Whatever the official ‘medium of instruction’, in actual practice most Indian universities work in Indian languages and not in English. This is true of both the teaching activities of faculty and specially the learning activities of students. Despite longstanding awareness of the problem, there is a marked lack of good teaching/learning materials in Indian languages with only rare exceptions. The social sciences are the worst affected because they are more dependent on language than the natural sciences, and do not possess the Indian language resources available to the humanities. This situation has been peculiarly stable because the factors and forces that may have led to change have for various reasons been ineffective. Although sustainable change requires internal roots, the initial impetus must perforce be external.
This project aims to produce an inventory and review of the popular curricular materials in Hindi used in six major universities in five states of north India. The social science disciplines covered are History, Political Science and Sociology. Both the B.A. and M.A. levels are considered, along with local variants of these courses. The universities considered are: Patna University (Bihar); Allahabad University and Banaras Hindu University (Uttar Pradesh); Barkatullah University, Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh); Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak (Haryana); and Rajasthan University, Jaipur (Rajasthan). Taking the syllabi and course content as given, the project focus is on evaluating the textbooks selected according to the following criteria: a) the coverage of the course content; b) academic quality of content in terms of its suitability for the relevant level and course; and c) production quality. Such a systematic survey of existing resources is an essential precondition for planning future initiatives to address the larger problem of quality teaching materials in Indian languages.
The most critical methodological component in this project is the evaluator or reviewer, who must produce a coherent account of an uneven body of material that varies across courses, syllabi, and type of textbook. The project has been very fortunate in its stellar team of consultants with extensive experience of social science teaching at the college and university level as well as prior engagement with the challenges of Hindi language pedagogy. Questions of approach and detailed procedures were left to individual consultants with the following broad framework being decided in preliminary meetings: a) The focus is on ‘popular’ materials (as different from those ‘prescribed’ in university reading lists); b) since no rigorous definition of ‘popular’ textbooks is possible, we will ask knowledgeable local informants to suggest suitable booksellers/publishers and use the materials found there; c) only compulsory courses will be considered; d) only ‘textbooks’ with chapters and topics will be considered and not ‘kunjis’ or guidebooks organised as answers to examination questions; e) no attempt will be made to critique syllabi or course structure beyond brief remarks; and f) every effort will be made to be self-conscious about the influence of implicit norms imported from English, and to think beyond them.
The textbook market plays a decisive role in determining the kind of curricular resources available to the average college or university student. The market itself is shaped by the examination system, including competitive examinations for recruitment to government jobs at the state and national levels. Both kinds of examination are in turn structured partly by university syllabi and partly by local tradition. The average textbook is designed to supply students with the minimum information needed to pass specific examinations.
There is a spectrum of genres in the textbook market that are distinguished primarily by their degree of directness in addressing examinations and secondarily by price-quality or brand considerations. At the top end of the spectrum is the translated classic with an autonomous – i.e., exam-independent – identity of its own, though this is true only in principle and not in practice. At the bottom end of the spectrum is the booklet known as a ‘pass-book’, which merely contains answers to the questions expected in a specific examination in a specific year. Roughly speaking, this Report considers the top third of this spectrum, with special reference to the middle and lower portions of the segment.
The unsurprising overall finding is that the Hindi-based social sciences are in desperate need of more and better teaching-learning resources. This general conclusion is based on a detailed qualitative hierarchy. At the top of this hierarchy is a tiny set of outstanding texts that are as good as or better than their English-language counterparts, but need to be updated. Next is a more numerous minority of competent textbooks that cover the required material well, but leave room for improvement in specific topics/areas; or in providing references and suggestions for further reading; or in the need to incorporate newer material. The vast majority of the textbooks reviewed must be considered deficient due to serious problems like: inadequate coverage; factual errors; unjustifiably biased presentations; lack of any citations or references; and, in general, poor quality of reasoning and exposition.
In general, the most serious – i.e., the most widespread and most consequential – problem is the lack of a critical-scholarly approach as reflected in: a) an overwhelming emphasis on transmitting information rather than framing issues and questions for multi-dimensional and many-sided debate or discussion; and b) the failure to encourage further reading and investigation through provision of citations and references, specially to existing Hindi materials. Another problem is the lack of meaningful calibration – there is little attempt to adapt textbooks to the level of the student (i.e., freshers vs. final years, Honours vs. Pass Course, BA vs. MA, etc.). At best, higher levels seem to invite quantitative expansion of content (sometimes not even that), but without qualitative change.
There are some disciplinary differences and specificities. Indian History and Ancient Indian History are expectedly the best endowed, and History as a whole is somewhat ahead of Sociology and Political Science in the quality and variety of textbooks, but World History and Historical Method are seriously deficient. Sociology is fortunate in the number and accessibility of translated classics, and some high quality original works, though their dissemination is limited. Political Science has a relatively high average level of textbook quality, though peaks are rare and troughs many. On the whole, disciplinary differences are much smaller than the overall similarities described above.
The biggest long term challenge is clearly the market-exam nexus. Bad textbooks flourish because they fulfill – or promise to fulfill – the real need to pass exams and acquire credentials. As long as this promise remains plausible, bad textbooks will tend to drive out – or at least not lose ground to – good textbooks, because the latter will always demand much more from both teachers and students. But there is still a lot to be done in the short and medium term future.
Initiatives offering the best returns to investment include: a) Wider dissemination of good existing curricular material by compiling and publicising subject-specific bibliographies; b) Producing annotated teaching-guides detailing how existing (extra-curricular) Hindi material from literature, journalism, film and other fields can be used to supplement textbooks in specific courses.
Initiatives addressing the areas of greatest need, but requiring significant investments of time, money and collective effort include: c) A series of course-specific ‘Readers’ at the MA level, containing a mix of existing, newly translated, and newly written materials; d) A similar series of short monographs on key topics with extensive bibliographies aimed at BA Honours students; e) Strategic, discipline-specific ‘gap-filling exercise’ that will produce new translations or original texts to plug holes in available curricular material; f) ‘Inspirational’ general introductions to disciplines designed to exploit and extend the momentum provided by the new NCERT class XII textbooks in the hope of weaning fresh undergraduates away from the temptations of the guide book genre; and g) Sustained efforts to ensure that good textbooks are updated regularly, both to drop obsolete material and to include new perspectives.
However, the fact remains that all such initiatives ultimately depend on ‘idealistic voluntarism’ – they require students and teachers to voluntarily cultivate a preference for good textbooks for their own sake. This is not sustainable in the long term unless examinations and syllabi are also changed. The prospect of attempting to transform such a vast and well-entrenched system of interlocking vested interests is indeed daunting. Strategic incremental changes designed to reward good textbooks and raise the risks of relying on ‘pass-books’ may be the more pragmatic route to take. Whatever the route chosen, the ultimate success of textbooks will continue to be determined by examinations in an educational system where the possession of a credential is more important than the possession of the skills and abilities it is supposed to guarantee.
Finally, we urgently need fora where various initiatives working towards broadly similar ends can learn about one another. ‘Coordination’ is too ambitious an objective, but mutual awareness, alliances and collective projects are not. In particular, interaction between state and non-state initiatives, and between Hindi and other Indian languages is likely to yield significant synergies.