THE crisis which faces the natural environment has had to wait
a long time for recognition from modern socio-political institutions. The case for institutional reform in the relationship
between man and nature has been made countless number of
times, but callous exploitation of nature's resources continues;
still, a change in recent times is evident. The crisis stands
acknowledged - not just by researchers, but by modern states
and their institutions as well.
In the case of our primary education system, symbolic
recognition has come in the form of space given in the curricula to environment -related knowledge and concerns. The
illustration of a factory spewing forth smoke, captioned "Idols
of modern India" in textbooks of the 1960s, now carries the
revised caption "Sources of pollution"-. But even the new curricula do not serve to impart to children a coherent understanding of the issues.
Substantive knowledge about such concerns is imparted
mainly as part of the teaching of science. But attempts made to
reorganise elementary school science as 'environmental studies' (EVS) and to incorporate ecological concerns in secondary
school science have not altered the character of science learning. EVS merely triggers a conflict of values in the context of
man's relationship with nature, which cannot be resolved
within the prevailing value-premises of science learning.
Science as EVS arouses concern for the destruction of nature,
whereas school science in general imparts a sense of control
over nature.
The syllabi and textbooks used in the teaching of EVS reveal
a two-fold objective: one, to impart knowledge about the environment; two, to arouse concern for the state of the environment. The first objective requires children to learn about different components of the environment and the inter-relationships which connect them. This EVS-imparted knowledge has
now been reorganised around the concept of sustainability of
life. The current presentation of these topics also features
information about the concepts of 'degradation' and 'pollution'. These ideas imply an obvious value-judgement, whose
basis is the concept of life. The ability of elements like air and
water to sustain life
provides a delineation of
the scale on which 'degradation' is said to have
occurred.
The second objective of EVS
often finds a didactic expression in
the shape of suggestions on 'what
needs to be done' to repair the damage to
the environment or to improve its degraded
state. Answers consist of telling children what they
can do. For instance, in the context of garbage disposal,
children are asked to be more careful about where they dump
garbage. A second type of answer consists of telling children
that scientists are working to find solutions to environmental
problems - like new kinds of pesticides which would only
eliminate specific pests. A third body of answers consists of
informing students that the government is taking steps to
improve the situation. For instance, to control river pollution,
the government is making arrangements for the treatment of
sewage in all riverside towns and cities.
EVS attributes the cause of environmental degradation to
industrialisation and modern lifestyle. For example, in the
context of pesticides, while use of these chemical killers have
been proved to be harmful to the environment, what scale of
their use might deserve to be called indiscriminate or excessive
is left uncertain. Let us consider the case Of DDT. That DDT is
harmful to organisms other than mosquitoes is mentioned in
EVS texts. Yet, when it comes to -discussing malaria- carrying
mosquitoes, children are told to spray DDT regularly. The next
sentence (which figures in NCERT Grade v textbooks), says:
"Take care that it is not sprayed in excess,'. It is difficult to
understand what "excess" might mean, when the spraying is
supposed to be regular.
EVS texts do not just question modernisation; they project
a categorically different Organisation of the world. This runs
counter to the knowledge represented in the rest of the
curricula. The relationship between EVs and other school
subjects involves a conflict between two structures of ideas and
informations that do not seem to be reconciliable. In one
structure, concepts of change and progress are forwarded,
together with ideas of economic growth, exploitability
of earth's resources and 'faith in human ingenuity. In the
other, knowledge is held together by the concept of limits to
the exploitability of the earth's resources and the parallel idea
of the morally- oriented limits to exploiting life forms for
human needs.
The values that are concomitant to belief in economic growth appear to be inimical to awareness of
the limits and problems
posed by the natural
environment. In this
context, the knowledge that EVS imparts
would appear as a
major source of discordance. In post-independence India,
school education has
played an important role
in projecting a benign,
uncritical perception of
modern science and technology. But today, questions are
raised by children in classrooms
which neither textbooks nor teachers
answer. One finds children wanting to
know if Medha Patkar and Baba Amte - opponents of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada - are
great people or a nuisance.
The conflict between the EVS perspective and that of modern science has its roots in values, and not in
poor management. These values are centered
in the perception of nature as an object.
Historically, these values and attitudes found
a cultural symbol in the European bourgeois,
and an ideological symbol in modern science. The manner in which the scientific
outlook has been defined denies any consciousness or sensibility to nature. Such
denial is also characteristic of the capitalistic
outlook which presents nature as resource to
be exploited for the maximisation of profit.
This consistency between the two outlooks
has facilitated the use of science for profit
maximisation.
Behind the positivistic veneer of school
science, there lies the agenda for distancing
the child from his or her own nature. In a bid
to make science - learning a means of developing the capacity of objective study, school science curricula
attempt to give a value-neutral character to the study of
natural phenomena, including the non-human living members of nature. A specific attempt is made, for instance, to help
children overcome any hesitation or inhibition that they
might feel in dissecting for examination a live frog or rat. But
no science text discusses the manner in which animals
respond to the violence inflicted on them in the course of
study by humans, apparently because such discussion might
generate an attitude incompatible with the attitudes and values into which the school science curriculum attempts to
socialise children. A truly positivistic orientation towards science would surely treat this issue as a valid subject of study.
Since the ecological crisis is related to the political economy of modern science, the role of education in promoting the
study of science in this value-neutral manner should be seen as
a factor contributing to the ecological crisis. As an institutionalised activity, education has a distinctly promotional role in
the context of ideas. Education enables men and women to
shed - during childhood - all those instincts and inhibitions
that they might feel when confronted with situations requiring
them to act as invaders or destroyers of nature or as witnesses
to such destruction.
The socialising aspect of science learning is not a logical
adjunct to the intellectual capacities which this learning helps
to develop in children. Therefore, it cannot be argued that if
science were to be learnt with respect for nature, it would lack
certain basic mental attributes which science teaching
attempts to develop today with its value- neutrality and indifference to nature. If concern and sensitivity towards the environment are to be reflected in school science as a whole, the
curricula need to be designed differently.
The new design must provide for space where the value-premises of modern science - we can identify two - can be
questioned. The first value-premise consists of the idea that
scientific enquiry has no moral responsibility towards the
object of enquiry. Scientific experiments are conducted in a
manner that leaves the enquirer unaccountable for the
consequences of his actions. Thus, while children are made to
dissect and kill frogs, they are not required to study how the
collection and killing of frogs would affect
the structure of bio -relationships to which
the animals belonged. Similarly, a
scientist- engineer studying a mineral is not
supposed to be concerned with the manner
in which mining in the area where the
mineral is found will affect the landscape and
those dependent on it.
Often, the claim that scientific activity
ultimately promotes human welfare and
prosperity is used to give it immunity against
the charge that it might have caused ecological damage. Such a plea has validity only if
we ignore the gross disparities in welfare and
prosperity between regions where activities
like mining are performed and the regions
where the products of mining are consumed.
Scientists rarely accept accountability for
such disparities; they find a convenient shelter behind the argument that the disparities are the outcome
of poor management and visionless politics, not science.
The second value-premise is that specialised activity alone
counts as scientific enquiry. Leaving aside some eminent
exceptions and idealists, scientists as a community universally
treat the right to pursue narrowly specialised enquiry as an
aspect of professional science. This right absolves them from
taking serious interest in other areas of science. This tendency
has provided the social sciences with a model; knowledge in
both natural and social sciences now accumulates in a manner
that lacks personal or individual integration, as opposed to
institutional integration which does occasionally take place
under the name of inter- disciplinary research.
As a socialising agency, the school starts preparing children for specialised study from the elementary stage. The label
'integrated science', currently in vogue, barely masks the methodological expectation embedded in the lessons - that enquiry
must aim at specialised findings.
Holistic understanding is professed in
prefaces to books and in documents of
state policy, but nothing in the actual
practice of classroom instruction
indicates that such understanding is
intended. There is nothing in the study
of science that might indicate to children that nature is a set of complex
relationships. It is hard to imagine
how any socialising function of the
school would operate if there were no
institutionalised roles available in
adult society to which the schooled
and socialised children could be allocated on growing up.
Science learning in school socialises the young not just for the roles
available in what has been aptly called
the military-industrial complex, but
also for providing mass assent to the
unlimited freedom of this complex to
destroy nature in the course of its so-called productive activities. Children
who succeed in acquiring roles and
positions in the military- industrial
complex are few; the majority end up
becoming members of a public which
gives silent approval to the stupendous
expenditure required for maintaining
the complex and the huge resources
locked in it in the shape of 'fixed capital'. It is this latter investment, personified in technological installations of
all kinds, that makes the total social
system - including institutionalised
education - so resistant to change.
The trend towards reorganisation
of school science curricula by the
incorporation of environmental concerns is too weak to make any major
impact on the socialising character of
science instruction and on the inter-linkages between science, politics and
the economy. As an isolated strategy,
this incorporation cannot disturb the
nexus that prevails between the consumption -oriented capitalistic economy and the teaching of science. This nexus ensures that the
awareness brought about by science instruction will never
cross the limits imposed on it by the economic interests vested
in the continued use and proliferation of pesticides, chemical
fertilisers and modern weapons. Allowed only to grow within
these limits, the celebrated scientific temper cannot answer the
child's search for coherence.
The lack of vision in the curricula of science is only a part
of the visionlessness of education itself. The enormous load of
factual knowledge that children learn to live with educates
them to become clueless and meek, which is how the consumer-citizen must live in a world
ruled by transnational companies,
especially if he/she happens to belong
to the Third World. Partial knowledge
alone seems to help earn a living.
General education gives the impression of immensity only by the disconnectedness of the knowledge, of complexity only by its confusion.
Science education in schools must
accept the biggest share of the blame
for this situation, for in no other area
of the Indian school curricula have syllabi and textbooks grown in size over
the recent years as much as they have
in science. Those concerned about
redesigning science curricula and
altering the socialising agenda of science teaching will have to look beyond
science, both in order to grasp the
problem better and to seek the means
to solve it. They will have to examine
modern science and social sciences in
the context of basic problem areas of
civic life in our country, such as
health, livelihood, housing and consumption.
Also, regional variations will mark
any sincere attempt to orient the
school curricula towards such themes.
It is not proposed that school science
or social studies should be confined to
themes of this kind. The point is that
school knowledge must socialise children into a culture of concern and
search for collective solutions. That
kind of socialisation alone can deserve
to be counted as a valid objective of
EVS.
Despite a crisis having been recognised in humanity's relationship with
nature, there is no sign yet that educational planners and curricula designers are willing to treat the crisis in an
integrated manner, permitting it to be
studied with reference to a transformative social order. Rather, they are
willing to let education be used for the
promotion of adjustment to a crisisridden situation. Thus, in our country,
they have proposed a set of behavioral objectives which might
be used as frameworks for curricula development.
These objectives - outdated copies of objectives
suggested a quarter of a century ago in USA - highlight certain
'minimum levels of learning' that are devoid of the basic concerns of living. They represent a disaggregate body of technical
tasks to be performed by children in the name of education.
Anyone anxious about changes in the pedagogy of science in
schools must resist this blatant attempt to destroy the philosophical and social foundations of education.
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