ROLE OF TEXTBOOKS IN EDUCATION

Texts and Books

Popular perception treats the textbook as the prime

site for curriculum designing. Though curriculum

planning is a much wider process, curriculum reform

seldom goes beyond changing the textbook. Improved

textbooks that are carefully written and designed,

professionally edited and tested, offering not merely

factual information but also interactive spaces for

children are important. But curricular reform can go

much farther if textbooks are accompanied by several

other kinds of materials. Subject dictionaries, for

instance, can relieve the main textbook from becoming

encyclopaedic, burdened by carrying definitions of

technical terms, and instead allow the teacher to focus

on understanding concepts. The triangular relationship

between high-speed classroom teaching, heavy

homework and private tuition, which is a major source

of stress, can be weakened if textbook writers focus

on elaboration of concepts, activities, spaces for

wondering about problems, exercises encouraging

reflective thinking and small-group work, leaving the

definition of technical terms to a subject dictionary.
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Supplementary books, workbooks, and extra

reading come next. In certain subjects, such as

languages, the importance of such material needs no

fresh recognition, but the concept of such material does

call for fresh thinking. Current textbooks contain

uninteresting content covering different genres, and

workbooks simply repeat exercises of the type already

found in textbooks. In mathematics, and the natural

and social sciences, such supplementary materials still

need to be developed. Such books could draw

children’s attention away from the text to the world

around them. Indeed, for subjects like art, workbooks

may form the main classroom material. There are

fine examples of such materials produced for the study

of the environment, introducing children to the

observation of trees, birds and the natural habitat.

Such resources need to become available to the teacher

and for use in the classroom.

Atlases have a similar role to play in enriching

the child’s understanding of the ear th, both as a natural

and as a human habitat. Atlases of stars, flora and fauna,

people and life patterns, history and culture, etc. can

greatly enlarge the scope of geography, history and

economics at all levels. Posters on these areas of

knowledge, as well as other matters of concern on

which general awareness needs to be promoted, can

also enhance learning. Some of these concerns include

gender bias, inclusion of children with special needs,

and Constitutional values. Such material could be

available in a resource library and at the cluster level to

be borrowed by schools for use, or they could be

placed in the school library, or made available by

teachers.

Manuals and resources for teachers are just as

important as textbooks. Any move to introduce a new

set of textbooks or a new kind of textbook should

include the preparation of handbooks for teachers.

These handbooks should reach principals and teachers

before the new textbooks do. Teachers' handbooks

can be designed in many dif ferent ways. They need not

cover the content of the textbook chapter-wise, though

that can be one of the approaches. Other formats can

be equally valid: offering a critique of established

methods and suggesting new ones, and including lists

of resource materials, audio and video materials and

sites on the Internet. These would provide tips for

teachers, which they could use for lesson planning. Such

source books need to be available during in - service

training of teachers and during meetings when they

plan their teaching units.

Ver tically organised group classrooms (multigrade

or multiability) require a shift away from textbooks

designed for monograde classrooms, which assume

that all children are being addressed by the teacher

together and that they are all at the same stage and are all

expected to do the same thing. Instead, there is a need

for alternative types of materials to be made available

to teachers as a basis of planning lessons and units:

• Thematic lesson with a variety of exercises and

activities a t different levels for different groups.

• Graded self - access materials that children can

engage with on their own with minimum

scaffolding from the teacher, allowing them to

work on their own or with other children.

• Whole - group activity plans, say, storytelling or

performing a small drama, based on which

children can do differ ent activities. For example,

all children from Classes I to V may enact the

folk story of the rabbit and the lion together,

and after this Groups I and II may work with

flashcards with the names of various animals;

Group III and IV may make a series of

drawings and then write out the story against

each drawing, working in small groups; and

Group V may rewrite the story, suggesting

alternative endings to it. Without the support

of appropriate materials, most teachers find

themselves trying to juggle monograde class

groups, with the result that for the majority of

children, time on the task becomes very low.