This paper endeavours to make sense of the various ways in which textbooks have been analysed in India, and the manner in which their goodness or worth is ascertained, based on an exhaustive review...

School Textbooks: Understanding Frameworks for Analysis

This study focuses on gender representation of reading texts, dialogues and pictures in a textbook “When English Rings a Bell” for Grade VII Junior High School. It used a descriptive qualitative approach, and its objective was both to investigate gender representation in the reading texts, dialogues and pictures, and to describe the differences and similarities of each representation. The study revealed that female domination was found in the reading texts as seen from gender visibility, gender specific noun, and male domination was seen from gender stereotype. Similarly, female domination was also found in the dialogues as seen from gender visibility and gender specific noun, while male domination was seen from gender stereotype. However, male domination was found in the pictures as seen from gender visibility and gender stereotype. Hence, both the reading texts and the dialogues showed female domination as seen from gender visibility, gender neutral, and gender specific noun. They also presented gender stereotype showing male domination. On the other hand, the pictures showed male domination. In conclusion, the textbook was dominated by female representation in term of the reading texts and the dialogues, and by male representation in term of the pictures. It also contained gender stereotypes placing females less dominant than males.

Gender Representation on Reading Texts, Dialogues and Pictures in “When English Rings a Bell” for Grade VII Junior High School

If “the academic field of curriculum studies is embedded in national culture” (Pinar 2005, 26) and our own social, historical, and institutional locations impinge on the questions we ask and the answers we give, then this effort to write about curriculum studies needs to take note of the specificity of India. I attempt to understand meaning and construction of the field of curriculum studies in India along two overlapping axes: (a) colonial experience, trajectory, practices, and tussles of nation building and democracy in India to locate curriculum in relation to larger context and developments, and (b) work in the area of education, curriculum, and textbooks by state and nonstate institutions to understand the ideas that have shaped curriculum studies and debates in India. This survey is used to take an overview of the state of the field of curriculum studies in India, its silences, challenges, and emerging areas of study. But before we undertake this exercise, it may be pertinent to understand the challenges involved in such an engagement.

Curriculum Studies in India

This paper examines local interpretations of some key themes in a democratic education against the backdrop of a changing social structure. It sees the discourse of a rational democracy as being severely challenged by practices of domination and an ideology of love. At the same time there may also be observed concrete contradictions which would welcome a democratic education that has concepts and morals that challenge the status quo. A strategy of principled cultural dialogue is advocated rather than one of isolation.

Between Love, Domination and Reason: Civic Education and its ‘Others’ in Central India

This paper examines local interpretations of some key themes in a democratic education against the backdrop of a changing social structure. It sees the discourse of a rational democracy as being severely challenged by practices of domination and an ideology of love. At the same time there may also be observed concrete contradictions which would welcome a democratic education that has concepts and morals that challenge the status quo. A strategy of principled cultural dialogue is advocated rather than one ofisolation. Acentral, though often unrecognised, concern in recent education has been the learning of universalist social relations. These make up the wider realm into which people move, going beyond the boundaries of a life constructed around family, kinship and caste. Such a public arena has sharply expanded with the growth of markets, towns and the state in India and its character, too, has been undergoing change. While older, descent-based relations like caste and clan continue to be important, the public arena has seen a marked growth of relatively secular and non-kinship aspects in almost all social institutions. A variety of sites in Indian education now try to deal with the ideas, principles and practices at the core of 2 d S S r a i a i o c , U e Vol2 No 2 Spring 2005 by Amman Madan on June 26, 2011 ced.sagepub.com Downloaded from Between Love, Domination and Reason 171 the growing and fast-changing public arena. Our contemporary vision of it is contributed to and expressed by the privileged place of science and technology in our curriculum, by the idea of merit and open competitive exams, by the importance of learning about the world rather than the local. The most explicit discussions of it in school classrooms, however, take place in the disciplines of history and civics. This is one of the reasons why history textbooks have been at the centre of so much controversy in recent years. For most Indians the vitality of the debate is obvious, but usually only intuitively so. History as a narrative of the most important myths of our country is also the most powerful conveyor of key principles and ideas. It legitimises and elaborates certain points of view at the cost of others. The debate over whether or not school textbooks should portray Aryans as coming from outside India or as indigenous is thus not over a minor point of fact relating to the long dead past. It bears upon how the legitimacy of power is constructed, upon territoriality as a principle of political mobilisation, upon ethnicity as the basis of political morality. If the Aryans did indeed come from outside India, many other myths centred on the idea of 'foreign-ness' become so much weaker. Such debates are central to the meaning given to the public arena. Our colonial heritage strongly influences the ways in which Indian education deals with such issues. This has been delineated and discussed by many scholars, including Sureshchandra Shukla (e.g., Shukla 1957) and Krishna Kumar (e.g., Kumar 1991). Krishna Kumar argues convincingly that nineteenth-century British liberalism was an important factor in the colonial educational agenda, and such an education contributed in no small way to the growth of the nationalist movement in India. Ideas of freedom and egalitarianism also drew from West European socialism and South Asian religious reform movements. The colonial and post-colonial state became by far the most powerful player in Indian education, even while being driven by diverse influences. Its changing configurations have left their marks on the portrayal of the public arena. In independent India, at the start of the 1990s for instance, statecentred socialism was the main thrust of the NCERT's civics textbooks (Madan 1995). This was, of course, tempered by the by Amman Madan on June 26, 2011 ced.sagepub.com Downloaded from

https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/sitepages/pdf/amman_between_love_domination_and_reason.pdf

'Others' in Central India Between Love, Domination and Reason: Civic Education and its

Are schoolchildren able to follow what civics textbooks try to teach? This field study in Madhya Pradesh examined what they understood of three basic themes in civics—the formation of an elected go...

Children's Perception of Sarkar: The Fallacies of Civics Teaching:

The use of cartoons as illustrations in National Council of Educational Research and Training’s (NCERT) Political Science textbooks has recently attracted attention from leaders across the political spectrum. Textbooks have been burnt and the government has set up a committee to inquire into the appropriateness of using cartoons in school textbooks. Unfortunately, it appears that there is a widespread lack of understanding about why cartoons should have been included in textbooks in the first place. It is often believed that the only purpose of a cartoon is to lampoon. Hence, it appears that in the NCERT textbooks, too, the cartoons were intended to mock and belittle. The job of textbooks is thought to be to simply lay down the truth according to the state. The fresh approach to using illustrations taken in the present NCERT social science textbooks, however, is largely unknown to many who express themselves vociferously and shrilly in the public sphere on the NCERT cartoon controversy.

Illustrating Social Studies in School Textbooks

2 finds imaginative use of illustrations, cartoons and images . In higher education, just as in academic discussions of every journal, we rely on the written word or assume that it alone can create ripples of academic discourses. It is an even rarer event to have a film being made with academics in mind. The film under review (ironically through the written word) Teacher’s Journey opens up and demands us to visualise the possibilities of exploring academic discourses in a distinct manner. It combines the documentation of a teacher’s practice and an enabling tool for the teacher educators to interact with their students. The film fills in what often educationists explore: classroom practices and the social world of a teacher.

Learning Teacher: Reviewing the Narrative of a Teacher's Journey

The article narrates a personal journey of learning and unlearning the images in school textbooks, its uses potentials and challenges as experienced by the author. It reflects upon the experiences of the process of selection of these images within the context of political science as a discipline. These experiences have been formed over a decade while working for Eklavya in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and also at the NCERT in New Delhi. It locates changes in understanding the perspectives on political cartoons and posters as could be used in a school textbook. It also argues that there is a need to rethink ways in which cartoons are used in textbooks. Furthermore, it tells us something about the way political science as a discipline is taught in schools across India.

Alex M. George

Papers

Children's Perception of Sarkar: The Fallacies of Civics Teaching:

Illustrating Social Studies in School Textbooks

Learning Teacher: Reviewing the Narrative of a Teacher's Journey

Political Science and Images in Schooling: Personal Reflections on Textbook Making Process.