Editorial

This year the south has had a late monsoon, and in keeping with the seasons our own issue of Contemporary Education Dialogue has also been delayed. We apologise to our readers for this. It is not the first time, and perhaps won’t be the last either, and the delay is a sober reminder to all of us in the editorial collective of the effort involved in getting the education community in India to dialogue through the written word.

The period between the last issue and this one has been as intense as the previous six months when many of our readers and editorial group members were engaged in the efforts of the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) to bring out the new National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005. The reactions that the NCF 2005 evoked have been illuminating to say the least. Education reports usually receive some public attention, because of the polarised polity. But this time, it was not simply the anticipated reaction of the Right to the curriculum framework. What was perhaps far more intriguing — yet insightful — was the reaction of many Left intellectuals who rejected the NCF 2005 for taking the position that the child constructs knowledge, and thereby giving a privileged place to local knowledge and experience in the child’s learning and hence in the curriculum. The ease with which key principles of progressive education and curriculum were being dismissed was instructive. It served as a grim reminder that what now serves as common sense in progressive education discourse has yet to find legitimacy not only in popular thinking but even in some intellectual circles. The exercise and events bring to the fore the politically negotiated character of curriculum in which the expertise of educators and pedagogues is often viewed as marginal and at times insignificant. What is it that allows for this marginalisation of the expertise of educators even when curriculum issues take centre stage? What lessons can we draw from this experience and how can we attempt to increase public attention on substantive issues of pedagogy and schooling while avoiding partisan concerns? This issue carries a report on the recently completed exercise of reviewing the National Curriculum Framework, and an end page reflecting on the recommendations on school leaving examinations.

The two main research papers in this issue address two very different areas of concern within education. Probal Dasgupta writes as a linguist reflecting on the nature of language development: he argues that language comes framed in a pedagogy. He draws parallels between Vygotsky’s insights on the symbolically mediated nature of cognition and Sarukkai’s observations on the pedagogy implicit in science writing, and emphasises the importance of adults in the development of children’s language. B.K. Anitha draws on her earlier study to propose a framework that can be used to characterise quality in rural schools, and reflects on quality in relation to the social context of schooling. She proposes that basic indicators of children’s attendance and length of school day, which are easily measurable and quantifiable, as well qualitative Indicators pertaining to teachers’ perceptions of the aims of education and the characteristics of their classroom practice could provide a comprehensive picture of ‘school quality’. Jane Sahi’s commentary draws attention to lesser known educational writings and concerns of the philosopher Martin Buber; most of us in education have not read more than his I and Thou. Sahi locates Buber in his socio-cultural milieu and brings forth the extent of intellectual engagement with childhood and education in Europe of the last century, through which it transformed educational aims and curriculum in the public schooling system towards the humanistic goal of all-round development.

The last six months have seen the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) in an active phase with as many as six reports being finalised on several important issues in education. In this issue of CED, in addition to the report on the National Curriculum Framework of the NCERT, we carry reports of three of these committees. We are grateful to Dr J.B.G. Tilak, Shirley and Anjali Noronha for assisting us with the preparation of reports in this issue. Ujwala Samarth has joined our editorial office to assist in coordinating the production of the journal. We welcome her to the team. The NCF and the reports of the CABE have brought to the fore a number of issues critical in Indian Education. We would like to focus on substantive debates arising from these documents in our next issue of the journal, and we invite you to send us your contributions.