Dr. Vasant Kalpande
डॉ. विजया वाड, अध्यक्ष, मराठी विश्वकोश मंडळ यांनी त्यांच्या एका प्रस्तावित प्रकाशनासाठी हा लेख मागितला होता. हे पुस्तक अजून प्रकाशित व्हायचे आहे.
POSITIVE
STROKES IN MY STUDENT LIFE
I was admitted in Class I in 1955. Those were the
days when the doctrine “Spare the rod and spoil the child” prevailed. However, I
was fortunate that the teachers who taught me did not follow this doctrine.
Teachers whom you remember throughout your life are
often the ones who had given you some attention or strokes. Positive strokes
make you feel good and negative make you feel bad. Of course, any attention is
better than none, unless it is cruel or demeaning. Most of my teachers in my student life were
attentive towards the needs of the students.
I studied my middle school classes in Science Core, a
Government Secondary
School located near Maltekadi in Amravati. Our language teachers Kamaltai
Deshpande and Kamaltai Dange encouraged me to write in the school magazine. Our school magazines during that period were in my
handwriting. Our Drawing teacher Shri. Wankhede
paid particular attention to the students who were good at Drawing. He used to go beyond the school syllabus. He taught
us how to use various techniques to achieve the desired effect in a picture. He also taught us how to select and buy
drawing material like various types of
pencils, colours and brushes of good quality. It was because of his
encouragement that I appeared for the Government
Elementary and Intermediate Grade Drawing Examinations and
passed them.
I completed my secondary education in Government
Kalaniketan, Amravati.
Shri. M.N.Kaned taught us Marathi. He encouraged us to write in our own style.
Once Shri. Kaned asked us to write a humorous essay on ‘How I spent my summer
vacation’. After reading my essay, he
remarked that the essay was really good, but
one should bear in mind that he is not Shripad Krushna Kolhatkar. One should
develop his own style of writing. Shri.
Sardeshmukh, our Science teacher, helped me find my own style of writing. He always emphasized the use of plain and simple language which
is characterized by clarity and brevity. If a student used mugged up sentences
in his reply, he used to say, “I can hear sound, but can’t make any sense out
of it.”
Shri. Sardeshmukh allowed us to take home the
instruments from the laboratory and told us that experiments need not be
performed necessarily in the laboratory. He encouraged me to read a variety of
books on Science and Mathematics including biographies of scientists and
mathematicians both in Marathi and English. A few of my articles were published
in Marathi digests like Amrut, Navaneet and
Shriyut when I was studying in secondary school.
Unlike some semi-English medium schools in Amravati, Science and Mathematics
in our school were taught in Marathi. Students suffered a lot in science
colleges where the medium of instruction was
English. I was an exception to this because of the encouragement I got to read
English books on science and mathematics.
I was very weak in sports. None of my schoolmates were
willing to include me in their team, because they were sure to lose in the
competitions. Bhaiyasaheb Nimbekar taught us Physical Education. He allowed me
to participate in any activity which I liked. He was also in-charge of the
school library. He used to hand over the keys of the library to me. I read more than 1000
books from the library. They included both fiction and non-fiction in Marathi,
English and Hindi. No one insisted that I should read good literature only. I
read trash material also. I read most of the novels written by Baburao Arnalkar,
the most popular writer of my generation who wrote about 1100 detective
novels.(His novels were not available in the school library.)
Ram Darwhekar, a brother of the noted Marathi
dramatist Purushottam Darwhekar, taught us Marathi. Apart from being an excellent
teacher, he was very careful in imbibing
values among the students. I remember an instance when I was in Class X. There
were single desks and chairs in our classrooms. Most of my classmates were
quite naughty. I was known to be a plain and sincere
student. I often envied other students and thought why can’t I play a mischief
like them? Once a student in front of me was standing and reading a lesson aloud. I pulled back his chair. He tried to sit on the
chair after he had finished reading. He fell down.
All the class laughed. “Who did this?’ Ram Darwhekar asked. I stood up and
said, “Sir, I did it.” He was silent for a moment and then asked all the
students to stand up until the period was over. One of the students gathered
courage and asked, “Sir, he made a mistake. Why all of us are punished?” Sir
said, “I know him well. It is your collective mind that has affected his mind.
Hence, I punished the whole class.” After the period was over I said to my
friends, “I am sorry. You were unnecessarily punished because of me.” “No, you
need not be sorry. What Sir said must be true. We will not think of any
mischief whenever you are with us.” My friends replied. This was the first and
the last mischief I got into in the school.
Almost all the students in our school were very weak
in English. The English teacher emphasized grammar and spellings alone without bothering about whether students could speak or write. This resulted in inferiority complex among us.
There were only two options before us; either to
speak or write grammatically correct English or to keep mum. We opted for the second easier option. The situation
persisted in all non-English medium schools in Maharashtra
till English was introduced from Class I.
AFTER
I JOINED THE MAHARARASHTRA EDUCATIONAL SERVICE
I did my M.Sc. in 1972. I was selected by the
Maharashtra Public Service Commission for Maharashtra Educational Service,
Class I in the same year. I had a dilemma before me; whether I should join this
service or pursue research in Physical Chemistry. Dr. N.V.Karbelkar, who was
head of the Chemistry Department, advised me to join the Government Service. I
followed his advice. In July 1973, after one year training I was posted as the
District Education Officer, Ahmednagar. Shri.V.V.Chiplunkar, who was our
Director of Education for a long period of 11 years guided us on every
occasion. He inculcated in us, a positive attitude toward work and impressed on us
that students are the centre of the education system and while taking any
decision or deciding any policy we should think to what extent students are
benefited. I was involved in either implementing
or formulating various reforms in education. I will describe a few of them
which had a long lasting impact on students. My experiences of my student life
also find a reflection in some of the programmes.
Science Forums
I worked as the Director, State Institute of Science
Education, Pune (now shifted to Nagpur)
between 1977 and 1980. There were no challenging enrichment programmes for
talented students having aptitude for Mathematics
and Science. Performance of Maharashtra in the
National Scince Talent Search Examination (now modified as National Talent
Search Examination) was also very poor. I started a ‘Science Forum’ for
selected students of secondary schools in Pune in the Institute on a pilot
basis and organized lectures by scientists and experts, quiz competitions, film
shows and a number of enrichment activities for them. They were allowed to take
home science instruments and books on Science and Mathematics. They could
perform as many experiments as they could. They were also given information
about the National Science Talent Search Examination. Encouraged by this pilot
project the Government of Maharashtra started Science Forums in renowned
Science Colleges in all the districts with a view to identifying
and nurturing talent in science and
mathematics among students. This programme yielded very positive results. The share of students in
Maharashtra securing NTS Scholarship rose from less than one percent in 1979 to
more than 25 percent since 2000.
Rapport-based
Programme of School Improvement
I participated in this project, which was initiated
by the then Director of Education, Shri.V.V.Chiplunkar in the year 1980. Each of the field officers of the School
Education Department had adopted a weaker secondary school, having SSC result
below 30% with its feeder primary schools.
The basic principles of the Rapport-base Programme
were: (a) rapport rather than support; (b) recognition rather than rebuke; (c)
trust rather than distrust; (d) self-assessment rather than external
assessment; and (e) example rather than precept.
The National University of Educational Planning and
Administration, New Delhi conducted a study of
this programme and brought out a publication titled ‘Revitalising School
Complexes in India’.
I had adopted Shiroli
High School, Shiroli in Kolhapur district between
1980 and 1982. In his letter to Shri. Chiplunkar, the Headmaster of the school, Shri.
C.R.Kulkarni wrote:
“I am writing to you for the first time. The result
of the SSC Examination of my school was always below 30% since last three years.
I am glad to inform you that this year it is 52%. Shri. Kalpande, Regional
Deputy Director of Education, Kolhapur
adopted our school and paid frequent visits. With his polite nature and planned
efforts he removed inferiority complex from the minds of the teachers and
students and enthused new confidence among them. This helped in improving
school discipline, mutual trust and improved effort to achieve the common goal
of enhancing student performance. The local community, which always criticized
us for poor performance, voluntarily distributed a large number of prizes to
the students”
Task Force for
Universalisation of Elementary Education
The Government of Maharashtra had set up a Task
Force in 1992 to prepare the Programme of Action for universalisation of
elementary education suited to the specific needs of the State under the
Chairmanship of Shri. Salim Zakeria the then Minister for School Education. The
Task Force submitted the POA in 1994. I chaired the drafting committee of the
Task Force. The POA of contained a number of recommendations and many of them
have been implemented by the State Government. The two most important recommendations according to
me were (a) increasing the rate of contingency grants to the primary schools
run by the local bodies; and (b) creation of the posts
of Kendra Pramukhs for effective supervision of Zilla Parishad primary schools.
Prior to 1994, the primary schools run by the local
bodies, i.e. Zilla Parishads, Municipal Councils and Municipal Corporations
used to get non-salary grants at the rate of Rs 5 per student per year. This
amount was very meager; not even a half percent of the expenditure on the
salary of teachers. Again this amount was placed at the disposal of the
concerned Education Officer. The demands of individual schools were rarely
taken into consideration. There were always delays in the supply of material to
schools. The POA recommended that the non-salary grants to these schools be increased to
4% of the expenditure on the salary of teachers working in that school.
The Government of Maharashtra accepted this recommendation and also placed the
grants directly at the disposal of the school. This resulted into tremendous improvement
in the school environment, teacher motivation
and teaching-learning process.
The inspecting machinery is quite inadequate and
pre-occupied with the administrative work. It has also lost touch with the actual teaching-learning process and is not in a
position to guide the teachers effectively. Academic inspections receive very
low priority. Zilla Parishad primary schools suffer the most as they are
situated in remote areas and have to work in isolation. The Task Force
recommended setting up central primary schools for a group of about 10 Zilla Parishad primary schools and appointment of a trained
graduate Kendra Pramukh for their academic supervision. A Kendra Pramukh would have to teach school subjects for at least 6
clock hours per week to ensure his contact with the teaching-learning process.
The Government of Maharashtra accepted this recommendation also and set up 4860 Central
Primary Schools and an equal
number of posts of Kendra Pramukhs.
The Government of Maharashtra issued these Government Resolutions on 14th
November, 1994, i.e. on Children’s Day. I was instrumental in including both these
recommendations in the POA and also drafting the Government Resolutions under
the guidance of Dr. Kumud Bansal, the then Education Secretary of the
Government of Maharashtra.
Syllabus-based Audio
and Video Programmes
I was posted as Director of the State Institute of
Educational Technology, (popularly known as Balchitravani)
in 1992. I changed the earlier policy of producing random
enrichment programmes to producing
syllabus-based programmes which was the demand of the teachers and the
requirement of students and parents. The audio-cassettes based on the English textbooks
titled ‘Let’s Learn English’ for classes V to VIII of non-English medium schools received a great response. These audio-cassettes
were actually the audio-form of the textbooks or in other words ‘talking books’.
They were easier to use as teachers or parents were neither required to give
any extra time nor did they require any
training for their use. The cassettes were of immense use to the teachers,
students and parents in improving their spoken
English. This approach was used on a mass scale in the
in-service training programmes of teachers of English from 1997 onwards.
SARAS 2001
Textbooks occupy the most important position among
teaching-learning materials. They reach all
the persons concerned with school education - students, teachers, parents - and
are easily available to those interested in the process of education. The joy
of a child, who gets a brand new textbook on the
first day of the school, cannot be described in words. I can proudly
claim that I was able to ensure that all the textbooks were available in
adequate quantity before the schools re-opened.
The
Textbook Bureau brought out a new series
of textbooks for Language, Mathematics and Science based on the ‘Competency-based
Primary Education Curriculum: 1995’ during my
first tenure as Director of that institute from 1996 to 2000. I tried my
best to ensure that all the textbooks would be
child-friendly and students would love them. The
Language and Mathematics textbooks for Class I were brought out in two parts
each to be used in the first and second academic term respectively. This was
done due to the fact that students in Class I cannot handle the textbooks
carefully and the books are torn within a period of five to six months.
Publishing these textbooks in two parts gave the students opportunity to use
new textbooks during the second academic term also.
All the textbooks in this new series were developed as part of a
comprehensive project of putting the textbooks on trial for an entire academic
year and then revising them in the light of the feedback received in the course
of this trial.
SARAS 2001 employed multiple methodologies including
feedback from selected schools, reviews by experts, feedback from other
interested persons and Research Projects.
This project covered the entire state and all the
eight media of instruction. It was named ‘SARAS
2001’ as it was undertaken to improve the quality of textbooks or to make
them better. The word ‘saras’ in Marathi means
‘better’.
SARAS 2001 has
put forth a new comprehensive model of post-publication evaluation of
textbooks, which was the first of its kind.
Reforms in
English Language Teaching
Dnyanamata Vidyalaya, Sangamner, in Ahmednagar
district is a school managed by a Christian Mission. The headmaster of this
school wrote to the Government of Maharashtra in the year 1998 that the school
had classes from I to X and have both English and Marathi as the mediums of
instruction. The school, however, was facing the problem of declining number of
admissions in Marathi medium classes and they feared that if the same situation
persisted they would have to close down the Marathi medium section, which they
did not want. They sought the permission to start English as one of the
subjects from Class I. This measure, they felt, would help in retaining
students in the Marathi medium section. I
discussed this issue with my colleagues in Balbharati and prepared a detailed
proposal regarding nature of syllabus, textbooks, teacher handbooks, teacher
training and various other aspects with the help of Ms. Dhanavanti Hardikar,
Special Officer for English. The proposal did not materialize immediately as
the Assembly elections were declared by that time. Prof. Ramkrushna More, Minister
for School Education in the newly elected Government immediately adopted the
idea and in November, 1999 announced the decision to start English as one of
the subjects in all the non-English medium schools. The decision was heavily and
aggressively criticized by the so-called intellectuals. But Prof. Ramkrushna
More showed a strong political will and responded with a matching vigour. This
policy received a strong support from the masses. Because of this and also
because of the preparatory work done earlier in the Textbook Bureau everything
with regard to implementation of the policy was
achieved successfully. This new programme
adopted a totally unconventional approach
towards English language teaching. This
created a new confidence among students.
After introduction of English from Class I since June
2000, the need for a pictorial and attractive
dictionary for primary school children was felt. The first such dictionary titled
‘My First English-Marathi Dictionary’ was published in 2005. It received
a wide acclaim. This dictionary Prepared by Ms. Dhanavanti Hardikar, Academic
Secretary, Balbharati was published during my second
tenure as the Director of Balbharati. Despite lack of publicity and
difficult procedures to buy it, more than three lakh of
its copies have been sold in the open market
apart from the Government sale. The popularity of the dictionary can be
gauged from these figures of sale.
Kendriya Vidyalayas are Hindi medium schools run by
the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sagathan under the control of the Government of India
having ‘semi-English’ from Class I. There are 1085 KVs in the country with an
enrolment of more than ten lakh and their performance is excellent. Most of the students in
these schools belong to lower middle-class or middle-class. I suggested to Prof. Vasant Purke, the then Minister for School Education that
we should also try out this idea in Maharashtra with a view to benefitting the students as well as Marathi medium schools. He approved
this idea and in 2007, declared the
policy of allowing ‘semi-English’
medium in Marahti medium schools. The idea is getting increasing
acceptance every year.
Inspection of Urdu
medium schools
The number of
Urdu medium schools in Maharashtra and the number
of students studying in them is very large; next to Marathi and English medium
schools. But there are practically no Urdu knowing inspecting officers in the
State. They either avoid inspecting Urdu medium schools or these inspections
are done perfunctorily. The inspecting officers
are not in a position to appreciate what is going on in the schools and provide
any guidance to them. Their major difficulty
with the Urdu language is really the script; the
language can be understood by anyone who knows Hindi. I got certain books prepared to overcome this difficulty.
These books provided
transliteration of Urdu Balbharati into Devnagari, along with details regarding
how Urdu script is written, the meaning of Urdu words which are normally not used
in Hindi and also some aspects of Urdu grammar which are different from Hindi. Now, the need is to
disseminate this material to all the inspecting officers and give them a
short-duration orientation.
Curriculum and
Examination Reforms at the Secondary and Higher Secondary Stage
Some of the important measures I took when I worked
as the Chairman of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher
Secondary Education were:
·
The new textbooks
introduced since 2006 emphasized project work, practical work, activities, new
technology and self-learning.
·
I scrapped the merit
list in the SSC and HSC Examinations from
2006. This reform was welcomed as it removed undue pressure on the minds of the
intelligent students. Comparing the student performance on basis of
aggregate percentage was really unscientific. This decision reached its logical
end when the State Board also did away with the prizes to the students standing
first in terms of the aggregate percentage and started only subject-wise prizes
since 2010.
·
Failure in the first public
examination is a very bitter experience and it shatters one’s confidence. Since
a large number of students used to fail in
English, the policy of combined passing in
three languages was introduced.
·
Twenty percent of the marks for each subject were
reserved for internal work.
·
Oral expression in
languages is a very important aspect which was
totally neglected earlier. Oral examination of 20 marks each for all the
languages was introduced in the new syllabus.
I worked in the School Education Department of the
State Government for a period of about 35 years. I loved my work and got immense
satisfaction out of it. There is a widespread belief that there are undue
restrictions on the Government machinery; the environment in the Government
system is highly suffocating and it cannot do anything good. This is not at all
true. Also, many people wrongly believe that
‘government servants’ resist their superiors’ attempts to do good work. My own
experience has been otherwise. Whenever I tried to introduce a new idea, plan
or strategy, my colleagues enjoyed the work as much as I did, and participated
in all my initiatives with a lot of eagerness and enthusiasm. The positive
strokes in all our endeavours were mutual. One can do a lot of good
things in the Government system if one has a will.
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