Recreating Knowledge:
These capabilities, practices, and skills of understanding
are what we seek to develop through the school
curriculum. Some of them readily lend themselves to
being formulated as ‘subjects’ of study such as
mathematics, history, science, and the visual arts. Others,
such as ethical understanding, need to be interwoven
into subjects and activities. The basic capabilities of
language require both approaches, and aesthetic
understanding also readily lends itself to both
approaches. All these areas require opportunities for
project activities, thematic and interdisciplinary courses
of studies, field trips, use of libraries and laboratories.
This approach to knowledge necessitates a move
away from ‘facts’ as ends in themselves, and a move
towards locating facts in the process through which
they come to be known, and moving below the surface
of facts to locate the deeper connections between them
that give them meaning and significance.
In India, we have traditionally followed a
subject-based approach to organising the curriculum,
drawing on only the disciplines. This approach tends
to present knowledge as ‘packaged’, usually in
textbooks, along with associated rituals of examinations
to assess, knowledge acquisition and marks as a way
of judging competence in the subject area. This
approach has led to several problems in our education
system. First, those areas that do not lend themselves
to being organised in textbooks and examined through
marks become sidelined and are then described as
‘extra’ or ‘co-curricular’, instead of being an integral
part of the curriculum. These rarely receive the attention
they deserve in terms of preparation by teachers or
school time. Areas of knowledge such as crafts and
sports, which are rich in potential for the development
of skill, aesthetics, creativity, resourcefulness and team
work, also become sidelined. Important areas of
knowledge such as work and associated practical
intelligences have been completely neglected, and we
still do not have an adequate curriculum theory to
support the development of knowledge, skills and
attitudes in these areas.
Second, the subject areas tend to become
watertight compartments. As a result, knowledge seems
fragmented rather than interrelated and integrated. The
discipline, rather than the child’s way of viewing the
world, tends to become the starting point, and
boundaries get constructed between knowledge in the
school and knowledge outside.
Third, what is already known gets emphasised,
subverting children’s own ability to construct knowledge
and explore novel ways of knowing. Information takes
precedence over knowledge, lending itself to producing
bulky textbooks, ‘quizzing’ and methods of mechanical
retrieval rather than understanding and problem solving.
This tendency of mistaking information for knowledge
leads to ‘loading’ the curriculum with too many facts
to be memorised.
Fourth, there is the issue of including ‘new
subjects’. The need for subjects addressing
contemporary concerns of society is important. But
there has been a misplaced tendency to address these
concerns in the school curriculum by ‘creating’ new
subjects, producing related textbooks and devising
methods of evaluation for them. These concerns may
be far better addressed if they are incorporated in the
curriculum through existing subjects and ongoing
activities. Needless to say, adding new areas as ‘subjects’only increases the curriculum load, and perpetuates
undesirable compartmentalisation of knowledge.
Finally, the principles for selecting knowledge for
inclusion in the curriculum are not well worked out.
There is insufficient consideration of developmental
appropriateness, logical sequencing and connection
between different grades, and overall pacing, with a
few or no opportunities to return to earlier concepts.
Further, concepts that cut across subject areas, such as
in secondary school mathematics and in physics, are
not placed in relation to one another
