Researching on the current

social sciences textbooks in

the backdrop of NCF 2005

EXAMINING & UNDERSTANDING THE

SIGNIFICANCE OF OUT OF THE SCHOOL
MILIEU IN THE CURRICULUM & TEXTBOOKS.

SUBMITTED BY:
SONAM CHHAPRANA
B.El.Ed. 4th year
 ACKNOWLDGEMENT
I have taken efforts in this project. However, it would not have
been possible without the kind support and help of many
individuals. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of
them.
I am highly indebted to Mrs. RUCHIRA DAS MA'AM for her
guidance and constant supervision as well as for providing
necessary information regarding the project & also for her
support in completing the project.
Furthermore, I would also like to convey my heartfelt thanks to
The Department of elementary education of IHE for providing
the opportunity to work on such an interesting research based
project as a part of our curriculum.
Last but not the least my thanks and appreciations also go to my
colleague in developing the project and people who have willingly
helped me out with their abilities.

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 CONTENTS
 ABSTRACT
 INTRODUCTION
 RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY
 SPEICIFIC OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
 LITERATURE REVIEW
 FINDINGS & ANALYSIS
 CONCLUSION
 REFERENCES

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 ABSTRACT
A textbook is used for the formal study of a subject
as it is written according to the syllabus and gives
the outline of the course. It is an imperative
reference and resource for students' learning in any
educational system therefore it is necessary to
analyze this resource.
This project report attempts to study & finding
the out of school milieu i.e. home
milieu/environment of the children in the context of
curriculum and textbooks of social sciences of
upper primary classes in the backdrop of NCF 2005.
I hope who goes through it will find it interesting
and worth reading. All constructive feedback is
cordially invited.

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 INTRODUCTION
The developed countries are those who believe in
education which is backbone of building nation and
enriching the economic corridors. The famous
educator and thinker Gandhi while emphasizing the
need and importance of education, said: “Education
is central way to generate awareness among people
of being Independent”. The root learning comes
from school education. School education entirely
depends upon Curriculum because it is way to teach
accordingly.
In our system of education, many people
including policy makers make no distinction
between the curriculum, syllabus, and textbook.
From the teacher's perspective, it is the textbook
that matters in everyday life; and the same is true
from the child's and the parents' point of view.
As far as social science is concerned, the text
book is an aid which is considered in dispensable in
all methods adopted for its Institution for the study
of the subject the role played by textbook is second
only to that of the teacher. It acts as the learners’
chief aid and support.
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The social sciences are often seen as easy, probably
because they deal with issues and processes that
surround us all the time, and on which we have
ideas and positions. Yet, this apparent simplicity is
deceptive. Teaching the complexities of human
beings is not easy.
Social sciences in Indian schools are in an
unenviable position. On the one hand, they are
expected to shoulder the bulk of the normative
expectations from schooling. Thus they are
supposed to teach everything—from a commitment
to keeping the streets clean to the internalization of
a pluralist vision of the nation. Yet, on the other
hand, they are treated as stepsisters of science.
Indian educationists have always had a wide vision
of the purpose of education. Most policy documents
have emphasized a cultural role for the social
sciences, over and above the mundaneness of
vocational knowledge. Social sciences are, after all,
the most practical, dealing with affairs that
everybody participates in, and best learnt by doing
rather than reading. Yet, the quality of social
science textbooks and classroom teaching has not
risen to expectations. Too often there has been the

5
lament that social sciences are dull and uninspiring.
The most common complaint is that they are meant
only for rote learning. Perhaps the cruelest cut of
all has been students saying that there is nothing to
understand in them, and that the social sciences are
only for cramming.
Social science textbooks have traditionally been
styled as a simple narration of facts. The idea that
textbooks must provide a format which invites the
active participation of students has rarely been put
into practice. Instead, there has been a linear
monologue, punctuated only to check whether or
not students have dutifully accepted what was
uttered. Whenever any suggestion was offered for
incorporation into the syllabus, it was added to the
corpus. Thus, nothing got removed and the textbook
grew into an encyclopedia bearing two lines about
everything under the sun.

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RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY
Milieu enjoys popular attention today and its
significance is seen as given at the level of
discourse as well as practice. Milieu-in-school
occupies the central focus of curriculum and
textbook drafting, innovative strategies, pedagogic
discourse as well as learning theories. It is seen as
a magic potion to all the schooling problems, as its
importance comes from the claim of lessening the
alienating, violent nature of schooling. The
academic discourse focuses around deploying
‘milieu-in-school’ without looking at an important
question of ‘whose milieu’?
Children and their milieu are held culpable for
schooling failure, for their own failure as well as for
pedagogic failure (Dalal , 2015). Hence, milieu’s
official presence makes it further easier for
teachers to hold children culpable. Moreover, the
milieu that enters the formal gates of school in an
official manner always gets more importance than
the one that comes through informal or unofficial
ways. In other words, the milieu in school is
legitimized when it is part of the curriculum/text

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book; but the same milieu is avoided when it enters
through the world of children. Hence, how milieu
unfolds in the web of power and knowledge in the
school setting needs adequate exploration which the
present project intends to do by examining the
politics of milieu.
For Stiegler, bringing milieu back to center is a
response to the proletarianized tendency of
capitalism, modernity, and its accompanying
unprecedented technological growth. In the
education discourse too, centering schooling on
milieu comes with the claim of reducing the violence
of modern, colonial education. This gets visible
when scholars argue on child’s milieu getting
inadequate representation in classroom practices
like pedagogy, assessment and resources like text-
books and other teaching material. NCF (2005)’s
special attention to this problem in new text-books;
and teaching in mother tongue which UN also
ascribes stands as an example of this anxiety. It
needs to be examined if milieu is able to counter the
violent, alienating nature of modern schooling or it
got coopted into the same violence that it wanted to
counter.

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On the other hand, being a practitioner of having
interest area in social science discipline another
major problem I found during my teaching practice
is that of implementing “inclusive pedagogy”.
As according to NCF 2005 positional paper on the
teaching of social sciences provides guidelines for
teacher education programes to make an epistemic
shift and carry the normative responsibility of
invoking an inclusive-egalitarian discourse by
inculcating values of freedom, equality, trust, dignity
and respect for diversity across caste, class,
religion, ethnic groups, gender, region, etc. in the
social sciences. The shift was also about making
students interrogative and transformative to contest
the structures of domination that delimit the idea of
inclusion.
Yet the disjuncture continues between the inclusive
pedagogy taught in social science classrooms and
the outside world. This disjuncture becomes all the
more visible when the same students who read these
ideals in their textbooks have to put them in
practice. This disjuncture is the well-known theory-
practice gap. Pierre Bourdieu explains this as
theory not being informed by practice.

9
Bourdieu (1990) suggests that theory should
incorporate the inner logic of the practice/field; a
theory which does not do this will always fail when it
confronts the practices of the real world.

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SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

 Review of relevant chapters of NCERT

textbooks in the backdrop of NCF 2005 &
positional paper 2005 of social sciences to
examine and understand the out of school
milieu.

 How inclusive are the texts & the curriculum?

Does this claim of inclusion reinforces &
reproduces exclusion?

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REASEARCH MRHODOLOGY USED:

 Book analysis. (Examining &

understanding the textbooks)
 Observations of classroom teaching.
 Semi structured interviews with the
teachers/informal discussions.

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 SAMPLE SIZE
CLASS 6
History – Our Pasts Part I
Geography – The Earth Our Habitat Part I
Political Science – Our social and political life
Part I
CLASS 7
History (Our Pasts II)
Geography (Our Environment)
Political Science
CLASS 8
History (Our Pasts – III) (Part 1 & 2)
Geography (Resources and Development)
Civics (Social and Political Life – III)

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 LITERATURE REVIEW
It is a broad topic to work on therefore I have gone
through some articles, educational ideas, research
papers etc. and even discuss with some teachers.
In our relationship with children and young people,
we are not dealing with mechanical devices that can
be quickly repaired, but with living beings that are
impressionable, volatile, sensitive, afraid, and
affectionate; and to deal with them we have to have
great understanding, the strength of patience and
love... - J.Krishnamurti. keeping this thought in
mind the study follows with some major concerns
discussed in the later sections.
So, Starting with what social sciences exactly
according to Max Weber, are “primarily analytical
instruments for understanding the meaning of and
causal relations between elements of social and
cultural life”.
The social sciences encompass diverse concerns of
society and include a wide a range of content, drawn
from the disciplines of history, geography, political
science, economics and sociology. The selection and

14
organization of material into a meaningful social
science curriculum, enabling students to develop a
critical understanding of society, is therefore a
challenging task. Which in today’s times is a major
concern of the educators as what should be
included in the syllabi/texts of especially social
sciences and how?
Recalling what Krishna Kumar has mentioned in his
book “conflict in the curriculum”; children are
always exposed to conflict and violence; it is part of
their lives both in an ‘intimate and broader’ sense.
Children know of its presence and absorb it, but
they are not allowed to look at it, both in the content
of what they study and how they study. As far as
their education is concerned, conflict does not exist.
Dr. Krishna Kumar insists that some conflicts are
embedded in the ‘system of education’ while others
are part of the knowledge that is imparted through
the curriculum. He then proceeds to examine each
subject and tells us how its content and the way it is
taught increases the level of conflict in the child’s
mind, creates contradictions, and impedes
understanding.

15
Research demonstrates that children’s knowledge
and culture find no place in the formal, official
world of the schooling (Kumar, 1989); standing as
a clear example of scientific rationality ruling over
the everyday life of school. In colonial discourse, the
scientific, rational, modern West transforms the
emotional, passionate Orient through modern
education, making violence necessary (Kumar
2005).
It is also argued that social reality is best
comprehended if it is analyzed, inferred, explained,
interpreted with the help of conceptual abstractions
that are(a) either deeply rooted in its structure,
culture and historical process,(b) or, are sufficiently
efficient in capturing the complex realities, no
matter if they are formulated in contexts other than
their own. Such a contextualization of conceptual
and theoretical formulations, it is contended, makes
for a more precise grasp of social reality and its
dynamics (Mukherjee and Sengupta 2004: 33).
The National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005,
prepared under the aegis of National Council of
Educational Research and Training (NCERT), has
raised a very pertinent issue concerning the place of

16
textbooks in school curriculum planning. The NCF
2005 laments that even though curriculum planning
is a much wider process, in actual practice
curriculum reform seldom goes beyond changing
the textbooks (NCF, 2005: 89).
Alienation in classrooms is one of the challenges
of school curriculum, and particularly of the social
sciences. Learners are not able to associate
themselves or see any connection between their life
in society and what is taught as social science in
classrooms. This led the NCF 2005 to suggest “what
is taught in school should have close linkages with
the life outside the school” as its guiding principle.
Locating this theoretical backdrop in the Indian
context brings two pertinent aspects that would be
covered here. The first being the Occident-Orient
dichotomy and the other is the school-milieu
disjuncture. The antithesis between the Occident
and the Orient can be traced back to modern
colonialism with the emergence of secular
hierarchies that were created in response to the
traditional order (Nandy, 1983). The major concern
here is about the gap/ dichotomy between home-
inner and school-outer world. Because in today’s

17
modernization world there is a sharp break from the
school environment and the domestic milieu. The
modern educational order makes the divide between
the home and the school all the more visible.
Bourdieu’s (1977) concepts of habitus, capital and
field explain how symbolic violence is exercised
through the interaction that the capital of primary
habitus has with the capital that is associated with
the field of school.

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 FINDINGS & ANALYSIS

PROBLEM 1: GEOGRAPHY HAS BECOME MORE OF

EXPLAINATIONS BASED RATHER INQUIRY BASED
DISCIPLINE !

Where is Geography?
To me, geography is a way of life; a day’s journey
for all of us starts with sun rising in the east, which
a child already knows; she knows it sets in the west
every day; likewise she knows about seasons, Onam,
pongal, vegetation, landforms, tsunami,
temperature, food habits, culture, types of clothes,
some diseases locally found and some are not, but
she is not aware of the geographical connections to
these.
Besides the mother tongue, I believe geography is
the other subject for which the child has an innate
capacity to learn. She learns it continuously all her
life.

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Krishna Kumar strongly believes in conversation
amongst children to be a very effective tool for
learning. Children, when they observe a new thing,
be it a caterpillar, a moth, a new place, a movie or
read a book, they would run to share with others,
here both the parties are learning. Conversation
among friends help children learns, especially if the
conversation is after a vacation; children may have
travelled to places in different directions and come
back with many new experiences and observations.
These, when shared amongst themselves, would help
the listeners to build up their imagination of these
places and would motivate them to learn on their
own.
A child learns by touching, eating, experimenting,
observing, imitating, asking and so on. The theory
of ‘constructivism’ says these are schemata; the
individual learner keeps on building her knowledge
on these experiences, lifelong. A teacher needs to
take care of the situations she wants her students to
experience for building up their own knowledge. The
National Curriculum Framework – 2005, has
identified these objectives.

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‘Asking’ is one very strong tool which can be used
by the teacher. ‘Why’ questions from the learners
may be a request for ‘reason’ or for ‘explanation’.
Giving reason is not the same thing as explaining.
Reasons are given for holding beliefs or believing
something to be true. Explanation is of events and
processes in the course of nature like, “Why are
some mountain peaks, and not all, covered with
snow?” or “Why do we experience sunrise (local
time 5am) at Namdhapa, Arunachal when it is still
very dark (local time 3 am) at Dwarka, Gujarat?”
Here both theories and laws are involved in
explaining. Sometimes teacher needs to telescope
the process i.e. explaining events and then
explaining laws.
Many a time the teacher/text offer “explanations”
which do not really explain.
For example
1. Why is Sahara a desert?
Because this region receives very little rainfall.
2. What are the climatic conditions of the Ladakh desert?
There the climate is extremely cold and dry.
Class 7th geography book; our environment- chapter life in the deserts

21
These are apparent explanations. In none of the
answers have we gone to the root of the actual
query like: why won’t it rain much in Sahara (in the
first question); and why is there extremely cold and
dry climate (in the second question) have never
been addressed.
{Examples given here are observed in my middle
school teaching when the teacher was teaching
them about the grasslands}.
According to the NCF, social science content
should aim at raising students’ awareness
through critically exploring and questioning
familiar social reality.

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PROBLEM 2: Class 8th History- our pasts 3
Chapters– When people rebel (1857movement).
The making of the national movement.
“Since the mid-eighteenth century, nawabs and rajas had seen their power erodes. They
had gradually lost their authority and honor. Residents had been stationed in many
courts, the freedom of the rulers reduced, their armed forces disbanded, and their
revenues and territories taken away by stages. Many ruling families tried to negotiate
with the Company to protect their interests. For example, Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi
wanted the Company to recognize her adopted son as the heir to the kingdom after the
death of her husband….”

Excerpt from the chapter 5 when people rebel of history-our pasts 3

One of the major problems I found in these

particular chapters are ; though the chapters are
talking about the important wars or rebellions we
have had in our past like revolt of 1857 or the
national movements etc. and other important things
happening over there at that time, But there are
nowhere discussions about the present times
situation as well because one of the important
objectives of teaching history and NCF 2005 also
claims that “Initiate the learner into a study of
India’s past, with references to contemporary
developments in other parts of the world” therefore
there should be a linkage of past times and present
times while teaching something in history.
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“We view the past, and achieve our understanding of
the past, only through the eyes of the present”
― E.H. Carr

And I am also totally agreed with the fact that we

can’t teach any past event of the history in isolation
rather comparing that with the thoughts of present
scenario. Therefore the teacher must insure that
and even the textbook makers also that before
describing about the events happened in the past
times there should be a scope where the children
will get to know about the present scenario as well
and then see the past happenings with the lenses of
present.
Another thing I did notice while analyzing these
chapters that the questions given at the end of the
chapters are all text- oriented. As if we just want to
give all the knowledge of these events in vacuum. Or
we just want them to prepare for future examination
purposes only. Some of the questions are so
straight forward that a child can answer them on
his own only by finding out the lines from the

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chapter in between without even understanding the
importance of the context.
E.g. Who did the Indian National Congress wish to speak for?

What was the demand of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi that was refused by the British?

Suggestions:
In my views, the questions in historical context
should be in that way that they would trigger the
minds of the young ones. Their views should be
welcome more and more. And not just learning who
did what and how but the children of would get to
know more of “why” reasons.
Also, giving them the holistic knowledge we can
refer to the current wars or tensions which the
children know and currently happening over here
like indo-pak war or indo-china wars etc. because
the children would better explain their
understandings be seeing the situations of their
current scenario. Then only the child’s milieu or
understanding will come in the center.

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PROBLEM 3: AVOIDING MILIEU IN THE
NAME OF EXAMINATION PURPOSE
There are several methods of facilitating the
understanding of social science subjects in schools.
However, at present, in most of the schools in India
the emphasis is on rote memorization. The teaching
is through a method where in the teacher
talks/lectures and the students passively take notes
and memorize to regurgitate in order to pass the
exams; the more similar the answer to what the
teacher has said , the higher is the passing grade.
“So often, in the name of ‘objectivity’, teachers
sacrifice flexibility and creativity. Very often
teachers, in government as well as private schools,
insist that all children must give identical answers
to questions. The argument given for not accepting
other answers is that, “They cannot give answers
that are not there in the textbook.” or that “There
will be too many types of answers. Then should we
accept them all?” Such arguments make a travesty
of the meaning of learning and only serve to
convince children and parents that schools are
irrationally rigid….. Source: Excerpted from the National
Curriculum Framework, 2005.
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During my middle school teaching when I was asked
to teach the chapter- “Panchayati raj” to class 6th I
found something very interesting and worth sharing.
Initially before starting with whatever written in the
textbook I asked the children to share what they do
know about this term, have they ever heard or seen
this term, etc. so that the classroom will become
inclusive and child centric. I tried to give them the
scope of discussion and bring their milieu in the
center. And the children were also so much active to
share their previous knowledge.. Then I also tried
to link panchayti system with our rural political
system, MCDs etc...
But what I get in return by teacher is that “ itna deep
mein jaane ki kya zaroorat hai, ye aaj sun rhe hai kal bhool
jaayenge isliye hum to padhate hi nahi ye faltu ki cheezein, bas
book mein jo likha hai vo read out karwa do aur important
questions karwado taaki pass hone layak to pata chal jaye inko”

Here, what I am trying to say that the teachers being

the stakeholders of the education system are
themselves so much corrupted that even when the
milieu is coming in any way in the learning
environment they are avoided that milieu in the
name of other reasons and make the class
traditional.
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 CONCLUDING REMARKS
Learners using social science textbooks, though
small in number, have just begun to move away
from memorizing rules and regulations, institutions,
names of kings, places and years, and towards
understanding society. Students are introduced to
multiple perspectives and voices of the marginalized
sections of Indian society. Yet, there is a
long way to go as there are systemic challenges, par
ticularly in implementing the genuine intentions of
the curriculum, and in teacher preparation.
There are some claims of NCF 2005 which are in a
way NCERT textbooks of social sciences have
actually tried to fulfill but again some things are
there which we as educators of social sciences need
to think. Most importantly to think the aspect of
milieu and inclusive pedagogy in social science
teaching learning process.
And the curriculum planers and textbooks makers
should also keep this problem in mind while
planning and making if whether they are giving the
scope of bringing the children’s milieu in schools
and texts.
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 REFERENCES
 An ethnographic study of violence in school practices: report of the
minor research project- Dr. Jyoti Dalal and Dr. Ruchira Das
 Modernity, Identities and Education -Jyoti Dalal, Chetan Anand and
Ruchira Das
 Pierre Bourdieu: The Sociologist of Education-Jyoti Dalal
 Quest for an Inclusive Pedagogy in Social Sciences: Understanding
the Theory-Practice Divide- Dr. Ruchira Das, Chetan Anand
 Social Sciences and the National Curriculum Framework- Indu
Prasad
 Geography in Daily Life -Tapasya Saha
 Geography Education for the 21st Century -Chandrashekhar
Balachandran
 Review of New NCERT Social Science Textbooks -Sampoorna Biswas
 Contested Terrain of School Social Science -Poonam Batra
 What is worth teaching? – Krishna kumar
 Social character of learning- Krishna kumar
 Teaching history in schools; the politics of textbooks- Neelandri
Bhattacharya
 Children and history- Krishna kumar
 http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/alex-george-amman.pdf
 https://www.academia.edu/16927812/School_Social_Science_Curric
ulum_in_India

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