and XI; and in 2005-06 for classes VIII and XII. "For the first time, we have put the entire syllabi in the Internet (www.tn.gov.in/schoolsyllabus) , for which we are getting feedback, even from Tamils settled in the U.S, the U.K, Australia and Europe."

He said the syllabus for class XI and XII were nearing completion. The textbooks would be written only after considering the feedback.

The whole idea was to evolve textbooks that went beyond ``knowledge and understanding'' and would enable students to apply the concepts and develop new skills. "Our new question papers would also be different. The idea is no one should fail, but it should also challenge the bright minds through new types of problem-solving regardless of whether one is in a urban or in a rural centre."

The chairman of the syllabus committee for Tamil, V. Ganapathy, said stress was on providing skills such as listening, reading, writing and understanding, besides higher skills such as appreciation, evaluation and creative writing. Functional grammar learning should be an integral part of language learning. The new syllabus would also highlight the correlation between language and its own culture.

After an introduction of the issues by the Chief Educational Officer, Chennai, D. Uma, the experts divided themselves into different groups to evaluate the syllabus for each standard. In the feedback presented later, they wanted the ``recitation/memorisation content'' increased and the number of essays to be brought down from 15 to 10.

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