A two-day exhibition was organized on “School books and related documents: A journey through two centuries” in collaboration with Azim Premji University and CTE, Raipur, Chhattisgarh.
REPORT
A two-day exhibition was organized on “School books and related documents: A journey through two centuries” in collaboration with Azim Premji University and CTE, Raipur, Chhattisgarh.
The program was held on the 25th and 26th of August, exclusively for all the stakeholders who benefitted from the school textbooks, that is professors, teachers and students who aspire to teach the younger generation someday.
The main guest, Mr Rohit Dhankar, Professor at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and Mr Varad Rajan Narayan, Professor at Azim Premji University were greeted by CTE.
Dr Bodele gave the opening remarks before Mrs J. Ekka, Principal, CTE Raipur, and Mrs M. Vijayalaxmi, Assistant Professor, respectively, welcomed the visitors to the occasion.
The primary goal of the event's organization was to discuss the quality of textbooks provided to students and the historical background of the creation of books. Prof. Rohit Dhankar encouraged and supported all of the attendees, during his speech on "The necessity of quality of school textbooks in India," which provided overwhelmingly favourable responses throughout and made it a shared learning event and the table discussions were fundamental to this exchange.
The next lecture was delivered by Mr Varad Rajan Narayan, where he spoke about the "Schoolbooks archive portal” which is a free, open-access online archive containing textbooks and related materials created and utilized in India and the subcontinent during the past 200 years, including a variety of subjects and languages.
Further in continuance, Prof. Rohit Dhankar emphasized the quality of education where he gave three dimensions of quality education:
- Clarity of concept
- Ability for self-learning
- Adherence towards learning
Moreover, here are the important points that were mentioned during his lecture:
- Textbooks define the scope of teaching. It determines the order of instruction and also refers to the subject matter.
- A good teacher can teach very effectively with or without textbooks, and they can do so even with bad textbooks. But yes, textbooks have their own importance.
- Many schools use textbooks as reference materials.
- Textbooks mark the scope of the examination and also suggest the methods.
- Textbooks might not be the only thing but are very crucial in guiding our education. It is not the most important or the only thing, not even the best of all, but yet is the most important for education.
- Quality education helps to develop learners’ abilities, thinking abilities, values and behavioural attributes.
- Marks are not a measure of quality education.
In addition to this discussion, it was learnt that in our country, the ideals of education are equality, justice, sensitivity, discretion, autonomy, and social justice in children which should be developed in the learner.
Basically, the core knowledge of this whole lecture was to make people aware that if textbooks are better in quality, then only, they can be helpful in education, that is both the terms quality textbooks and quality education are interrelated to each other.
The two-day exhibition turned out to be successful where the exchange of learning and knowledge took place.
At the end of the event, the vote of thanks was given by Assistant Prof. Alok Sharma, coordinator of this event and Mrs J. Ekka, Principal, CTE, Raipur. With this successful organization, CTE looks forward to the opportunity of conducting more such events in future for general awareness and learning exchange programmes.
Praveen Toppo