04-17-2006, 02:26 AM
A new kind of history textbook
Sumit Sarkar
Books just brought out by the NCERT teach history in creative ways. All themes are sought to be looked at from the angle of everyday life and its changing patterns, bringing history down from the distant skies, as it were.
A FEW days ago, I came across the three History textbooks just brought out by the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT), for Classes VI, IX, and XI. I opened the second â India and the Contemporary World, from roughly the French Revolution to the mid-20th century â with the idea of just turning over some pages, for it was a very busy day for me. But soon I was engrossed, and could not stop reading till the end, so exciting did it seem, so different from what one expects from school or college textbooks. The other two books proved to be just as interesting. For reasons of space, however, let me dwell mainly on the second book.
What makes the new books such an unexpected pleasure to read â a feeling, I am sure, the students and their teachers will also share? Their physical appearance, first of all. The books are filled with illustrations, most of them in colour: photographs of historical sites, inscriptions, monuments, reproductions of paintings, posters and pages from leaflets: an immense range of visual material going back to the times being described. Thoughtful designing has achieved a sense of space, very different from the usual cramped, breathless impression one gets when reading history books, filled with closely packed text.
The books teach history in creative ways. There are extracts from contemporary documents, many of them of contrasting kinds: the French Declaration of the Rights of Man set beside Olympia de Gouges' feminist alternative, an official Soviet account of collectivisation alongside a letter from a peasant who hated the changes. Students are introduced to the basics of historical research: both to documents and to understanding how open-ended historical reconstruction is. Every section is accompanied by questions and suggested classroom activities, visualising creative student-teacher interaction in place of enforced rote-learning. After reading about the coming of modern agriculture in England, students are asked to look at the previous, open field system from the points of view of a rich farmer, a labourer, and a peasant woman. An activity suggested after the chapter on Nazi Germany recommends writing one-page histories of it from the points of view of a schoolchild studying there, a Jewish survivor, and a political opponent of the regime. The chapter on the Roman Empire in the Class XI book on "Themes in World History" asks students to imagine the shopping list of a city housewife in those times. Let me add, though, that books like these will require a fundamental transformation also in the pattern of setting questions in CBSE examinations, which so long have been of a so-called `objective' type, totally unsuitable at least for history, social sciences, and the humanities in general. I do hope that such changes will be brought about as quickly as possible.
What made such textbooks possible? Fundamentally, a simple innovation, pedagogically vital: the clear break with the earlier dominant assumption that textbooks must be `comprehensive,' `cover' all `relevant' facts. Never mind the overcrowding, sheer boredom, rote-learning â followed by quick oblivion, as those of us who have been teachers at college or postgraduate levels have often encountered. One can anticipate that this will be the line possible critics of the new books will take, and they will find it easy enough to point to much that has been `left out.' But the point surely is that no book, not just meant for schools but really at any level, can ever cover `everything,' one always has to be selective. The need is to stimulate interest and curiosity, some understanding about what history today is really about and why it is important. The points or themes of entry here always suggest broader patterns. Some students might be stimulated to read further about them. To take an instance from Class VI, about Ancient India: giving comprehensive lists of archaeological sites relevant for a particular period may place a great burden on memory. Instead, one or two sites or inscriptions have been chosen here, but these are looked at in detail, with profuse illustrations followed by discussions about what can and cannot be inferred from them. Similarly, we have French and Russian Revolutions but not all the 19th century European revolutions; Nazi Germany but not Fascist Italy. These, however, are studied in profuse and interesting detail. An incidental gain is that the burden of dates gets reduced, particularly at lower levels. Time-charts are introduced in Class XI. They are divided according to continents, with an additional one for South Asia. They indicate at a glance that one must not assume a single, linear, pattern of development for all times and places.
But surely history has a special role in schools, its purpose is, above all, the promotion of `national unity,' `identity,' `integration,' pride in one's country? And so should not every region and community be covered at the same level of detail, all prominent figures mentioned? To have all that all would consider important is not possible within any textbook, however voluminous. <span style='color:red'>Moreover, there will always be conflicting political opinions about what is important and what is not.</span> The choice will then depend on the dominant view of political correctness, and not on pedagogical needs or the logic of the subject. We saw some of these problems during Bharatiya Janata Party rule. But even state-of-the-art notions of history or progressive values need to be conveyed in interesting and interactive ways. Otherwise they remain facts and values that are memorised, reproduced, and then speedily forgotten, while the assumptions and stereotypes current in their immediate environment, often retrogressive or obscurantist, live on in the minds of the new generation. The approach of these books is very different. After a searing account of Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust, for instance, a question is posed about whether students have ever encountered stereotypes of other communities among people around them, and how they could have come about. I cannot think of a better way of providing a pointer towards the dangers of narrow identity politics of every kind, and the need for basic secular and human values.
More than trivia
Are not some chapters about `trivial' things, though â what has a `serious' history textbook to do with cricket, or the social history of clothing (Class IX)? On the contrary, students are bound to get interested as they discover that these, too, have histories, and so the subject is not about remote and dead matters alone. Both lead on to other themes, including more conventional ones the importance of which no one will deny. The handicrafts that declined under colonial rule, the mills of Lancashire and Bombay, were all inseparable from clothes and changing tastes about them, while at the core of Gandhian mass struggle lay boycott, the wearing of khadi, and the Mahatma's conversion to the loincloth.
The books quietly introduce students to many of the new ways in which history is developing in recent times. There are sections in all three volumes about the lives of hunters, foodgatherers, and pastoralists, and the ways in which their more interactive relations with nature have been disrupted in modern times: themes that recent environmental history foregrounds. Women are central to all the narratives. The section about clothing mentions its relations with social hierarchies: class in pre-Revolutionary France, or caste in South India. Above all, all themes are sought to be looked at from the angle of everyday life and its changing patterns, bringing history down from the distant skies, as it were. The crucial point emerges that literally everything, every kind of relationship, has histories. The social world, as Vico proclaimed in a foundation text of modern history almost three centuries ago, is made by human beings, not divinity or nature, and it can be changed, too, through human endeavour.
In all these ways, these textbooks both respect and enhance the students' imagination and critical thinking.
(The author is an eminent historian of modern India.)
Sumit Sarkar
Books just brought out by the NCERT teach history in creative ways. All themes are sought to be looked at from the angle of everyday life and its changing patterns, bringing history down from the distant skies, as it were.
A FEW days ago, I came across the three History textbooks just brought out by the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT), for Classes VI, IX, and XI. I opened the second â India and the Contemporary World, from roughly the French Revolution to the mid-20th century â with the idea of just turning over some pages, for it was a very busy day for me. But soon I was engrossed, and could not stop reading till the end, so exciting did it seem, so different from what one expects from school or college textbooks. The other two books proved to be just as interesting. For reasons of space, however, let me dwell mainly on the second book.
What makes the new books such an unexpected pleasure to read â a feeling, I am sure, the students and their teachers will also share? Their physical appearance, first of all. The books are filled with illustrations, most of them in colour: photographs of historical sites, inscriptions, monuments, reproductions of paintings, posters and pages from leaflets: an immense range of visual material going back to the times being described. Thoughtful designing has achieved a sense of space, very different from the usual cramped, breathless impression one gets when reading history books, filled with closely packed text.
The books teach history in creative ways. There are extracts from contemporary documents, many of them of contrasting kinds: the French Declaration of the Rights of Man set beside Olympia de Gouges' feminist alternative, an official Soviet account of collectivisation alongside a letter from a peasant who hated the changes. Students are introduced to the basics of historical research: both to documents and to understanding how open-ended historical reconstruction is. Every section is accompanied by questions and suggested classroom activities, visualising creative student-teacher interaction in place of enforced rote-learning. After reading about the coming of modern agriculture in England, students are asked to look at the previous, open field system from the points of view of a rich farmer, a labourer, and a peasant woman. An activity suggested after the chapter on Nazi Germany recommends writing one-page histories of it from the points of view of a schoolchild studying there, a Jewish survivor, and a political opponent of the regime. The chapter on the Roman Empire in the Class XI book on "Themes in World History" asks students to imagine the shopping list of a city housewife in those times. Let me add, though, that books like these will require a fundamental transformation also in the pattern of setting questions in CBSE examinations, which so long have been of a so-called `objective' type, totally unsuitable at least for history, social sciences, and the humanities in general. I do hope that such changes will be brought about as quickly as possible.
What made such textbooks possible? Fundamentally, a simple innovation, pedagogically vital: the clear break with the earlier dominant assumption that textbooks must be `comprehensive,' `cover' all `relevant' facts. Never mind the overcrowding, sheer boredom, rote-learning â followed by quick oblivion, as those of us who have been teachers at college or postgraduate levels have often encountered. One can anticipate that this will be the line possible critics of the new books will take, and they will find it easy enough to point to much that has been `left out.' But the point surely is that no book, not just meant for schools but really at any level, can ever cover `everything,' one always has to be selective. The need is to stimulate interest and curiosity, some understanding about what history today is really about and why it is important. The points or themes of entry here always suggest broader patterns. Some students might be stimulated to read further about them. To take an instance from Class VI, about Ancient India: giving comprehensive lists of archaeological sites relevant for a particular period may place a great burden on memory. Instead, one or two sites or inscriptions have been chosen here, but these are looked at in detail, with profuse illustrations followed by discussions about what can and cannot be inferred from them. Similarly, we have French and Russian Revolutions but not all the 19th century European revolutions; Nazi Germany but not Fascist Italy. These, however, are studied in profuse and interesting detail. An incidental gain is that the burden of dates gets reduced, particularly at lower levels. Time-charts are introduced in Class XI. They are divided according to continents, with an additional one for South Asia. They indicate at a glance that one must not assume a single, linear, pattern of development for all times and places.
But surely history has a special role in schools, its purpose is, above all, the promotion of `national unity,' `identity,' `integration,' pride in one's country? And so should not every region and community be covered at the same level of detail, all prominent figures mentioned? To have all that all would consider important is not possible within any textbook, however voluminous. <span style='color:red'>Moreover, there will always be conflicting political opinions about what is important and what is not.</span> The choice will then depend on the dominant view of political correctness, and not on pedagogical needs or the logic of the subject. We saw some of these problems during Bharatiya Janata Party rule. But even state-of-the-art notions of history or progressive values need to be conveyed in interesting and interactive ways. Otherwise they remain facts and values that are memorised, reproduced, and then speedily forgotten, while the assumptions and stereotypes current in their immediate environment, often retrogressive or obscurantist, live on in the minds of the new generation. The approach of these books is very different. After a searing account of Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust, for instance, a question is posed about whether students have ever encountered stereotypes of other communities among people around them, and how they could have come about. I cannot think of a better way of providing a pointer towards the dangers of narrow identity politics of every kind, and the need for basic secular and human values.
More than trivia
Are not some chapters about `trivial' things, though â what has a `serious' history textbook to do with cricket, or the social history of clothing (Class IX)? On the contrary, students are bound to get interested as they discover that these, too, have histories, and so the subject is not about remote and dead matters alone. Both lead on to other themes, including more conventional ones the importance of which no one will deny. The handicrafts that declined under colonial rule, the mills of Lancashire and Bombay, were all inseparable from clothes and changing tastes about them, while at the core of Gandhian mass struggle lay boycott, the wearing of khadi, and the Mahatma's conversion to the loincloth.
The books quietly introduce students to many of the new ways in which history is developing in recent times. There are sections in all three volumes about the lives of hunters, foodgatherers, and pastoralists, and the ways in which their more interactive relations with nature have been disrupted in modern times: themes that recent environmental history foregrounds. Women are central to all the narratives. The section about clothing mentions its relations with social hierarchies: class in pre-Revolutionary France, or caste in South India. Above all, all themes are sought to be looked at from the angle of everyday life and its changing patterns, bringing history down from the distant skies, as it were. The crucial point emerges that literally everything, every kind of relationship, has histories. The social world, as Vico proclaimed in a foundation text of modern history almost three centuries ago, is made by human beings, not divinity or nature, and it can be changed, too, through human endeavour.
In all these ways, these textbooks both respect and enhance the students' imagination and critical thinking.
(The author is an eminent historian of modern India.)