The recent decision of HRD minister Smriti Irani, to replace
teaching of German language with that of Sanskrit has raised a lot of questions
about educational reforms in India and their implications. In the same manner,
debate about civil service aptitude test (CSAT) in the UPSC examinations also
came under scanner and almost all the media channels covered the debate.
However, there has been a continuous change in teaching practices on the primary level for the students of 1st to 3rd class, yet almost everyone is oblivious to it. According to the Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) of 2013, it was estimated that a large percentage of 5th class students were not able to read or write properly and solve basic mathematical problems.
The question which becomes more important is that are we giving equal importance to the educational reforms and implementation of them on the primary level, which is perhaps required the most? NCERT had changed the basic concept of its books long back after researching and adapting better ways of teaching language and mathematics to the primary school children from curriculum of different countries.
The out-dated method of teaching alphabets first and then moving on to words and in the same way, teaching mathematics and science were abandoned by N.C.E.R.T a long back. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) also provides a sum of Rs. 500 to all the primary school teachers annually, so that they can spend it on Teaching Learning Materials (TLM), which are used to make classroom studies an interesting and joyful experience for the children. However, if we go to a primary school run by government in remote villages of our country or even in big cities, we can see the same old methods of teaching used by teachers and none of the changes are implemented.
Therefore, the question is whether giving sole importance and attention to higher studies will bring any concrete change on the grassroots or do we need to give more emphasis to primary school education so that the foundation of our society becomes strong and the children are motivated to study further?
However, there has been a continuous change in teaching practices on the primary level for the students of 1st to 3rd class, yet almost everyone is oblivious to it. According to the Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) of 2013, it was estimated that a large percentage of 5th class students were not able to read or write properly and solve basic mathematical problems.
The question which becomes more important is that are we giving equal importance to the educational reforms and implementation of them on the primary level, which is perhaps required the most? NCERT had changed the basic concept of its books long back after researching and adapting better ways of teaching language and mathematics to the primary school children from curriculum of different countries.
The out-dated method of teaching alphabets first and then moving on to words and in the same way, teaching mathematics and science were abandoned by N.C.E.R.T a long back. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) also provides a sum of Rs. 500 to all the primary school teachers annually, so that they can spend it on Teaching Learning Materials (TLM), which are used to make classroom studies an interesting and joyful experience for the children. However, if we go to a primary school run by government in remote villages of our country or even in big cities, we can see the same old methods of teaching used by teachers and none of the changes are implemented.
Therefore, the question is whether giving sole importance and attention to higher studies will bring any concrete change on the grassroots or do we need to give more emphasis to primary school education so that the foundation of our society becomes strong and the children are motivated to study further?
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