Participation of All Children:
Participation by itself has little meaning. It is the
ideological framework surrounding participation that
defines it and gives it a political construct. For example,
work participation within an authoritarian frame would
give participation a very different form from
participation within a democracy. Today, the
participation of ‘civil society’ has become part of the
rhetoric in developmental circles, but the nature of that
civil society and the object of that participation have
been moulded by a specific interpretation of what it
means to be a citizen. Today, civil society participation
has come to mean NGO participation, and attempts
to enable the participation of individual citizens, for
example, in local governance is posing a major
challenge.
India is one of the largest and oldest democracies
in the world; this curriculum framework is built on an
understanding of this foundation. Education defines
the fabric of a nation, and has the capacity to provide
each child a positive experience of democratic
functioning. Like the texture, colour, strength, and nature
of each thread that is woven into a tapestry, each Indian
child can be enabled to not only participate in a
democracy, but to also learn how to interact and form
partnerships with others to preserve and enhance
democracy. It is the quality and nature of the
interrelationships among individuals that determines the
socio-political fabric of our nation. However, children
are often socialised in to discriminatory practices.
Children and adults learn from what they experience
at home, the community and the world around them.
It is important to recognise that adults socialise children
within the dominant socio-cultural paradigm. This
paradigm would include the role models that children
see the mass media including television. This experience
conditions their perceptions of caste and class, gender,
democracy and justice. These perceptions, if and when
reinforced by repeated experiences of the same kind,
are converted into values. At a community level, when
a group of people have the same experience and
therefore share the same values, these values get
converted into culture, and sometimes even ideology.
This is a spiral, and each time the cycle is repeated the
values and culture get reinforced unless there is a
variation in the experience. The counter - experience
needs to be strong and real enough to transform the
earlier perceptions. Children cannot wake up one fine
morning when they are 18 and know how to participate
in, preserve and enhance a democracy, especially if they
have had no prior personal or even second - hand
experience of it, nor any role models to learn from.
The participation of children is a means to a much
larger end, that of preserving and adding a new
vibrancy to our culture of egalitarianism, democracy,
secularism and equality. These values can be best realised
through an integrated and well-designed curriculum
that enables children’s participation. The existing
environment of unhealthy competition in schools promotes values that are the antithesis of the values
enshrined in our Constitution. A positive ‘experience’
of democracy and democratic participation must be
provided both within and outside the school. This
experience must actively engage children and young
people in ways that encourage values of inclusion,
eventually leading the way to the realisation of the vision
of a participatory democracy.
Enabling democratic participation is also a means
of empowering the weak and the marginalised. If India
is to realise her dream of a nation based on
egalitarianism, democracy and secularism, where all her
citizens enjoy justice, liberty, equality and fraternity,
enabling the participation of children would be the
most fundamental step in this process. Enabling learning
through participation in the life of a community and
the nation at large is crucial to the success of schooling.
The failure to provide this will result in the failure of
the system, and hence needs to be treated as the utmost
priority. It is not only as essential as the teaching of
mathematics and science, but takes on even greater
importance as an indispensable component of all
disciplines. It is a running theme, and has to be integrated
into all learning processes and arenas, and given top
priority in the development of all curricula and syllabi.
