Phishing in troubled textbooks

There is so much debate on the ideological perspectives through which textbooks are written that attention to some core issues at the foundational sch­ool level gets marginalised. The conceptual and pedagogic structure of textbooks at the initial stages of primary sch­ooling is critical to how learning takes place in our educational system.

Children rarely remember what they read in school unless it was either taught very well or the textbooks were well written. While minutiae details may be forgotten, a well-written book would induce langu­age skills and stimulate curiosity. This is not to ignore the need to free textbooks from cultural bias and factual err­ors. But even when textbooks are error-free, they can suffer from serious scholastic anomalies that impede learning. In purely academic terms, there are many flaws in the textbooks that are not the consequence of ideological differences, but the result of epistemological misconstructions. These can help or hinder learning.

A good textbook can foster critical reasoning by developing strong foundational competencies of linguistic and numerical knowledge systems. This is particularly true of ea­rly learning levels. Conceptual understanding is layered and matures if memory, analysis and comprehension create a learning continuum. A curric­ulum delineating learning objectives and a syllabus mapping them on knowledge fie­lds are expected to be desi­gned on this learning continuum. The most critical element in this learning design is the textbook, especially for children from backgrounds and in schools, where learning reso­urces are scarce. For them, te­xtbooks become the only bo­oks they read. Textbooks can become both their friends and draw them into a world of learning or stare back at them passively like indifferent stra­ngers, closing their doors to learning.

A few examples illustrate the academic myopia that bli­nds textbooks in most government schools, despite endless textbook revisions. Textbooks do not form an integrated wh­ole, complementing each oth­er and reinforcing learning. Each text exists in its secluded world. These textual wo­rlds do not connect with each other and only tangentially, if at all with the world the children know. Hindi language teaching is replete with anachronistic words. Sugarcane is eekh and not ganna the popular word for it. Spectacles are ainak not chashma. Darpan rather than sheesha or aaeena signifies mirror. Of course, new and unfamiliar words are integral to enriching vocabulary. A more effective way, however, would be to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

In English language books, the unfamiliarity of the word is aggravated by the unfamiliar referent world. Xmas, Xray, quill, yacht, yak and zebra make such troublesome alphabets even more difficult to remember because they form no recognisable picture in the he­ad and phonetically they are not easily relatable to Hindi. Wittgenstein said that a word is a picture and that gives it meaning. A word that does not do so remains a sound without meaning, a bit like Lewis Caroll’s Jabberwocky, where ‘all mimsy were the borogoves’!

Culturally alien words induce imperfect learning. They help memorise the alphabet in its predictable sequence, but not comprehend phonetic relationships. If alphabets are juggled, the letters are lost and words are usually misspelt. Te­achers unfamiliar with English further complicate this problem. When a child writes ‘phish’ for fish, she is faithfully transcribing the way the word is spoken by the teacher. Three languages — that in the sch­ool, at home, in the textbook fail to complement each other — the foundation of learning is their coming together, not wedging apart.

Then, there are incompatible levels of knowledge between language and math bo­oks for the same class. Thus, the first chapter of a standard one math textbook teaches the very difficult concept of zero through the word shunya. But a student in the first standard cannot write this word in Hindi because she/he has neither learnt corresponding letters, nor the meaning of the word shunya. Small wonder, zero is a hard concept for children to grasp.

John Holt, the educationist, argued that children do not need to be made to learn because they have what Einstein called the holy curiosity of inquiry. For them, learning is as natural as breathing. They fail primarily because they are afraid, bored and confused. A textbook disconne­cted from reality and real learning, kills children’s innate desire to learn. Textual opacity or communicability — this influences not just learning quality, but how the world is viewed. Not to be able to learn at all makes one vulnerable — the untaught are brainwashed. Th­ose who acquire the ability to learn will always question. How minds constr­ue and construct the world is decided not only by what textbooks say about the world but by the way they teach the word. As the French philosopher Jacques Derrida said “ il n’ya pas de hors texte” — there is nothing outside of text.

Source | Financial Chronicle | 17 March 2016

Pralhad Jadhav

Senior Librarian

Khaitan & Co

Upcoming Event | National Conference on Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) during April 22-23, 2016.

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