Social Science Curriculum Development

 

Vikramshila has been working on an active citizenship programme since 2012. We feel children need to have a good understanding of certain issues to be able to deal with the rapidly changing, complex world of today. Unfortunately, such active citizenship themes like ‘Democracy and rights’, ‘Judiciary from the lens of justice’, ‘Gender and Socialization’, ‘Media literacy’, Diversity and discrimination’, are not taught as they do not fall within the formal school curriculum. As part of this work, Vikramshila has developed a set of modules onseven themes around citizenship, based on an interdisciplinary approach, and anchored in critical pedagogy methods.

Wipro has supported Vikramshila in this work. These modules have been field tested with ~ 10,000 students in various types of schools- Government, private, urban, rural, Madrasahs, non-formal learning centres etc. The response from students across all schools has been uniformly very encouraging. Students revealed a great deal of understanding and awareness, which came as a surprise to their own teachers. We feel that children are very keen on engaging with such topics and they looked forward to such interactions with much eagerness.