The Curriculum for the Ten-Year School: a Framework

Abstract

The school curriculum of a country, like its Constitution, reflects the ethos of that country as also its chief concerns. Time and again it has been pointed out by our national leaders that the vestigial remains of a colonial-feudal system of education historically meant for the production of clerks should be thrown out of the system and the system revamped to respond to the growing needs, aspirations and demands of a modernizing egalitarian society. In his system of Basic Education, Mahatma Gandhi gave an alternative approach which could help the development of a system in tune with the Indian society. The Report of the Education Commission (1964-66) incorporates the best that Basic Education has to offer, and lays emphasis on the “internal transformation” of education so as to relate it to the life, needs and aspirations of the nation. The values enshrined in our Constitution point towards the development of a pluralist open society and a state which is secular, democratic and socialist in nature. The school curriculum should reflect these aims and values in its structure, content, implied methodology—in fact, in its entire design.