Let’s leave politics out of education: HRD Minister on syllabi exclusions

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 8 

HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal on Thursday rose in defence of CBSE’s syllabi rationalisation for classes 9 to 12 given the COVID pandemic. He urged everyone to leave politics out of education and stop spinning a “false narrative.”

Pokhriyal was reacting after educationists and opposition politicians slammed the CBSE wielding a knife on key and controversial topics— secularism, federalism, nationalism and citizenship among others— while rationalising the syllabi for higher classes.

Many educationists have termed the syllabi reductions by CBSE as motivated and demanded a recall.

“There has been a lot of uninformed commentary on the exclusion of some topics from CBSE syllabus. The problem with these comments is that they resort to sensationalism by connecting topics selectively to portray a false narrative,” Pokhriyal said, adding that education is a sacred duty towards children and it should be spared of politics.

“Let us leave politics out of education and make our politics more educated,” was the Minister’s defence after top educationists like Anita Rampal questioned the rationale behind the reductions.

Pokhriyal said CBSE has clarified that schools have been advised to

follow the NCERT Alternate Academic Calendar and all the topics mentioned have been covered under the same Academic Calendar.

The exclusions are merely a one-time measure for exams, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Minister reiterated.

He said the sole only aim was to ease the stress on students by reducing the syllabus by 30 per cent.

“This exercise has been carried out following the advice and recommendations of various experts and considering the suggestions received from educationists through our syllabus for students 2020 campaign,” Pokhriyal said.

Adviser to NCERT Prof Subhash had on Wednesday said he wasn’t aware of the move to rationalise until it happened.

The minister added: “While it is easy to misconstrue exclusion of topics like nationalism, local government, federalism, etc and build a concocted narrative, a wider perusal of different subjects will show that this exclusion is happening across subjects. To give a few examples, the topics excluded in Economics are Measures of Dispersion, Balance of Payments Deficit, etc, topics excluded in Physics are Heat Engine & Refrigerator, Heat Transfer, Convection & Radiation among others.

Similarly, some of the excluded topics in Maths are Properties of Determinants, Consistency, Inconsistency, and Number of Solutions of System of Linear Equations by Examples and Binomial Probability Distribution.

In Biology, portions of Mineral Nutrition, Digestion & Absorption have been excluded. It can be no one’s argument that these topics have also being excluded by malice or some grand design which only partisan minds can decipher,” Pokhriyal said.