“Social studies is my favorite
subject…!” beamed Dinesh, a class IX student of Holy Cow Senior Secondary
School. His friends secretly set up an appointment for him at the State Rehabilitation
Center for Juvenile Maladies. Say his friends, “ I mean seriously, who’s ever
liked Social? He isn’t normal”. But little did they know that Dinesh’s school
was prescribing to the new NCERT textbooks. Dinesh was released from
rehabilitation after the mental health officer learnt the fact that his school
followed the new NCERT books.
Dinesh isn’t alone. Many of his
classmates are now hooked to social studies. They say they’ve never seen
anything so entertaining before. “My marks have improved. I read social every
day. And without my mother having to plead with or threaten me with flushing my
Playstation memory card down the toilet.”
So what’s with the new NCERT
books? “CARTOONS…!” yells Dinesh. “There are so many of them. Like over here,
this Children’s day dude is whipping the guy with glasses for not doing his
homework while people around are watching that. It conforms to the tales my
grandpa used to tell me about his days at school. That’s exactly how
punishments were in those days. That’s history right there for you – punishment
in the 40s. The best way to learn is indeed through cartoons.”
Well, perhaps Dinesh hasn’t
exactly grasped the crux of the cartoon. But his classmate, class topper Aarthi,
shows her substance. “I now spend much lesser time to learn social. There’s
much lesser to mug up because the book is like 10% cartoons. And they usually
give us ruled sheets in our exams. So I know they can’t ask us to draw those.
So instead of 30 hours a week I spend just 27 hours to read social. I use the 3
hours I gained to solve RD Sharma’s math problems for the 5th time.
My score in math jumped from 97 to 99. I wish they put cartoons in Science too.
I can gain a few more hours and get a 100 in math too” she exasperates.
She was nudged as to what she
understood by the Nehru-Ambedkar cartoon which Dinesh so uniquely
misinterpreted. “Didn’t I just tell you I skip the cartoons? Those are
introduced just to motivate and scare poor students who don’t study well or do
homework. I haven’t thought about the cartoon much but since you ask, it looks
to me as if Nehru is whipping Ambedkar for writing a constitution which even
brilliant, talented, high-IQ students like me have to mug up 8 times. You know,
because Nehru loved children he would have never wanted them to read such
difficult documents and score such low marks. You know, I forgot the Preamble
and Fundamental Rights and got only 95 last year in Social” she weeps
inconsolably.
Differing outlooks from different
students. But it didn’t seem like any student interpreted it the way certain
pro-Ambedkar groups claim they will i.e it will poison their minds and create
an aversion towards politicians. One certain pro-Ambedkar activist, Chiruthai,
had this to say. “This cartoon defames our icon, Babasaheb Ambedkar. It
projects Babasaheb as a wimp. He was a very brave man. We demand that another
cartoon be printed in which Babasaheb fights Nehru back. And it also projects Babasaheb
as a mean person. He would never harm even a fly, let alone try to squash a
snail.” So how will it affect what the students infer from it? - “Can’t you see
that for yourself? Babasaheb is riding a snail. The younger generation wants
220cc racer bikes. The students will think life involving the constitution is
not lucrative. Atleast someone should tell them that not all of us politicians
adhere to the constitution” decries Chiruthai. A better understanding of the cartoon than
Dinesh and Aarthi, it appears.
But why have the cartoons made
the NCERT books so popular? Dinesh explains, “Before we used to get some very
good cartoons on Cartoon Network. Nowadays it’s total crap. I can’t stand the
sight of Ben10 and Billy Mandy aur life mein haddi. The cartoons on Disney are
no respite either with Doraemon being shown 17 out of 24 hours. These new
social studies cartoons have injected new life and enthusiasm into us. We open
those pages and laugh our heart out in the same way we laughed when we see how
the mayor of Townsville (Powerpuff Girls) is only as tall as Miss Bellum’s
heels. And the way we focused our eyes on Mayor Tilton’s (The Mask) corrupt
deeds. We enjoyed those cartoons. The only way we can relive it is through
these NCERT cartoons. If not mayors, atleast regular politicians recreate the
memories of those cartoons to some extent.”
As expected topper Aarthi loved
the cartoons for a different reason, altogether. “Are you retarded? How many
times do I need to tell you? I love the cartoons because I have lesser pages to
mug up and more time to concentrate on RD Sharma problems. With every second I’m
wasting answering your pointless queries I am losing 0.025 mark. Which works
out to how many marks till now? Wait, let me get my log book. We’re not allowed
calculators” she quips.
The final view to make the
verdict on these cartoons was the view of teachers. Principal of Holy Cow
Senior Secondary School, Interest, was ready to state his views. “I think it’s
made our job a lot easier. Even weak student now has learnt that Babasaheb ‘rode’
the constitution. We just have to tell them it’s ‘wrote’ and not ‘rode’. It’s
the teachers who have created some problems infact. Some of them thought it was
a novel punishment to make erring students sit on a snail. I had a lot of
answering to do to the ‘People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) ‘”.
So did Interest think students will get wrong notions from the cartoons as
expressed by Chiruthai? – “No I don’t think so. These students have learnt from
the cartoon that you will be whipped if you try to write a constitution. Hence
no one in future will try to rewrite the constitution or become an extra-constitutional
authority. Thus there is no fear of our nation losing its sovereign-secular-democratic-socialist-republican
identity. It is quite clear that this cartoon has the put the future in safe
hands” claims Interest. A far-fetched logic in it, but it seems to work.
Both students and teachers alike
have thus favored these cartoons. It is better for the children of our country
that these cartoons are not removed from the NCERT text books. Chacha Nehru
loved children, and Aarthi’s argument showed that. Let the children be provided
with a life-saving alternative to CN…
