NCERT textbooks carry ‘outdated’ IMD data
Karam Prakash
New Delhi, April 19
It has come to the fore that Indian school children — owing to the failure to revise the geography textbooks by the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) — are being taught a decade-old data of South West Monsoon. The Monsoon is an important event in agrarian India that marks the beginning of the cultivation of rain-fed Kharif crops.
Despite having contemporised the Monsoon relating data by India Metrological Department (IMD) in 2020, NCERT — an autonomous organisation established to assist and advise the Central and State Governments on school education — has yet to update their textbooks.
Adhering to the IMD’s 2010 data, NCERT textbooks still read: “Indian Monsoon advances in northwest India around July 15,” however, the revised dates for the weather activity, by the IMD, say “monsoon onset in the region by July 8.”
Similarly, the NCERT textbooks mention retrieval of monsoon around September 1; however, IMD says it retreats around September 17 in the northwest region. Moreover, normal dates related to the monsoon in other parts of the country have also not been updated, and students are taught the wrong dates in the schools.
A class 12th student of a private school in Gurugram, talking to the Tribune, said, “I had pointed this anomaly to the NCERT by writing an email a few months ago. However, no response was received. Currently, all the students across the country are being taught incorrect dates related to the Indian monsoon.”
When asked about this anomaly in geography textbooks, Dr Dinesh Prasad Saklani, Director, NCERT, said, “Changes are being done under the National Curriculum Framework, and all such things will be rectified.”
