A draft National Education Policy came out many years after the second one, National Policy on Education, changed into promulgated in 1986 and distilled through five years of several draft panels and countrywide consultations, obviously consisting of expectancies. However, the 2019 draft appears to best air some loud and naive wondering, a few properly-intentioned, however unsubstantiated ideas, and some smartly crafted statements on the contentious supposed motion.
The draft’s eponymous bankruptcy on ‘foundational literacy and numeracy’ describes a severe “learning disaster” and warns that the country could lose “10 crore or more students — the scale of a large u. S. A . — from the learning system”. It then goes directly to solve that this can’t be allowed to manifest. “The value is far too first-rate— to crores of individuals and the state. Attaining foundational literacy and numeracy for all youngsters must become a right away national assignment,” it notes.
It then goes on to state, almost tautologically, that the cause in the back of that is a “lack of school preparedness,” trouble which the draft says acutely ‘afflicts’ youngsters from disadvantaged socio-monetary backgrounds without getting admission to pre-primary schooling.
Hiding in the back of terms like ‘fun.’
It asserts that early grade education does not emphasize studying, writing, and talking or on mathematical ideas and wondering; however, movements quickly directly to rote learning. In real truth, ‘rote’ mastering frames all of the training, its expectancies, syllabi, texts, teaching, and assessment at all tiers, as regarded and mentioned by all the earlier guidelines. So how does this policy renowned, recognize, or face that systemic undertaking? It does not, however, maintains that “If and while rote studying is used, it’ll constantly be pre-observed using context and motivation and publish observed with the aid of analysis and discussion” (p. Seventy-six).
Moreover, it provides, “If college students are given a strong foundation in analyzing, writing, speakme, counting, mathematics, mathematical and logical thinking, hassle-solving…then all other future lifelong studying will become…more fun.”
Enumerating counting, mathematics, and mathematical thinking as specific factors of foundational numeracy shows lay expertise of ‘mastering’ that runs via the document, regularly hiding at the back of the repeated use of terms, including ‘bendy’ and ‘fun.’
In Curriculum and Pedagogy (bankruptcy 4), we get a dream menu of variations and combos of this ‘fun.’ From ‘interactive fun classrooms’ (p. Seventy-six) to language coaching in a ‘fun and interactive fashion’ (p. Eighty-five) as carried out with the aid of Samskrita Bharati and Alliance Française, for Sanskrit and French (however likely no longer for the ones of their early years).
Contrary to theories of learning, it recommends harnessing the “extraordinarily flexible capability” (p. 79) of young students, from pre-school onwards, who would be “exposed to 3 or extra languages to develop talking proficiency and interplay, and the potential to recognize scripts and examine simple texts, in all three languages using Grade three” (p. 81). It also states that during grades six to 8, each pupil will take a ‘fun route’ (p. 86) in the languages of India. Multilingualism and range know-how are critical ambitions but are now not carried out in such an ad-hoc manner.
It provides that puzzles or competitions to write down a topic without a given sound/alphabet can provide “a laugh way to recognize and play with language” (p. 93).
Such ideas have been utilized in NCERT language or arithmetic textbooks; however, no longer as arbitrarily and in reality now not for a laugh’, as they seem to be indexed within the policy.
Lack of focus on how college students will imbibe talents
An essential theme of integrating work and training is no longer for a vocation but as a medium of mastering lifestyles and existence, carried out with the aid of the Zakir Hussain Committee (1938), has not been severely discussed in any respect. The draft claims that “exposure to sensible vocational-fashion schooling is continually fun for younger students” (p. 94) and recommends, without any modalities, that each student will take a fun 12 months-long direction on a survey of vocational talents and crafts, someday among grades six and eight, with a few palms-on revels in of carpentry, electric work, gardening, pottery, and so on.