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A Study in the Idea of Inclusive Curriculum

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Education is the foremost right of all people. Wanting their representation in books shouldn’t be a privilege. This piece aims to highlight the importance of Inclusive Curriculum in modern day schools.

As a society, we’re constantly refusing the ideals of patriarchy and discrimination. It’s imperative to realise, that those ideals could be illustrated in books as well. The curriculum students are taught at colleges or schools act as a medium for to resonate with the world. However, the curriculum taught hasn’t been changed since past many years.

The book assigned to my mother is the one I still have to study now. Curriculum should be periodically updated to ensure its reflecting the current state of society, not how it was a century ago. There’s a huge part of modern day relationships, identities and choice that is completely ignored in this course.

Inclusive curriculum is defined as an approach to course and unit design, and to teaching-learning practice which aims to improve access and successful participation in education of groups traditionally excluded from tertiary education.

This is to show students that there are people just like them in this multicultural society, so they feel better engaged with their schoolwork and can better relate to course materials. If there is no representation of their identity, race, sexuality, religion or nationality embedded within the course, many end up feeling disillusioned and demotivated.

As per the Times report, more than 63% of students cannot relate to the subject being taught in school and feel demotivated instead. For example, its like opening a brown magazine with an extremely fair cover girl with European features. After seeing that magazine, there’s a high chance you might find yourself less beautiful. Just the same way students who are from oppressed communities do not see themselves in the course they study, yet are still expected to comprehend it.

An inclusive curriculum helps them see that all walks of life are relevant and important, and that they are in a safe environment where everyone is not only accepted, but celebrated. People all over the world, are starting to recognise this, and many have started implementing a more inclusive curriculum. They are already seeing positive changes in students, reporting higher rates of achievement and better engagement.

The other aspect of Inclusive Education is to make students familiarise with modern complexities like social media management, financial literacy, scientific temperament, and political ideologies that affects them. It’s an attempt to give an exposure of real life situations to students in these institutions to make them informed citizens.

For you to understand the concept much better, here are few examples of good teaching practice in an inclusive curriculum. Introducing students to LGBTQIA+ literature, about regressive Transgender Bill,supporting female Muslim students in physiotherapy education, teaching capitalism to students of economics, rural geography, auto-ethnic profiling, co-creating the curriculum for fine arts and, history, and faith, spirituality, and social work.

Inclusive curriculum will be a revolutionary tool in modern day education. It will help raising sensitive, kind and socially aware students than cramming expert robots. The education will go far beyond than just acing exams, it will result in informative classroom discussions and will make students more accepting of their flaws and other people. Inclusive curriculum is a great way to raise awareness about and then eventually solve many social evils prevailing in the society.

Feature Image Credits: Vaibhav Tekchandani for DU beat

Chhavi Bahmba 

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Campus Central

SOL Students Protest Against Application of CBCS

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On 17th November, Sunday, students of School of Open Learning (SOL) held a funeral march to symbolise the death of the varsity’s Vice Chancellor (VC) for them, and sent tonsured hair to the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) to protest against the hasty implementation of the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) system in SOL. 

On 17th November 2019, the students of DU’s School of Open Learning (SOL) took out a funeral march from the main gate of the Arts Faculty to the VC house, symbolising his death for the students of School of Open Learning (SOL). The students carried an effigy of the VC in a funeral procession, with slogans that read Annyay VC ki shavyatra (Unfair VC’s funeral procession) and SOL aur Regular mein degree ki samanta hee nahi, suvidhaon ki bhi do (Provide equal opportunities to regular courses and SOL, and not just equal degrees). The march was organised by the students and the KYS against the ‘bulldozed’implementation of the CBCS/ Semester system by DU for the students of SOL. 

In a press statement released on Sunday, the Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS), mentioned, “Classes are suspended while more than half of the Honours courses remain incomplete; thus destroying the future of first-year SOL students, who have to appear for the CBCS examination later this November. Not only is the syllabus incomplete, the SOL students are yet to be provided with their complete study material. SOL is so unprepared that till now even the study material which has to be mandatorily provided to the students has not been made available to the majority. All this while the exams are due this very month. Also, even though lacs of students have taken admission this year in SOL, the study centres are almost empty because no information has been provided to them.”

The students of SOL had held a massive protest at the MHRD as well, where they had tonsured their hair and sent it to the Union HRD Minister, Delhi Education Minister, UGC, DU, and SOL authorities to assert that they felt orphaned, and were thus sending their tonsured hair as offerings of symbolic sacrifice. The students have made an appeal to the High Court of Delhi and had also protested against University Grants Commission (UGC), demanding its immediate intervention for the roll-back of the new CBCS curriculum and semester mode. 

“The entire situation is chaos. Even though the idea of lessening the parity between regular colleges and distant learning is a good initiative, its implementation is terrible. We don’t know the syllabus, classes are empty and without the proper study material, the teachers don’t know what to teach in classes either. We’ve been completely abandoned by the authorities, despite continually reaching out. The University decided to introduce the CBCS system with no preparation and now we have to sit for semester exams that SOL wasn’t even prepared for. This is our future, and the University doesn’t seem to care at all,” Mrinal Yadav, a B.Com. student at SOL told DU Beat. 

Expressing concern over this issue, several teachers have written to the University visitor, President Ram Nath Kovind, calling for the postponement of the exams and rolling back of the semester system for this year. “We have been observing the growing agitation of SOL students and the high handedness with which the University is circumventing to their objections regarding the manner in which the system has been introduced,” the letter to the President said. It was said to be signed by about 100 teachers. A review of the study materials provided, upon which distance education students mostly rely, showed that they were “full of errors” and not a product of academic protocols, they wrote in the letter. The teachers also raised issues about the way the new system was introduced, arguing that it was “bulldozed” through the University’s statutory bodies.

Feature Image Credits: KYS

Shreya Juyal

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Campus Central

DU to Revamp Evaluation Procedure

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University Grants Commission (UGC) has initiated its new evaluation set-up of continuous assessment, incorporating poster making, quizzes, essays and much more as a part of the curriculum. Thereby, restructuring a 7:3 assessment pattern.

 

UGC has initiated its latest step towards the evaluation and assessment of students, introducing poster making, quizzes and essays, giving respite to the paper-pen system of evaluation.

The committee that recommended the analysis reforms was headed by Professor M.M. Salunkhe, President, Affiliation of Indian Universities (AIU), with an objective of inculcating continuous assessment- making paper displays, participating in group discussions and writing unit exams for every chapter in addition to the year-end examination. In keeping with the proposed analysis methodology, 70 per cent weightage will likely be given to formative evaluation while summative evaluation, which was thus far 100 per cent of the analysis, will now be restricted to 30 per cent.

“The idea of moving towards a continuous evaluation method is a move away from rote learning and to make learning interesting for students,” said UGC Vice Chairman Bhushan Patwardhan. He further added, “The new evaluation scheme has been formulated by a committee of experts appointed by the commission and will soon be made official by the HRD minister.”

However, apprehensions lurk around the latest move. Rajesh Jha, a Delhi University College instructor told LiiStudio, “One has to see the size of our classrooms; there are 60 students in one class, how are we going to have the ability to do inside evaluation with issues like group discussions and poster making with them?” He added, “What are we going to teach the students anyway by poster-making? If the government wants a curriculum that makes students more creative and develops their critical ability, they should assess this scheme properly before implementation,”. Satviki Sanjay, a student of Miranda House put forth her views on the continual analysis initiative- “Poster making and quizzes seem like a waste of time. I would like the syllabus and the teaching to be more practical and application-oriented, for which I think essays and, to an extent, presentations are great, but a replica of the CCE (Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation) system in college is impractical. While I agree, there should be some continuous evaluation because we only study for exams, I am not sure how practical and how well implemented this system would be.”

With private universities such as the Azim Premji University and Ashoka University already abiding by the continuous evaluation process, results of implementation of a similar process on DU colleges are awaited.

Feature Image Credits: The Print

Priyanshi Banerjee

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Campus Central

Editorial: Delhi University, It Is Time to Pull Up Your Socks

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To stay relevant in the 21st century – the University of Delhi (DU) needs to let go of its laissez-faire attitude. Read our Editor’s take on why DU is trapped in its own history.

Making it into DU was a dream for so many of us. We battled the unpredictable and exhausting board examinations, obsessed over  cut-off lists, and withstood the impossibly frustrating admission process to finally make it here. Once here, all the effort seemed worth it. To study with the brightest people in our generation, participate in DU’s competitive society culture, absorb its active protest culture, and learn under its brilliant faculty, made it a one of a kind experience. This, coupled with a relatively relaxed attendance policy and reasonable fee, was enough to make this place a dream come true.

However, three years in the University and my rose-coloured glasses have finally worn off. What I saw as the culture of protest is actually teachers and students demanding basic resources and rights. What was seen as thriving society culture is the students’ way to keep themselves occupied and challenged since the varsity offers few opportunities to do so. The affordability of DU is constantly at threat, with newly established schools like Delhi School of Journalism charging a hefty fee and offering sub par education in return. With the Higher Education Funding Agency and the current government’s obsession with privatisation, DU’s accessibility is historically most vulnerable right now.

However, this is not all. The bigger problems with DU are related to its academic rigour. The truth is, towards the end of our three years, there is very little that the institution has taught us.

This facade of DU’s reputation has limited influence; recruiters and major corporations are distinctly aware of how little a DU degree teaches you, which is perhaps why they avoid us like the plague. Navigating the process of landing your first job on your own is chaotic and most people seek the security of campus placements. However, in DU, the word ‘placement’ is reserved for commerce students from the five top – ranked colleges in the varsity. It’s not as if commerce students or those in top colleges are necessarily more skilled than the rest of us but selective elitism goes a long way. The rest, pursuing other “non-employable” degrees in the remaining colleges, cannot aspire to be recruited in any capacity.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to DU for the exposure and experiences but they were by and large the product of the hard work of the students who made societies their life and gave them their competitive edge. Apart from its reputation, there is very little that DU offers us. My resentment stems from the fact that I, like my peers, am horribly under-prepared for the real world. It is responsible to revive the curriculum to make it competitive with other universities, and it is their responsibility to realise that their job does not end by offering students mere theoretical knowledge.

Sports facilities in DU are underwhelming and most sports’ quota students find their own way of training themselves independently. Certainly, there is a funding crisis that the varsity is experiencing and the threat of a bigger impending crisis looms above the surface, but even existing funds aren’t appropriately utilised. For example, in 2017, the varsity returned 108 crores to the University Grants Commission (UGC) because it could not find an avenue to spend it. Three crore rupees allocated by the UGC remained under-utilised and had to be returned as well.

As I reflect upon my three years in DU, I am grateful for the creative minds I got the opportunity to interact with. However, nostalgia has not clouded my judgment and I know that there was so much more that DU could have offered and so much more that I deserved. The only people who graduate from DU and make it in life should not be B.Com. students, IAS officers, rich kids whose resources get them into an Ivy – league college for Master’s or those studying in Hindu, Lady Shri Ram, Stephen’s, and Hansraj. The rest of us also deserve access to an education that teaches us the required skills, has a curriculum abreast with top international universities, and offers us the opportunity that allows us to get employed if we wish to be. Like an egocentric, ageing actor who cannot get over their glory days, DU is iconic but stuck in the past. It needs to catch up with the times and enter the 21st century. After all, reputations alone can only last so long.  

Kinjal Pandey
[email protected]

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