Pedagogy

Responding to the special issue, “CORE’s Economics Textbook” (EPW, 16 June 2018), a teacher who has used the book in class explains why the book has proved useful in conveying concepts in economics and inculcating an interest in the study of social sciences at large. The Economy is not only a well-thought-out and ideologically eclectic textbook, but an interactive and dynamic teaching and learning tool that incorporates digital resources.

The periodic debates on continuous and comprehensive evaluation and no-detention policy in media are completely futile, given the current class-wise structure of schools and curricula. As a result, elementary education gets defi ned by the number of years spent in school. The examination system thwarts all attempts at bringing reforms in pedagogy, curriculum and textbooks. Therefore, discarding both examinations and detention is necessary, and an alternative imagination of schools and curriculum organisation is imperative for the success of educational reforms.

Conventional wisdom suggests that children acquire complex words from simple words and treat words as an assemblage of segmented meanings. Through examples, the author suggests that word formation strategies do not follow this rule; words are bidirectionally related and this has important consequences for pedagogy.

Pedagogy has a crucial role in constructions of the self and the "good" or the "ideal" citizen. Civic education in schools seeks to build up notions of the good citizen, by outlining "ideal" norms of behaviour, for instance, towards parents, elders, the government, as also the nation. But the human subject is not always a passive recipient of pedagogic formulations. Rather as this article that bases itself on student responses in a test school in Delhi, establishes, students negotiate established pedagogy and received wisdom in a variety of ways. Their understanding of issues of citizenship is arrived at not merely through textbook instruction, but their reception to the very manner of this instruction that is exam-oriented, in their interactions with friends, peers and family as well as information received and interpreted through a variety of other sources. The article argues that to move beyond mere subjecthood and towards ensuring an individual's "agency" in the creation of "good" citizenship, pedagogy has to engage and debate widely with these varied sites of interaction.