A multi-party Parliamentary Forum For Education And Culture (PFEC) has expressed concern over the authoritarian manner in which Centre was dealing with the sensitive issues of education and culture in the country. Education and culture are among the most sensitive issues in any country. In a nation as large and diverse as India, all such fundamental questions can only be resolved through consensual governance rather than through imposition of any particular view in an authoritarian manner, PFEC convenor Eduardo Faleiro said in the first newsletter of the outfit to be released by leader of opposition Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday. In the editorial, Faleiro said recently the Centre through the National Council Of Educational Research And Training (NCERT) formulated a draft national curriculum framework for school education without obtaining the approval of Central Advisory Board of Education even though education is in the concurrent list of the constitution.
There were several other important issues, that should find greater resonance in Parliament, the editorial said adding a steering committee on text book evalution constituted by the Centre in 1991 identified history text books used in several states and by some organisations, which contain unscientific, communal and obscurantist distortions and steps are yet to be taken to remove these distortions. At what price, education?