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Teaching history, beyond the textbook

The real problem with history education is bigger than textbook revisions. Thanks to the team at Deccan Herald . This week NCERT has released the new Social Science textbook for Grade 9 - Understanding Society: India and Beyond Part 2. As with the previous ‘new’ textbooks, some of us have been complaining about a few topics that have found their way into the textbook and a few that have been shown the door. Syllabus changes dictated by those in power are a matter of concern and warrant deliberation. But, is this the only concern with our textbooks? Let us look at a few questions. How important are textbooks in today’s time? Textbooks, today, are just one of the many sources children have to build their knowledge and understanding of a topic. Our fetish for marks and ranks, has fuelled the popularity of guides and exam-keys, and as a corollary rendered textbooks - and the pedagogy envisaged while designing them - virtually ineffective. A few years ago I had pitched an article on ‘errors...
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Cultivating Cultivation

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Learning and Sustaining Agricultural Practices The Dialectics of Cultivating Cultivation in Rural India Springer, 2021 Karen Haydock, Abhijit Sambhaji Bansode, Gurinder Singh, Kalpana Sangale. More about the book, including the PDF, at the publisher's and the author's websites. The book and I. This book too came into my life courtesy Bookworm's Reading Circle and I begin by thanking the group and Bookworm. I read the book slowly, very slowly, as it repeatedly set me thinking. It made me question some of my actions and I was left wondering if I would have benefitted by reading a book of this nature at an earlier stage in life. This book is immense in its scope — it deals with documenting a process, understanding societal realities, and exploring science, education, cultivation, learning and more. Cultivation and us. We eat multiple times a day and yet we know so little about the food we eat - who grows it, where it is grown, how it reaches our homes, who all were involved ...
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Gyaan : From Friends

I have been lucky when it comes to friends, Enjoy talking with them. Amidst talking about school days, worrying about the state of the world today, distilled nonsense, books we have read and such they come up with lines that stand-out, Friends who matter and lines that have since been a part of our lives since, Share a few of these below - Receiving is a fine-art in today's time, warrants grace, and a few seem to have it in our rush to give, to appear bigger. (A friend who gifts me each time I meet) Multi-tasking is a myth; one bloody task we cannot do properly. (A friend whom I used to enjoy long conversations with) Academics is highly overrated, chances are high that many are in academia today as they probably had no other options. (A friend who used to encourage me when I needed it badly) झुकता सब से ज़्यादा ब्राह्मण है, तब ही तो वह ऊपर बना रहता है, देखो अपने आस पास ध्यान से। and  फसता तो हर कोई अपनी मर्ज़ी से है ।  (A senior friend, a brahman, in Banaras, wish I had put more...
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Gyaan : From Strangers and Aqcuaintances

Over the years, I have learnt a lot from people,  Including from random conversations with people I came across during my meanderings,  People I am glad I bumped into, conversations I am glad took place,  Some of these conversations have been eye-opening, made me stop and think,  And, have stayed with me since,  S hare a few below -  What is there to think so much, go ahead, and if you see shoes - chappal somewhere leave your's too nearby. (A monk at a monastery in Bir, when I asked him if I could enter the monastery and where I need to keep my footwear - The message : keep it simple, don't complicate) जब खाना ख़त्म हो जाता है! (An old uncle running a small restuarant in Secunderabad, on my asking him, during Ramzaan, what time the restuarant closes for the day - He made me realize how silly and boxed I had become!) I have been beginning my days with a warm glass of water and reading a page of Bhagwad Gita, my life has changed, try that - you too will benefi...
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Conversations as a learning tool

How much can you learn by listening:  The educational potential of conversations online. Thanks to the team at Deccan Herald for publishing this. Webinars and online sessions are the norm today in many of our education institutions. Listening to conversations, too, can be an equally effective tool. Listening to conversations between people who have made the best of life's opportunities, are well-versed in their fields, and have lived inspiring lives can open up new worlds. These are conversations where two people discuss, at length, a topic they are passionate about - conversations that Ralph Waldo Emerson referred to as “ art ” and “ the best of life ”. These conversations, available on YouTube, include sessions from events such as literature festivals. Watching these videos provides us with an opportunity to listen to people who leave us flummoxed by their sheer brilliance - people we may never get to meet. These conversations can make us aware of people we were ignorant of unti...
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Children in the news

Newspapers once took children beyond textbooks. What happens when they disappear? Published at Deccan Herald here . Thanks to the team at Deccan Herald. One of the happy memories of the school days, for many of us, is reading the newspaper at the library - we began with the sports or the entertainment page and then slowly moved to the other pages. Another major attraction was the magazines; Illustrated Weekly was a favourite with its large format and eclectic content, and India Today followed suit. There would also be the colourful weekend newspapers like the Sunday Observer or the, loaded with numbers, salmon pink newspaper that we picked out of intrigue. Skimming pages was fun as was the element of surprise these newspapers and magazines brought in. Today when I look back, they took us beyond the text-books and helped us realize that there was a lot else happening in the worlds beyond our small worlds. They got us hooked on reading, made us aware of our interests, and our country, an...
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Tarkeshwar Mahadev

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A Baroda where temple, trees, grace, aesthetic, Sayajirao's influence, quiet all come together,  These elephants are as cute as any I have come across,  A Baroda that is old and crumbling, yet beautiful and appealing, and can do with some restoration,  If the dilapilated windows are this grand, one can only imagine, wish,  A Baroda that invites me to be amidst meaningful silences,  This made me feel the temple wanted to shake hands, greet playfully as we stood next to the door,  A Baroda which reminds me of Banaras, that trees at temples have a special feel,  And that we have not yet learnt how to build platforms around their trunks,  A Baroda I have not experienced previously,  A Baroda I am glad exists,  A Baroda I look forward to knowing better,  More about the place here ,  Thanks Eesha for the images, 
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Thursdays with the Reading Circle

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This piece based on my experience with Bookworm's Reading Circle is up on their website here .  Warm thanks to Bookworm and the Reading Circle participants.  Thursday evenings, 7.00 pm to 8.30 pm, some of us meet online to discuss the book we have read during the week gone by. Each of us have, of course, read the same chapter(s) from the same book. We are a part of Bookworm’s ‘Non Fiction Reading Circle’. The Bookworm team ensures timely communication ( book details, links and reminders for the meetings and such ) and also sends the books by Speed Post to those of us who do not have a copy and want to borrow one; we return the book once the sessions are over. We read the books individually, it is the discussions that follow that are a group activity. The group is small, 15 to 20 people, and smaller if the book is dense; a few of us may also drop-off as the chapters progress. The scale enables the Reading Circle to be close-knitted and informal. The group that continues, that i...
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Walking on our footpaths

Footpaths have been in the news in recent times for more than one reason, primary being the safety of those walking on them. I am a big fan of walking, including in our towns and cities, and increasingly have encountered more and more impediments as I walk. Many a time I walk together with mumi, and I must add it is increasingly getting difficult to walk with her.   Let me share some of the innovative ways in which some of us obstruct others from walking on the footpaths - Please add other impediments and obstructions that you have come across in the comments or write to me and I will be happy to add in the text. Security Cabins and Generators - Few of us with large houses install these fixed structures on the footpaths rather than inside our compounds and ensure that not only do we encroach the footpaths but also that the fumes from the generator are meant more for eyes and throats of those on the roads than for ours. This I first encountered in Gurgaon and the blessed genera...
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Education: behind the classrooms

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Title:  Shaping and Denying Education: Role of Class, Caste, and Gender Author:  Aman Madan   Illustrator:  AbiraBandhyopadhyay Publisher:  Eklavya Foundation Price: 360/- Pages: 299 License:  Creative Commons   Development Support:  Tata Trusts Education : An uneven playing field Up at Teacher Plus , July 2026.  In his latest book, author Aman Madan talks about the impact of inequalities in our society ( gender, class, and caste ) on education, the dynamic nature of these inequalities, and how societal changes in the recent decades have impacted them. The book is spread across 14 chapters, each with its own set of references. The first two chapters lay the premise, the next five focus on caste and class, the three that follow talk about gender, and the final four about government policies and intersectionality. Towards the end is a list of further readings.   Caste and class. The author talks about caste and class in a manner that is un...
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