Of content and context
Content and Context
Information for its own sake mere is
a bane of textbooks. A recent report in the local press told us that the Civics
Book of Class 6, in a reputed public school in Allahabad , mentions the term of
office of a mayor as one year, though it is five years in all the districts of
U.P. The information is not incorrect; it’s only that it is out of context for
a student in U.P.; it is of course all right for one in a metro. Learning is
becoming a casualty in information explosion. Just sample this question from
the G.K. book of class 1, my child was mugging up – “Can you name a famous
cartoon movie which is about a fish?” Impressive for a child to know the
answer isn’t it!
Book writing is both an
art and science and, so is the prescription of the correct one for the kids.
The writer has to be aware for whom he is writing – the age and the milieu. The
experience of a teacher in a Government school in a resettlement colony in
Delhi , published in the Public Report on Basic Education in India (PROBE), is
pertinent- “The curriculum, for its part, is drastically at variance with the
life these children live. By focusing on upper- middle class experiences, it
further alienates them from the world of knowledge. They are simply unable to
relate to the finer subtleties of birthday parties, balanced diets, family
holiday, or multistoried homes. Being a teacher of English, I have come to
realize that the curriculum is utterly incomprehensible to these
underprivileged children.” It has also been my experience, during the training
sessions of the teachers posted in the rural schools in U.P, that many
references in our texts like 'fireplace', 'mantelpiece' (in the chapter on
‘Our Home’) and, the activities such as 'camping', 'hiking', 'fishing',
evoke questioning glances not only by the pupil but, also by the
teachers. Similarly, the references to 'Santa Claus' and, 'basketball' as
'our favourite game’, is found difficult by the teachers to relate to and
explain.
Since language is embedded in
culture, it is in the course of learning English that the cultural interference
is clearly felt. Culture and communication are intertwined and it determines
how people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages and, how they
get interpreted. For instance, as different from the West, in our
country, a teacher or elder is not addressed by his name/surname,
instead, family friends are identified through some relationship – 'Uncle',
'Aunty', 'Chacha', 'Mama' etc. and, in Hindi, there are two different ways of
addressing an elder and the younger – 'Aap' (for former) and 'Tum' (for younger). Associative
contexts in which a word is used in a place might evoke a different
understanding of that word. The word 'darling', I remember, raised shy smiles
among us when a teacher addressed a student lovingly by this term. As 10 years
old we had heard it being used in the Hindi films in only one connotation. The
various nuances of meaning given to the word ‘sexy’, ranging from obscenity to
aesthetics, are only a matter of one’s cultural environs. Just imagine the
reaction of Shakespeare’s beloved on hearing the sonnet- ‘Shall I compare thee
to the summer’s day’, had her experience of summer was only of the Indian
plains
published in HT Lko 24-6-12
