The story of Lakhmir Singh & Manjit Kaur
The only tuition class Delhi University chemistry professor Lakhmir Singh ever took made him consider the need for a simplified version of the NCERT school textbook, especially for science. Hoping to reach students who could not afford private tuitions or were in relatively remote areas, he wrote his first Chemistry textbook in 1980. Co-authored with wife Manjit Kaur, the book was a success. The couple soon added physics and biology books for classes 9 and 10. Realizing that the monetary reward for writing reference textbooks was several times higher and directly proportional to the effort invested in them, Lakhmir Singh took voluntary retirement from DU to devote all his time for academic writing.
“Our books are highly simplified. All books have the same concepts: it is the language and presentation of facts which makes the difference. Writing a simplified book is a tough job,” says Lakhmir Singh.
Recommendations
In his research paper titled 'Quality Concerns in School Education' that appeared in the Journal of Indian Education published by the NCERT in its 2015 edition, Shankar Sharan, Professor, Faculty of Arts, MS University of Baroda, Vadodara, mentioned the following:
- The respect of NCERT books seems to have lost grounds.
- Teachers' involvement in framing textbooks should be increased substantially.
- Social participation in curriculum making exercise should be vastly increased.
- Before publishing the final version of the reading material for children, comments should be invited from a large number of readers including teachers, students and parents and discussed honestly.
- Exam-centric education and popularity of guidebooks are inter-linked. The students are able to score modest marks by going through the run-of-the-mill help books by cramming the subjects hours before the examination.
- There should be serious and multiple studies about the effects of English medium education with all its facets.
Seema Kaul, New Delhi
