13th October 2003
Ashish Shetty NCERT's responses to accusations - the historians' thoughts could have 'tallied'. Come on, life is not a David Dhawan movie. We expect better excuses from our top academicians
NCERT revises history. NCERT plagiarizes. NCERT does this or that. Frankly, NCERT can do whatever it wants as long as it does it well. Even plagiarism can be done well.
I have no particular interest in NCERT. What NCERT decides hardly changes the education environment in this country. Education will not improve because of text books which some academicians (fake or genuine) condescend to write.
I studied in a reasonably well run private school. It definitely belongs in the top 1 per cent of schools in India.
I learnt a lot. I scored high ranks all through my educational life by mugging up text books. And mugging up how? Just by studying determinedly only a few days before the examinations. The textbooks, teachers or the examinations could not stop me from passing with flying colours regularly. When I was too lazy to study, I copied from other students.
The teachers were bad - in the ten years of school life, only a couple of teachers could inspire me. And frankly, the
inspiration led to me reading a lot of other books on the topics I was inspired by, not the text books and understanding them better.
If my teachers in the high profile school I studied were that bad, I shudder to think of the education imparted to students by SSC, ICSE, whatever to students across the country.
I survived school. But entirely because of my own enterprise and desire to learn which was not satisfied by the crap I was force-fed in school. Not because of boring, unimaginative and often cruel teachers who were doing their job the way knew best.
Screw the schools and screw the text books. Neither NCERT nor any one else can stem the rot in the system.
I wish I could visit students in the schools and give them the dirty truth. Text books will not save you, nor will teachers or scoring marks in examinations. Do not expect anything from your education. The marks you score are necessary in life - so mug up. Understand if you can, mug up if you can't. Learn from any source you can on things your curriculum fails to teach you. Your education is in your own hands. Half-baked teachers who can barely read and come to school to earn their daily bread are not your saviours. Your saviors are you, yourself.
There are valuable things you learn from school, though. Bullying is one. Avoiding bullying is another. How to lie - whether it is about your home assignments,
mark sheets, fake illnesses or financial transactions tomorrow when you grow up, how to make the most of the crappy systems you are going to inherit - these are lessons only school can teach you. How to strike deals with authority while actively working to subvert it - now that's one skill which a good student can learn if he puts his mind to it.
Anyway, coming back to NCERT. The latest amazing discovery of NCERT seems to be that 'historians' thoughts can tally'. Tally!!! Dear Dr. Rajput, your esteemed historians have only what we as students used to do during the examinations - copy like hell! At least we had the honour to admit to copying when the occasional pissed-off examiner caught us in the act. I do not remember one student who ever said his thoughts tallied with those of the guy sitting towards his left. Tally!! The sheer nerve of it! It ranks right next to the everlasting 'dog ate my homework'.
Plagiarism is something which everyone does. Professors, research students, little kids, journalists - everyone
plagiarizes. Often chapter by chapter, word by word. And are never caught. If one paragraph in one book is exactly the same as another paragraph in another book - what are the chances that the complete similarity between the two texts are because someone's thoughts tallied? Nah. Too corny.
My complaint is that the text was not copied intelligently. Come on, everyone knows how to rewrite text. Especially when it is going to appear in print, in something as controversial as NCERT text books! The current controversy displays a sheer lack of brains, I say. These guys, and the NCERT chairman should not be in their current posts - if only for not coming up with a better excuse. Tally, my foot.
Text books, in India, are a means to and end - scoring marks in the examinations. Nothing more, nothing less.
For
those of you who need a backgrounder, read below. It is a
true copy. For US author, it’s a copy but in NCERT it’s a ‘tally’
‘It’s plagiarism, I don’t like it one bit’
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR, OCTOBER 9: Trust our learned NCERT textbook writers not to know what plagiarism means.
Two authors of the Class XII world history textbook which has several excerpts lifted from a seminal US book—first reported in The Indian Express—denied any wrongdoing. One of them even claimed that their ‘‘opinions tally with that of the US authors and hence it cannot be called plagiarism.’’
But this opinion doesn’t tally with at least one of the US authors of World Civilization, Their History, Their Civilization.
Robert E. Lerner, Professor of Humanities at the Northwestern University and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy and the American Academy in Rome, identified some of the paras lifted by the NCERT book (cited in The Indian Express, October 7) as written by him.
‘‘It certainly is plagiarism,’’ he said via email. ‘‘And I don’t like it one bit. Four of the five passages you cited were written by me.’’ We disagree, say NCERT authors Himansu Sekhar Patnaik and Mohammed Anwar Haque leaving it to the NCERT to deal with ‘‘the complaint’’.
‘‘A number of people and materials were consulted,’’ said Patnaik, ‘‘and there is no question of lifting anything from any book. The similarity could be coincidental.’’
Patnaik said he has been teaching history for last 33 years and he does not think he needs to copy anything from any US book. ‘‘We are also aware of the Copyright Act...Opinions do tally, it cannot be called plagiarism.’’
For his part, Haque said: ‘‘Those who have reviewed the book could have a different opinion but if we have anything to say, we will write it to the NCERT.’’ And that if there were any ‘‘mistakes,’’ it could be corrected in the second edition.
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