-The Hindu “We know that Nehru had enjoyed Shankar’s cartoons on him” Academic and chairman of the National Curriculum Framework (2005) review committee Yash Pal has rejected the S.K. Thorat panel recommendations for deletion of cartoons on politicians and bureaucrats from the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks. Terming the panel report “insensitive” and an example of the “growing politics of intolerance,” Prof. Yash Pal said “academicians [in the panel]...

-The Hindu In ordering the deletion of certain cartoons and words from a number of social and political science school textbooks, the committee constituted by the National Council for Educational Research and Training appears to have followed the line of least resistance. First the two cartoons that have generated political controversies were promptly sent to the trash tray; and then, many, many more. With a mandate to review the textbooks and...

-The Hindu There is nothing inappropriate in the NCERT Social Science textbooks and the tools used are indeed imaginative exercises in critical pedagogy, says M.S.S. Pandian in his note dissenting with the S.K. Thorat panel, which has ordered deletion of several cartoons and words. The six-member committee was constituted in the wake of a controversy over an Ambedkar cartoon in a class XI textbook. “I read all the textbooks with care, and from...

The dissent note by a member of a government appointed committee reviewing textbooks of political science avers that the pedagogic intent and methods of the NCERT textbooks are sound and they encourage critical dialogue among learners.  M.S.S. Pandian (mathiaspandian57@gmail.com) is member, the NCERT Committee for Reviewing the Textbooks of Social Science/Political Science and teaches history at the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.   It...

-The Hindu The six-member panel constituted to review the cartoons used in social sciences textbooks of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has ordered the deletion of several cartoons and words that it says are either “ambiguous”, negative or show politicians and bureaucrats in an ‘incorrect way. Among the material that gets the chop: an R.K. Laxman cartoon from the 1950s showing Nehru telling France and Portugal (represented as monkeys,...