All is not well with the curriculum reform in Kerala.

Failing to deliver

R. KRISHNAKUMAR
in Thiruvananthapuram

An expert committee review suggests that all is not well with the decade-long school curriculum reform in Kerala.

S. GOPAKUMAR 
 
K.N. Panikkar, Vice-Chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council, handing over the report of the Expert Committee on Textbook Review to Education Minister M.A. Baby on October 7.

THE report of the Expert Committee on Textbook Review is a revealing commentary on the gap between theory and practice in the making of the curriculum, syllabi and textbooks and in the training of teachers in Kerala under an ambitious teaching reform programme introduced in State schools from 1997. The findings of the 18-member group of academicians led by the Vice-Chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council, Dr. K.N. Panikkar, is, however, an unexpected outcome of the bitter political controversy and related violence that rocked the State recently over the contents of a few new schoolbooks, among them a social science textbook for Standard VII (“A lesson to learn”, Frontline, July 8, 2008).  more